Why You May Hate Being a Data Science Manager

As a data science leader at a Fortune 500 company, I want to start by saying I love my job. Yes, the title was meant to catch your attention, but it also points to a real issue I have seen firsthand. Many data scientists become managers for the wrong reasons. In this post, I will explore that idea by sharing my own journey from an individual contributor to people manager, what I've learned along the way, and what I think truly makes a great leader in this field.

My Journey

After finishing grad school, I started my career as an “individual contributor,” where my value was measured by my personal output. It was an amazing opportunity. I loved writing code, conducting analyses, and working directly with clients to solve their business problems.

However, I missed something I had enjoyed in previous roles: mentoring. With the support of a great manager, I started coaching interns and junior data scientists, a responsibility I found incredibly rewarding. This path naturally led to my first role as a people manager.

While I was excited to formally develop people, looking back, I did not place enough emphasis on the most important word in my new job title, which was people. My days were filled with activities, such as conducting analyses, meeting stakeholders, and developing strategy. These are all very important activities, but after years of experience—learning what works and what doesn't—I’ve reached an undeniable conclusion: a manager's most important job is their people. It is, by far, the highest-leverage activity they can perform.

This realization is why I'm writing this blog post. If you are considering becoming a people manager but are not prepared to make people your primary responsibility, you are setting yourself up to be an ineffective leader and you may even hate your job.

Let's explore why.

Why you may hate being a people manager

1. You are responsible for the health of your team / organization

As a people manager, your primary and most overlooked responsibility is the health of your team. It is your job to actively root out dysfunction and build a culture that inspires, motivates, and develops your people. This is relentless, emotionally-taxing work. It means dedicating a huge portion of your time to communication—through regular 1:1s, team meetings, and fostering a safe environment for feedback. You are the team's detective, constantly on the lookout for friction, and its primary problem-solver for messy, human-centered issues.

I believe this is the single most important part of your job—more important than aligning with leadership, managing stakeholders, or conducting your own analyses. Why? Because a healthy and effective team becomes a force multiplier. When your team is functioning well, they will partner with you to tackle all those other activities and deliver results that far exceed what any individual can accomplish.

2. You have essentially two jobs — you are both a manager and a leader

As a people manager, you have two distinct and often competing jobs: you are the Manager and you are the Leader. The real challenge of the role—and one reason people may grow to hate it—is that you must excel at both, even when their demands are in direct conflict.

The Leader role is often viewed as the more glamorous one. It's about setting the vision: you create the team’s strategy, meet with stakeholders to identify new opportunities, and ensure your team stays competitive.

The Manager role, however, is about day-to-day execution and people development. It means ensuring your team is delivering high-quality work and, when they are not, coaching them on how to improve. This is the hands-on, often difficult, work of growing your direct reports.

A great people manager has to be both, but I would argue they must lean more toward the manager role. Many are drawn to the high-level strategy development but neglect the essential groundwork of developing their team. If you are not genuinely interested in the daily work of coaching and growing people, you will end up resenting the very responsibilities that define the job.

3. You have significantly less and possibly no time to conduct analyses / code

For many technical professionals, this is the most jarring reality of management: the hands-on work that defined your career—writing code and conducting complex analyses—is no longer your primary job. This can feel like a profound identity crisis. The very skills that got you promoted are now the ones you must deliberately step away from.

Your value to the company has fundamentally changed. As a manager, your job is to inspire, motivate, and develop your team. This means you must give them the most exciting and challenging projects—the ones that will help them grow. Even if you do have time for technical work, it's often the projects nobody else wants.

What your team needs from you are the things they weren't hired to do. They need you to set the team’s strategy, align with leadership to maximize their impact, be the ultimate guardian of the team's output quality, and inspire, motivate and develop your team. Your success is no longer measured by your individual contribution, but by the collective success and growth of your team.

Why I love being a people manager

After reading the challenges above, you might wonder why anyone would choose this path. But the truth is, I love being a people manager because of those difficulties, not in spite of them.

There is immense satisfaction in turning team dysfunction into a healthy, thriving culture. I enjoy the unique puzzle of balancing the day-to-day manager role with the visionary leader role. And I’ve discovered that the reward of being a multiplier for my team—watching them achieve more than I ever could alone—is far greater than the satisfaction of being an individual contributor.

While I'll always enjoy the craft of data science, my greatest professional fulfillment now comes from helping a talented group of people grow, develop, and pursue their career goals. At the end of the day, a company is just a group of people. If you're a leader who is passionate about the "people" part of that equation, you’ll find that management isn't just a job—it's one of the most rewarding challenges you can take on.

Call to Action

My call to action for current and aspiring data science managers is simple: take the people part of your title seriously. While as a leader why will have to excel at many activities, such as understanding customer needs and aligning with leadership, your primary function—the one that creates the most value—is to inspire, motivate, and develop your team.

Committing to this is not just about improving your team’s morale; it’s about fundamentally improving their output and the value they deliver. A manager who has little interest in the messy, rewarding, and essential work of managing people isn't just in the wrong role—they are a recipe for disaster.