--- title: Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson description: Erik Bernhardsson, former head of music recommendations at Spotify and author of Luigi, shares career reflections in an interview format. He discusses the two... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/interview-with-a-data-scientist-erik-bernhardsson-6hwqpb9ci twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson | daily.dev og:description: Erik Bernhardsson, former head of music recommendations at Spotify and author of Luigi, shares career reflections in an interview format. He discusses the two... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/interview-with-a-data-scientist-erik-bernhardsson-6hwqpb9ci og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/6HWQpb9cI.png og:image:alt: Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson **[Erik Bernhardsson](https://daily.dev/sources/erikbernhardsson)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Erik Bernhardsson, former head of music recommendations at Spotify and author of Luigi, shares career reflections in an interview format. He discusses the two camps of data science (business insights vs. production ML engineering), the importance of backend skills for ML practitioners, his views on big data and Hadoop, and advice for younger professionals: write lots of code, build prototypes others can use, and focus on communicating ideas rather than perfecting algorithms. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Career stories: The math-music connection in data science](https://daily.dev/posts/career-stories-the-math-music-connection-in-data-science-opstavkv6) · LinkedIn Engineering · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#big-data](https://daily.dev/tags/big-data), [#spotify](https://daily.dev/tags/spotify) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/interview-with-a-data-scientist-erik-bernhardsson-6hwqpb9ci) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/interview-with-a-data-scientist-erik-bernhardsson-6hwqpb9ci","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/interview-with-a-data-scientist-erik-bernhardsson-6hwqpb9ci"},"datePublished":"2026-03-26T08:35:15.870Z","dateModified":"2026-03-26T08:38:34.200Z","description":"Erik Bernhardsson, former head of music recommendations at Spotify and author of Luigi, shares career reflections in an interview format. 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