I just finished a PhD in stats, and before that, studied computer science. I had planned to go back to industry to do software engineering or be a data scientist afterwards.
However, it seems that in the meantime, vibe coding has taken over the software industry and swallowed most data scientist roles. Few open positions, and the ones that do exist are just pushing a button instead of thinking and solving problems. Is this a correct assessment? Should I try to get back in or just find a new career? I am not too keen on staying in academia either.
Try creating a plan document with the AI first, consisting of small steps. Start by telling it to explain different solutions to the problem, with pros and cons so you can decide what you need. Refine the steps. Then let it implement and review the solution step by step. Let it add general things you don’t like to an archtiecture document and refer to that in the prompt. Clear the context inbetween steps.
I do that, the issue usually comes up when new features get added, the plan is helpful, and I do usually start with one that tackles the backend and makes a basic frontend, it’s all the iteration that comes after the mvp where any new features also need to be planned to come out right which annoys me. I always start with locally hosted web frontends to test quickly on my phone, so I can go back and forth while testing to ensure everything works as expected. When doing that, one manually asked for change at a time to test is ideal. Ai tests do not seem to account for if things feel good to use, you just get a basic functional ui in my experience otherwise.
Thats also my experience and the reason I don’t fear for my job. 😀