The internet is awash with posts by former PhD students who have succesfully transitioned into data scientist roles in industry (see here, here, here, and tangentially here). I loved reading these posts while studying for job interviews because I felt like the more I saw examples of sucessful transitions, the more likely it seemed that such feats were actually achievable. I am going to try to touch on many of the aspects of leaving academia for data science while trying to limit the length of...