Page 35 - Future Demands Jan 2021

FUTURE DEMANDS
PAYAL JAIN
CHAIR – WOMEN IN DATA
FUTURISTIC LESSONS FROM THE STONE AGE
When I started out working in data-analysis for financial institutions at the turn of the millennium, my colleagues and I were able to predict many things which came to be.
Like number-obsessed fortune tellers, we could then see how banking would evolve from branch to app, how alternative currencies like Bitcoin would fill a void, and how peer-lending would provide real competition for traditional lenders.
However, one thing would have filled me with surprise.
For, when I think back to that windowless office in 1999, and all those long days poring over pages of statistics, I would never have forecasted that data would become sexy.
But, that’s the reality today.
It certainly wasn’t when I finished my maths degree in the late nineties. Then, I was a pariah for choosing a career in data- analytics over the lucrative City option. I can still recall the horrified look on my favourite professor’s face as he said to me, ”but, where will the jobs be?”.
They’re not saying that to graduates in 2021.
In fact, universities around the world cannot grow their data departments quick enough to cope with global demand, and in 2016 data science became the highest paid field to enter. Meanwhile, senior jobs continue to bloom, and today over two thirds of Fortune 1000 companies have a Chief Data Officer in their C-suite. There were none when I started out.
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