The Care and Feeding of Data Scientists

Chapter 1. Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

So here you are, pondering the running of a data science team. Maybe you’re a data scientist who has risen through the ranks and been put in charge of a growing team. Maybe you’re an engineering or product leader tasked with building a new data science function from scratch. Or maybe you’re being proactive, sizing up what data science management looks like and figuring out whether it’s for you some day. To do your mission well, you’ll need to understand how to balance and structure a data science team, how to recruit and interview the best people to fill that team, and how to keep them productive and happy after they’re in place. It can be a daunting task, but this report is here to help. And luckily, it won’t self-destruct at the end. Over the following pages, we cover each of these topics in turn, with a focus on concrete, actionable tips that you can actually use.

To begin, it’s crucial to recognize that there are several different flavors of data scientist who generally will fill different niches within your organization and need to be managed differently. Your first job as a data science leader is to quickly take stock of your team (or the team you’re tasked with building), match it up against the goals of your organization, and target your efforts around building the right kind of data science team. In this section, we cover the different flavors as well as thoughts on how to structure your team within the context of ...