how did someone who studied stats and ds end up as a software engineer?
i studied statistics and data science during school and was convinced i wanted to become a data scientist.
throughout this time it was stated constantly how ds work is 90% data manipulation and 10% model training. which seemed fine. but at the same time does that mean im studying and majoring in something that will only be 10% of my time? leaving me at a disadvantage 90% of the time?
nonetheless i continue, eventually getting more and more exposure to model training. its fun. but then it also occurs to me i will forever be at the mercy of the people that make the tools i use. or the people that collect the data i use. or the people that productionalize the models i train.
so i learn web scraping. then i learn how to build my own tools and libraries. then i learn how to build products and learn how to build the infrastructure to support them.
turns out i just like building things. and model training is only a small part of that.
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so at this point some people call me data scientist (i wouldnt classify myself as one) some call me platform engineer, ai engineer, full stack engineer, ml engineer, some say im not an engineer because i didnt study CS lol.
idk what an engineer is by definition, but i know i dont like being at the mercy of other people, so i learn how to build things, and a result of that is a lot of people call me an engineer.
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