academic job market for statistics?

[sidneysamson]

Hi everyone,
 

what's the academic job market like for statistics PhDs?  I want to become a professor ideally, but if the academic job market is as saturated as it is for math, then I'd like to know sooner than later so I can start making contacts with people in industry.  I don't want to be toiling for a decade in low paid postdoc positions after a PhD.  Ideally I would spend a year or two as a postdoc before moving to a tenure-track assistant professorship.

I'm very risk averse since my math degree was fairly useless for anything except for programming jobs, and I don't want a repeat of the same.  It gave me a good foundation to build on for grad programs, but it didn't provide much in itself.

 

Also some more information about me...I'm a 24-year-old starting Berkeley's stats phd program this fall.

Appreciate any input guys.  Thanks!

[cyberwulf]

Practically anything is better than the math job market...

The job market in stats is a lot better than math, certainly. While graduating from UCB doesn't guarantee a faculty position at a good place, the outlook is still pretty decent since the private sector provides a fallback option.

[sidneysamson]

Sounds good to me!

 

Also I'm thinking about getting a masters in computer science as well.  However, I could just do a "Designated Emphasis in Communication, Computation, and Statistics" instead.

My big question is whether or not the masters in computer science would add that much value if I already have a statistics PhD.  I figure some job listings are anal about requiring a "masters or above in computer science" too, sadly.

[cyberwulf]

I think that a Masters in CS might help you, particularly if you end up looking to land a job at a place like Google/Facebook.

[wine in coffee cups]

Sounds good to me!

 

Also I'm thinking about getting a masters in computer science as well.  However, I could just do a "Designated Emphasis in Communication, Computation, and Statistics" instead.

My big question is whether or not the masters in computer science would add that much value if I already have a statistics PhD.  I figure some job listings are anal about requiring a "masters or above in computer science" too, sadly.

Doesn't Berkeley have a steady pipeline of people working on machine learning under Jordan/Wainwright moving on to the big tech companies? I imagine their students are getting the jobs no matter if they're coming from the stat department or the EECS department.

 

I think it's unlikely that industry positions you would reasonably be considering coming out of Berkeley would have a hard CS degree requirement. (If they do...you are looking at the wrong jobs.)

 

As a quick check, I don't see many master's in CS degrees among this crowd. I don't think you will need that extra CS credential to be marketable as a statistician/data scientist as long as you pick up relevant experience during your research.