I have ~5-6 years of remote work experience, started off as the only remote employee of a company, then was partially remote at my next company, then worked from an office for a local startup, and have been working for a fully distributed company for the past 4 years.
While my 2 years working at a startup in my mid-20s where we would sleep at the office and worked 24/7 did end up producing some of my closest friendships and a relationship with the company and the CEO that is strong to this day, my last few years working at a fully distributed company has also been really social.
We build friendships, we gossip, we argue, we share interesting tidbits about our lives - I don't feel like the social component is lost. It is usually not as strong as when you have to see the other person every day but it is more than enough for most purposes.
Our company also does meetups 3-4 times a year where we all fly to locations like Bali, Mexico, Iceland, US..etc. and spend a week socializing and working together. Remote work does not mean that you are basically a freelancer contracting for a company, there are ways to build strong enough social connections.
> Why go through all of that for an extra $250/wk?
People don't do these trials for the money. We do it because the payoff is getting a great job, and we want to know what the company is like to gauge if it would be a good fit for us and if it indeed is a great job.
I work at Automattic and the hourly rate was not at all a consideration for me when I did my trial. I understand it may be different for others, though!
I did the Automattic trial and have been a very very satisfied employee of the company for 4 years now so I may be a little biased. I understand it is not for everyone.
The trial is very very accommodating to whatever life situation you are in. I was young and obsessed with the startup I was working for so I was working 60-70 hour weeks (I do not do this at Automattic). I also had a pre-planned 3-week long vacation during this time when I couldn't go online or do the trial, so I had to start my trial later. And then I had an unexpected health issue. Automattic accommodated all of this.
I am from one of those countries where they have a 3-month long probation period. It is not something to aspire to. You need to quit your job to start a new job you don't know much about where you can be let go anytime.
For many of us, the fact that you get to see what your day-to-day would look like, what the company culture is really like, and what kind of people you'd be working with - without having to make a huge commitment - is invaluable. I am not sure I would've left my previous job where I was really happy if I wasn't 100% certain that Automattic was a good fit for me. And I wouldn't have been able to gauge that if I had not done a trial.
It is meant to be a showcase of what data scientists work on in companies whose businesses do not rely on accuracy of ML models.
For example, data science work at companies like LinkedIn or Facebook can end up requiring concentrated focus on model performance as they have highly developed ML capabilities.
Data scientists at smaller or less data-driven companies end up running ad-hoc queries for marketing or product teams. We are somewhere in-between at Automattic and we find value in sharing our day-to-day work so other data scientists and companies know what to expect when they hire or get hired as someone to do data science work - which is now such a broad definition that it barely means anything.
I also wanted to share our learnings about going from ad-hoc queries, one-off models and solutions to general frameworks, and make a case for custom ML pipelines by showing how this kind of work is so closely coupled with internal data.
It really isn't very magical, though. It is mainly data and software engineering work as mentioned in the post and we are still in the early stages.
I think there is some magic in the applications of ML models to actual business questions which is also a topic that I want to post about on the same blog.
It also wasn't meant as a way to recruit people, as far as I know, we are not currently explicitly looking to hire more data scientists (but also, of course, always welcome applications). I posted this to HN because people ask many questions about what exactly it is that data scientists do in the industry!
While my 2 years working at a startup in my mid-20s where we would sleep at the office and worked 24/7 did end up producing some of my closest friendships and a relationship with the company and the CEO that is strong to this day, my last few years working at a fully distributed company has also been really social.
We build friendships, we gossip, we argue, we share interesting tidbits about our lives - I don't feel like the social component is lost. It is usually not as strong as when you have to see the other person every day but it is more than enough for most purposes.
Our company also does meetups 3-4 times a year where we all fly to locations like Bali, Mexico, Iceland, US..etc. and spend a week socializing and working together. Remote work does not mean that you are basically a freelancer contracting for a company, there are ways to build strong enough social connections.