Data Science Around The World
Examining How the Data Science industry is similar, and different in 3 key areas: North America, Africa, and India.
For this section, I (BT_Raptor) handled North America. Gabby handled Africa, and Avi handled India. Here’s a link to each of their twitter accounts, go check them out if you like the content on this substack.
Avi: https://twitter.com/avikumart_
Gabby: https://twitter.com/thenaijacarguy
Raptor: https://twitter.com/BowTied_Raptor
Table of Contents
Living Standards
Cost of Living
Salary
Company Culture Expectations
Skills
The Skillset Needed
Is Getting Promoted Worth it?
Remote Work
Is Remote Work a Good Idea?
What Abut Sponsorships?
1 - Living Standards
Cost of Living
India: In India, the cost of living is around 25,399.10 INR monthly. This translates to about $325.62, to live a decent life. If you have a family 4 it will cost you around 89,571.27 INR monthly which is around $1,148.38. These expense figures do not include rent.
The cost of living in India is, on average, 67.69% lower than in the USA, and rent in India is, On average 88.20% lower in India.
Below is the distribution of expenses In India (Source: numbeo.com)
Africa: Africa is too large and vast for generalization, so I’m going to focus on Nigeria. The cost of living here depends on the state you live in; whether it’s considered a city or not.
Rent takes a huge part of your earnings, a 2-bedroom apartment ranges from 500k-1M naira ($2,312) yearly. In high-class neighborhoods it costs as much as 4M naira ($9,200) yearly.
Electricity, transportation, food, and other miscellaneous monthly expenses all fluctuate month after month. It depends on the exchange rate. Did I mention that electricity and data bills could add up to your rent monthly? Yeah, it’s that crazy here!
North America: If you are living in a nice comfortable city in North America. To figure out how much it would cost to live a decent life, take the median salary for your city and multiply it by 4. For example, in Vancouver the median salary is 61k. To life a comfortable life in Vancouver, you want your gross pre-tax income to be around 250k. You can look at the below chart to get an idea of how much taxes alone take from you.
You end up paying the government about 100k/yr in your income tax. We haven’t even talked about the capital gains, HST, property, or type of taxes. Just make sure your rent payment is around 10% of your net pay, and you should be fine.
FYI: If you are not keeping more than 50% of your after tax income then you are being stupid. Either reduce expenses or generate more income (preferred).
Salary
India: India is the second-highest country to recruit employees in the field of data science. Yearly, it has 50,000 positions available – second only to the United States. Following the growth of data science as a field, they offer a competitive salary. The demand for data scientists come from many industries. Here's a few such examples: the big companies, the e-commerce industry, or even start-ups.
The salary of data scientists in India varies based on several factors. Though, the average data scientist's salary is ₹698,412. An entry-level data scientist can earn around ₹500,000 per annum with less than one year of experience. Early-level data scientists with 1 to 4 years of experience get around ₹610,811 per annum.
A mid-level data scientist with 5 to 9 years of experience earns ₹1,004,082 per annum in India. As your experience and skills grow, your earnings rise. Senior-level data scientists earn more than ₹1,700,000 a year in India!
Source: Payscale.com
Africa: The concept of an average salary in Nigeria is non-existent. The reason for this is because there is no standard and there are a huge number of outliers. Example below:
Data Scientists can earn as low as ₦70,000 ($162) monthly to as much as ₦1.5M ($3,400) monthly. These number fluctuate depending on the company itself, and the location. but, the most common salary range but is ₦250,000 - ₦500,000 ($579 – $1,158) monthly. The big boys are those who work for multinationals and earn in USD. They go home with the standard salary in the Western world while enjoying a lesser cost of living.
North America: A simple Quantitative Analytics Data Science job pays you around 110k/yr. For a revenue generating one such as this, if you are in the junior side, then your bonus is around 30 to 40k/yr. Or, if you are in the seniority position, then you can go ahead and assume your bonus is 100% of your salary. In other words:
Junior: 150k/yr
Senior: 240k/yr
Note that the quantitative position in this picture is a data science career, not a simple job. This is because this specific role focuses on generating revenue for the firm. Most Data Science positions you encounter will be simple number crunching. This means most data scientist roles are simple jobs, with 0 bonus given to you. Avoid these jobs like the plague they are. It doesn’t matter if you give it your all, or if you slack off, you get paid the same amount. To find out if a position’s mediocre or not, ask them this “Hey is there some sort of a performance incentive such as a bonus, or stock option?” If they say no, time to bail.
Company Culture Expectations
India: India is a vast, populous, and diverse nation. It encompasses many different identities, languages, cultures, and religions. It is very difficult to make generalizations about Indian culture. There are, but, a few tips that can help you understand the company culture in India.
There are many Indians within India. India is a multilingual, multi-ethnic, and pluralistic society. You will see vast cultural differences between North and South India.
Be aware of cultural diversity and be cautious about generalizations. Joan Robinson once observed: “Whatever you can say about India, the opposite is also true.”
English is the official language of conducting business.
Be prepared for meetings to start and finish late and for interruptions to occur on a regular basis
There is formal & hierarchical relationship between managers and staff in India
Indians place great value on relationships: take your time to develop contacts.
Africa: For a country that puts a lot of emphasis on culture, there's actually no such thing as company culture.
The occasional weekend parties are always nice. And Kunle from HR gave us permission to call our bosses by their first names. But, that’s as much culture as you can get without endangering your employment status.
Paid holidays, paternal leaves, inclusivity, and soft perks are myths in Nigerian companies. Except for places like Interswitch that pay Employee’s Spouse Allowance.
North America: Company loyalty is dead. If you believe your company will still hold onto you even when they are operating at a net loss. Your employer wants to use you to make as much money as possible, while paying the least amount possible.
You want to make yourself richer by asking for the biggest salary possible. You are both at odds. So, the employer tricks you by giving you a bunch of fluff items to try to keep you while paying you very little. This would be things like goodie bags, free lunch, free coffee etc… Run the math, this is like $20 per day max => 300x20 => $6,000. I’d much rather have a +10k raise instead of $6k of free stuff.
The key in North America is to be 2-faced, in public, talk about how much you love your company, and it's culture. Then attend all the get-together, and meetings. Then, the moment you get home, see if you can find something that pays higher (don't increase time worked).
2 - Skills
The Skillset Needed
India: In India, you want the following:
Knowledge of algorithms, statistics, mathematics and machine learning.
Programming languages such as R, Python, SQL, SAS, and Hive.
Business understanding, and framing the right questions to ask your data.
Communication skills to communicate the results to the rest of the team. (Source: upgrad.com)
Africa: If you’re working for a larger company, then chances are you’d be working in a team with other data scientists. This means you will get training before your resumption. But, you need to be well-grounded in a couple of tools and processes:
A degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or Statistics (optional).
Skill in Python or R programming language.
Excel.
Visualization tools – Power BI, Tableau.
SQL.
Projects or Real-life work experience.
Most companies do not enforce strict requirements. If you’re able to convince them during the interviews you will get the job. The requirements listed are soft requirements, not hard requirements. You will still get some on the job training
North America: In North America, here are the priorities that you should pursue if in college/bootcamp:
Data Science Internships
Analytics Internships
Programming Internships
Any sort of computer Internships
College Degree or Coding Bootcamp
If you are already in the field, then you can focus on looking at research papers. You want to do this to see what other firms in your industry are doing. Then seeing how many of those you can install (once tested). You will want to do that because it will increase your company’s revenue, and then you get a bigger bonus. You will also end up getting more important responsibilities (no more grunt work). This could mean more time learning neural nets, time series analysis, linear algebra, or combinatorics.
Is Getting Promoted Worth it?
India: Yes, it is worth it to get a promotion in India when it comes to data science roles. The reason is the high growth of data science and machine learning roles in India. The demand for data science roles is seeing an acceleration upwards. Since 2012, the Data Science sector has saw a massive hike of 650%, far outpacing other sectors.
The growth (salary) when people swap from digital analytics to data science is 31% (average).
According to Michael Page’s 2021 India Talent Trends report on data science. Data scientists with 3-10 years of experience get salaries in the 25-65 lakh range. While those with more experience can command pay packages upwards of 1 crore (Around $128K).
Africa: Yes, if you don’t mind attending more meetings and delegating most of the tasks to subordinates. I mean, some extra money wouldn’t hurt anyone. Keep in mind that you will get more work, and if one of your subordinates screws up, that's on you. So, it requires more management and leadership skills and more responsibility. It also helps in your Resume for when you might be looking to change jobs.
North America: Generally, not worth it. You will get something like a 10 to 30k raise (not looking at high Cost of Living Areas). With taxes this translates to about 5 to 15k/yr increase. This means somewhere between $13 to $41 per day.
Congrats, you can have a +1 meal extra per day. But, now you get to have 2x the stress, deadlines, presentations, meetings, and extra work. Not worth it. Much better off by taking 2 or 3 Remote Full Time positions, and being above average in all them.
Don’t be average they get lay offs, don’t be in the top they get swarmed with lots of work. Be above average.
3 - Remote Work
Is Remote Work a Good idea?
India: Yes, definitely a good idea in India. Data science is one of the most popular jobs that exists now . Whether data scientists want to opt for this or not is another discussion. According to Burthworks, 72% of professionals prefer to work from home.
Data Scientists have a lot of platform options: freelancing, and working from home. Additionally, some of these platforms also provide regular payroll for working remote.
Africa: This is what makes employment unbearable in Nigeria. The traffic here is awful. The transportation costs, and fuel costs rising makes leaving your the house expensive.
In Lagos, Nigeria, workers spend an average of 30 hours weekly in traffic. People wake up as early as 5am to beat traffic, since work starts at 8am. Office closes at 5pm, and because of traffic people get home by 11 pm. Then repeat the cycle the next day.
All this should be avoided by working from home. And, the 30 extra hours could go into doing something productive.
But, employers here do not ever listen to the idea of working-from-home. They want to see your face every day, working from the office. This is counterproductive but the reality here.
A few employers have seen the light and encouraged a hybrid setting. This allows more work to get done, happier employees, and reduces traffic for everyone.
North America: Yes, always say yes to 100% Remote work, even if you have to take a -20k loss in salary. Here’s why, there’s something called over-employed. Here’s the idea, instead of having 1 FT job, you have 2 of them. If you have some skills (social & technical), you should be able to maintain this no problem. You will save on travel costs, traffic, and all the headache that comes with going to the office. Here’s a vid on overemployment:
My recommendation is to use the money from overemployment into some sort of a business. Look at the cashflow below for a second:
1st job: $120k
2nd job: $120k
1st business: $50k
2nd business: $50k
Most people who become millionaires end up having 5 income streams. The above strategy would give you 4, and you can live a nice easy life then. Better to live a life that’s legendary, instead of another boring 9 to 5 grind.
What about sponsorships?
India: To hire a foreigner, companies have to follow the Indian Immigration Regulations.
Foreign nationals can only enter India on an employment visa. This must be sponsored by a registered Indian company. The company needs to be one of the following:
Be the Indian subsidiary of the foreign national’s employer
Be an Indian client of the employer
The company has to fulfill obligations before it can bring the foreign national to India.
Africa: This is every Nigerian's dream. Get a job that pays in USD and live the life here, or get a job that offers Visa Sponsorship and move.
Visa sponsorship can be either way. Foreigners coming to work in Nigeria, or Nigerians going overseas to work. For the former, abort mission! I doubt anyone would search for visa sponsorship to work in Nigeria. This is because the smallest wage here is among the lowest worldwide.
A couple of Nigerians work for foreign companies. And also earn in foreign currencies, others have gotten Visa sponsorship. They did this to move to where the company is located.
As a data scientist in Nigeria, this should be your priority. Keep applying. You have what it takes.
North America: If you are in Canada, and you want to get paid in USD for a US company. You have 2 main options:
Look for companies that will hire you full time, and pay you in USD.
Look for companies that are located in the US, and be a contract (not full time) worker for them.
If you are going the contractor route, then grab a PayPal account. From my experience, this is one of their preferred ways of sending you payment.