What does Product Data Scientist do at FB/Twitter?
A peak into the role of DS at a big tech
The first question I get after telling people I am a Data Scientist at Facebook is: what does product DS do at Facebook? Or a similar question: what is the value proposition of a DS at Facebook?
I am sure different DSs have different answers here, and I have an epiphany when I read the Lean Startup by Eric Ries. In this book, the lean startup model focuses on creating a minimal viable product for the market and receiving customer feedback along the way to improve it. How do startups improve the product? Through validated learning. Validated learning helps quickly validate or reject core business hypotheses. For example, if we were to build a video Reel product (short videos) at Facebook app, the key chain of assumptions or hypotheses we are making are: Reel videos provide user value and increase user engagement at Facebook-> user engagement on Reel can drive Reel producers to produce more content (positive feedback loop)-> more Reel content gradually keeps users spending more time on Facebook-> Facebook can monetize the time spent on Reel product in the future.
You can probably guess that these are the exact set of questions product DS is trying to answer every day at Facebook. Viola! Facebook is essentially operating each product as a small start-up and each DS is working on the validated learning for these growing products. And the steps are:
The product team builds a minimal viable product (MVP) as quickly as possible and ship it to users
DS validates the key assumptions in making the product successful and identified gaps between user behaviors and key assumptions
The outcome can be: 1. DS assures the product team to continue investing in the product if the validated learning proves key assumptions of the product and also points out the weakest linkage in the chain of assumptions for improvement. 2. the product team pivots if the basic assumptions about users needs are wrong
Obviously, DS at Facebook has other responsibilities to cover, setting goals, looking for opportunities to improve our products and so many more. However, I believe validated learning is the core value proposition DS is providing at Facebook.