The email where the title 'data scientist' was originally coined by Jeff Hammerbacher and his team at Facebook on March 1, 2008

Jeff-Hammerbacher.eml

From: cameron marlow <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 12:25 AM
Subject: data application scientist
To: Jeff Hammerbacher <[email protected]>


Was searching for the date the term was coined, thought you might appreciate this.

    Hey Cam,

    Thanks for the feedback.  I guess I’m arguing for “Data” to replace “Research” in those titles (I am happy to drop the “Applications”), as the primary focus of our organization is not corporate research.  I’m happy to leave official titles as they are, but would you object to a change in title to “Data Scientist” for internal purposes?  I normally don’t care at all what titles are used but there has been concern expressed about having “research” in our title system so just want to avoid a problem for communication purposes.

    Also, I’d like to avoid specialization at this early stage and I expect every member of our group to have a mix of research, engineering, and analysis in their workload.  Does that match your expectations?

    Thanks,
    Jeff

    p.s. welcome home.  hopefully the move was not too painful.

    On 3/1/08 11:33 PM, "Cameron Marlow" <[email protected]> wrote:
    
    Hey Jeff,

        Sorry I didn’t get to respond earlier. There is a pretty common title scheme for corporate research, namely Research Scientist for people with Ph.D.’s, Research Engineer for people without, and Research Analyst for those that don’t write code. From a recruiting perspective, we need to make sure that we provide titles here are consistent with industry norms. Personally, I do not want my title to change, and would prefer that it remain Research Scientist.

        thanks,
        cameron
        
        On 2/29/08 11:22 PM, "Jeff Hammerbacher" <[email protected]> wrote:
        
        
            hey,

            I have only heard back from one person about that “Data Applications Scientist” thing.  I had anticipated a bit more discussion.  If you have a strong feeling one way or the other, please let me know.  Otherwise, I’m going to write up a job description based on your talks at our offsite and change our titles.

            Thanks,
            Jeff