What I wish I knew before becoming a data analyst | salary, job, reality

what I wish I knew before becoming a data analyst  if you're watching this you're probably thinking   should I change my career to a data analyst will  it be worth it to learn data analysis skills and   what if I become a data analyst and realize  that this is not the career for me by sharing   my perspective of what I wish I knew before  becoming a data analyst I hope to help answer   these questions for you now starting with my  background I have a college degree in business and   sociology and I worked as a litigation consultant  for the first 5 years out of school then I was   completely burnt out and decided I needed a career  change so I self-studied data analysis skills to   become a data analyst in healthcare from there  I took a boot camp to learn more data science   skills and change my career into a business  intelligence engineer at Amazon which is what   I do today so I share my background because one  of the things I wish I had known is that there   is not just one path to becoming a data analyst  for the longest time I had regretted not having a   computer science background the fact that I don't  have a master's in data analytics and today a lot   of my peers that I work with come from those  backgrounds and what I realized now hindsight   having been a data analyst years later I realize  that it doesn't matter because we all ended up in   the same place so yes I do think having a masters  does help yes having a computer science does help   as well but there's so many different ways you  can end up in the same data analyst role one is   by self-studying another is a bootcamp which  I was able to leverage and change my career   from Healthcare to Tech so if you're asking and  you have these thoughts of can I become a data   analyst without a computer science degree then  my answer is absolutely yes and talking about   skills I wish there was was less emphasis on math  and more on critical thinking yes you do need to   know math and when to use the right formulas but  what's more important is that you know when to   use them as well as how to solve a problem using  math so I remember when I was first learning how   to do data analysis and learning statistics and  all these math calculations I really thought it   was over my head and thought maybe this is not  the job for me because math is not my my strong   suit but come to realize all the code does  the calculations for you and with AI too it   does all the calculations for you so you really  just need to know when to use it and be able to   read the data you want to know the difference  between when to use a median versus an average   versus how to calculate it and that is going to  be the trend with automation and so if you feel   like math isn't your strong suit don't feel like  that's something that should stop you from a data   analyst career path when thinking about a career  change you have to consider salary when I was   growing up I always thought that the doctors and  lawyers were the ones who are making good money   and that was the only way so I took the Law School  exam thinking I'd be a lawyer turns out that was   not for me and when I decided to take my leap  into data analytics I actually took a pay cut   and I really thought that forever this was going  to be how much I was going to make for the rest   of my life but little did I know and I wish I had  known that this is a career path where if you put   in the work of learning the new skills there's a  way to make more money as your career progresses   so I want to give you some realistic numbers of  what you can expect as you're looking into the   data analytics role and salary does really matter  based on location experience and industry but this   is what you can expect for an entry-level data  analyst role you you can look at around $76,000   and then as you become more senior and become  manager of data analytics the salary moves up   to around $107,000 and maybe you decide that you  want to become a data scientist or data engineer   and that goes to around $123,000 and you do not  have to become a data analyst first if you want   to move into data science and data engineer  but the skill sets do really overlap and if   you decide to get into Tech the salary goes over  over $200,000 so my point here is that there's a   lot of opportunity to increase your pay in the  data career path and don't feel like this is a   dead-end roll because there's so much more you  can do once you start learning more skills and   talking about skills the skills that will really  get you to increase your pay is people skills when   I was first learning data analysis the focus is  on the hard skills right you have to learn Excel   SQL a BI visualization tool which is definitely  all skills that you should know but I realized   about 5 years after working as a data analyst  that slowly the people who had really strong   people skills the people that were building  relationships really good at communicating   had so many more opportunities and were getting  better jobs than the ones who might have been   more technically savvy so I think this is a lesson  learned for all careers really that you want to be   able to have really strong people skills because  that is really what will open up opportunities   for you the next is managing stakeholders so in  my previous video when I talk about what I do as   a data analyst which I will link up here I talk  about the unrealistic expectations that you'll   get from stakeholders they're going to ask you  ad hoc work make you stay late at night and when   I was young a young data analyst I thought that  this was was okay that this was just the nature   of the work I would say yes to all the requests  and work the late hours but as I've grown and now   that I'm more experienced I've come to realize  that you have to manage your stakeholders and   that there are systems in place to do that so  what we do now is we have a sprint process so   anybody who has requests from you will put it  in a queue and you prioritize those tasks and   work on it during a sprint and only commit to  what you can work on during those two weeks so   anybody who has new requests for you or fire drill  requests those get prioritized in a queue so that   you don't end up having to drop everything you're  working on just to work on those things for them   and this system and process has really helped me  manage my stakeholders and it's something I wish   I had known earlier in my career transferable  skills as the years pass as a data analyst I   find myself thinking do I still want to be a data  analyst did I waste all my years just learning   these skills and I get asked a lot too what if  I go to grad school and realize that I don't   want to be a data analyst would I have wasted my  time and looking back I would say no maybe I'm   biased but the skills you learn as a data analyst  your communication skills your ability to analyze   data and have strong problem solving skills are  extremely transferable and are not a waste at all   there's other Tech roles you can even transfer  them to such as a product manager or project   manager which are also considered Tech roles and  pay pretty well so a product manager is someone   who manages the life cycle of a product they're  the ones who are going to manage the different   teams and be able to pull their own analytics to  see whether their product is successful you also   have project managers who are managing projects  and they will be able to pull their own data to   be able to make business decisions so you'll see  that there's a lot of transferable skills and   in my career I've actually seen a lot of people  transfer between these two roles of being a data   analyst and then maybe they're a product manager  so I don't believe that these skills you learn   is a waste and solely just by investing in your  skills you're already setting yourself up for   success now if you like this video please like and  subscribe as it really does support the channel   and I will link my other video where I talk about  the harsh reality of being a data analyst just so   that you can get a realistic picture of what it's  like thank you so much and I will see you there

Channel: Agatha

Views: 21,847

Keywords: data analyst, data analytics, data analytics roadmap, data analytics career, data science, chatgpt data analysis, data analytics skills required, business intelligence analyst, business intelligence, data analytics career change, ai data analytics, data analyst salary

Id: LNM6cvPyBYE

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2024