What are the skills you need to earn more?

In the 2015 Skill Up Survey, Packt talked to more than 20,000 people who work in IT globally to identify what skills are valued in technical roles and what trends are changing and emerging. Responses from the Data Science and Business Intelligence community provided us with some great insight into how skills are rated across multiple industries, job roles and experience levels.

The world of Data Science is highly varied, and can be super competitive too, so we wanted to find out what industries are best for those just entering the market. We also discovered which technologies are proving to be most popular and where can you earn the best salaries.

We also had some specific questions for which we wanted answers:-

• Are Python and R still the key data science languages?
• What are the hottest trends?
• Which is the most lucrative sector for those with Data Science skills.
• Which cutting edge technologies should you invest in learning?

We received a whopping 3,800 responses from the Data Science community. The largest number of respondents were Consultants who, with over 20 years experience on average, provided some great insight into the Data Science world. Our survey identified which industry sectors pay the most for those with less experience and also showed up some big differences in average salaries across industries.

We also wanted to look at the technologies our community are using. More than 25% of our respondents use Python, but is it here to stay, or will it be overtaken by Julia in the next 12 months? The results were interesting and suggested that salaries influence responses!

Unsurprisingly, Big Data emerged as a Hot Topic. When asked whether their company was planning to implement a Big Data project over the next 12 months, it seems that the response was tied in to experience levels too.

And of course, we just had to ask - does Excel still hold a place in your heart? Can you guess what the answer was?

Read the rest of the report to see what skills you need to build on and which technologies are poised to take the Data Science and Business Intelligence world by storm so you can get ahead of the competition.

Click here to download the full report

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