"…the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians…"

That's a quote from Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist. It surfaced in an online interview months ago, but it's been getting a lot of play lately.

Mr. Varian goes on to say:

The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill.

I completely agree. But wait, I'm not a statistician. I'm a computer programmer. What does the future hold for my profession? Mr. Varian, in the same interview, says this:

People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s?

Really? The 1990s? The decade flew by and I don't think I appreciated the sexiness of my job. Opportunity lost, I guess.