Sean J. Taylor interned with the LinkedIn Data Science team and had some cogent observations on what the work can really boil down to:
Most people who describe data science are actually describing what it takes to get the job. (e.g. Take statistics and machine learning courses. Learn such-and-such languages/packages. Hack.). Or they describe how the job is growing in importance. I’m going to describe the actual practice of data science.
Ask a good question.
Answer the question while economizing on resources.
Communicate your results.
(Sometimes) Make recommendations to engineers or managers.
The whole thing is worth a read, but most importantly, the closing graf.