Drawing on theories from the sociology of work and the sociology of culture, this article argues that members of nascent technical occupations construct their professional identity and claim status through an omnivorous approach to skills acquisition. Based on a discursive analysis of 56 semi-structured in-depth interviews with data scientists, data science professors and managers in Israel, it was found that data scientists mobilise the following five resources to construct their identity: (1) ability to bridge the gap between scientist’s and engineer’s identities; (2) multiplicity of theories; (3) intensive self-learning; (4) bridging technical and social skills; and (5) acquiring domain knowledge easily. These resources diverge from former generalist-specialist identity tensions described in the literature as they attribute a higher status to the generalist-omnivore and a lower one to the specialist-snob.

借鉴工作社会学和文化社会学的理论，本文认为，新生的技术职业的成员通过杂乱无章的技能获取方法来构建自己的职业身份和主张地位。通过对以色列的56位半结构化深度访谈进行的话语分析，发现数据科学家调动了以下五种资源来构建自己的身份：（1）弥合差距的能力在科学家和工程师的身份之间；（2）理论的多样性；（3）强化自学；（4）桥接技术和社交技能；（5）容易获得领域知识。