Why you should NOT be a Data Analyst

so luke congratulations you've received positive feedback on all of the data analyst interviews that you've done with our company ah thanks mr ken before we extend an offer though i need to make sure how comfortable you are with the following okay autonomy in your task with potential lack of direction in others yeah metrics and kpis that are ever changing because of indecisive leadership um sure a somewhat competitive salary that is frankly pretty far below other entry level positions in data um what's the pay needing to learn new tools and redo your analysis because management thinks that new tools are really cool and should be put into production redo my work working exhaustively on a strict deadline for projects with the potential for your work never to see the light of day is this for real and finally non-constructive comments that can cause you emotional or physical pain did you say physical pain i i'm joking i feel uh about the physical thing what okay then we'll be extending an offer that you'll need to sign by the close of business today but what about those other things that you said don't forget end of day bye what the what up done nerds i'm luke and my channel is all about tech and skills for data science and i've been working as a data analyst these past few years and i've found a number of different aspects that i'm going to outline today that i definitely think you should consider before becoming a data analyst don't worry these aspects aren't as extreme as what mr ken i mean kenji and i also demonstrated in that opening scene but it also isn't always glamorous just like any other job it has ups and downs associated with it so with that let's jump into the first one because of the data analytical skills that i've built up over the past number of years it's pretty common for non-data nerds to come up to me at work and ask questions such as hey luke can you help me real quick with this excel issue or even worse i have this idea for a dashboard do you think you can build it for me now don't get me wrong it's pretty awesome and humbling that people look to me as a problem solver but during the day i typically have limited time as i'm working on tasks that are signed by the person that pays my paycheck my boss however i do most the time end up giving into these requests because that's just my nature but it does end up eating a lot of my time during the wake day because of this now the positive aspect of this is it not only has helped me refine my skills by teaching others how to actually do these tasks but also it's worked my favor for getting positive evaluations for my coworkers and thus led to those positive evaluations from my boss all right next up is salary and let's just say i didn't choose the data analyst life because of salary the dino analyst life chose me as i detailed in a recent video on the most popular jobs in data science data analysts receive some of the lowest salaries for entry-level roles and this is actually for a good reason when you compare data analysts to those other roles data analysts typically have less formal training of in-depth usage of tools and also there's usually less educational requirements such as you don't have to have a master to become a data analyst but i actually think that those two things of lower requested skill levels and low requested education are actually a good thing if you're interested in a newcomer to data science data analysts i think are the perfect starting role to get into for your first job take for example ben he's a former data engineer at meta and he's the brains behind the seattle data guy ben started his journey in data science by becoming a data analyst first and then from there once he started leveling up his skills more he then transitioned over to becoming a data engineer regarding the salary number itself i do think that you have to have a high enough salary in order to support your lifestyle but i'm not a fan of choosing a job or a potential role based on salary alone instead i think you need to be choosing a job or a position based on your passion and your interest in that over a salary job satisfaction is more important to me so therefore i'm more comfortable with this type of salary so personally i've never handled rejection very well it's probably why i have commit issues but rejection is actually pretty commonplace in data analytical projects for example i was working on a tableau dashboard to be used to investigate a supply chain issue the dashboard that my stakeholders wanted was quite simple they just wanted a line plot showing how a particular metric was changing over time but as i investigated this issue i found that there were actually other metrics that were influencing this main metric driving it up and down so like any data nerd i went to the extreme and i built a dashboard that had all of these different metrics personally i obviously thought this dashboard was better and i was really excited to show it to my stakeholders unfortunately my stakeholders did not find value in the dashboard that i created instead they wanted me to revert back to the previous design they suggested using only that single metric for me this is a learning experience that just because i think that this dashboard or the solution i develop is great my stakeholders may not think that as well being a data analyst isn't as easy as calculated out to be mainly there isn't always this perfect data source available for you to access in order to do your job instead a lot of times you actually have to jump through a lot of different hoops to get the data that you need for example on one project i was working on we needed data that was in an application the problem is is that application was easy to put the data into but it was not easy to collect the data from so talk with the stakeholders and got their consent to build a bot in order to go into this application and extract the data we needed over the course of a month i worked to extract all the data from the application in order for us to start diving into it for our insights well it turns out that the data i collected had a lot of issues with it and one of the key stakeholders in this project was adamant that we couldn't use the data for this project we ended up canceling this entire project because of the issues with the data and my project never saw the light of day the potential for your work never to see the light of day is this for real so basically a month of my life was wasted so my learnings from the project were to investigate data quality early don't wait until you're extracting all the data to start checking the data and making sure that it's correct investigate it early and often to make sure that you're getting the data that you need so i recently received a question from a subscriber that battled social anxiety and they were asking whether becoming a data analyst would be a good career switch for them as an introvert myself i'd very much like to work in a bubble looking at and researching data trying to solve problems and then building dashboards but unfortunately that's not the nature of a data analyst's role i would say that more than half of my time is spent communicating with others whether that be via written or oral communications i think it's necessary though in order to find out what people's problems are having and then solve them i feel like this is especially important for newer and aspiring data analysts that are going to be new to a team during that time you need to be able to ask a lot of questions and be able to understand the dynamic of the teams and the problem that they're facing and so this communication is really key to have on a positive note i feel like this has done a great job of getting me out of my comfort zone as a introvert and really pushing me to go to the next level of exploring problems but i do want to share this because i don't want you to think that you're really sitting in front of a computer just crunching numbers all day not interacting with others the tools you end up learning and then growing to love aren't always the ones that you'll always be using take for example my case during my first role i learned and built a full solution with power bi i grew to love this tool for all of its different capabilities because of this i was very excited about implementing this tool and my future roles unfortunately when i moved on to my next role with a completely different team they used a completely different dashboarding system of tableau for their dashboard needs so i ended up having to spend my free time learning this new tool of tableau but i did find like there was a lot of different synergies between that of power bi and tableau so it made it a lot easier to pick up this tool but in the long run i actually found that learning and using this new tool at tableau really helped develop me further as a data analyst and understand what people's needs were so you may love a certain tool and you may devote a lot of time to actually learning it but when it comes to the actual use of it it's going to come down to that company or client and what their need is so let's say you're aspiring data analyst and you're wanting to work with either python or r judging at a recent poll that i gave my subscribers more than a third of you are focusing your time and efforts on learning python or r now i do think it's great that so many are aspiring to learn this programming language of either python or r i think it's a great skill to have but as a data analyst myself and also from research that i've performed i've found that excel and sql are the two top skills to know as a data analyst so for those looking to land those roles as an entry level data analyst i think it's really important to keep this in mind at what the true skills are that you should be focusing on and what you'll actually be using as a data analyst it wasn't until a few years into my role as data analyst that i was able to even use python and even that was a stretch so i share this for warning not for you to abandon your passion one i think python and r are both pretty difficult skills to learn and so i think you do have to actually put in the time and effort to learn these and it may take a few years to learn them and two if you really are passionate about these programming languages i would highly encourage you to start looking into other roles in data science such as data engineers machine learning engineers or data scientists as those typically use programming languages more in their roles as an entry-level data analyst you're typically lowering the rankings of a company and you're not necessarily making those decisions on major projects but that isn't to say that you don't have influencing power as an example i was working on yet another dashboard that we were working to deploy to the region of north america my boss was really pleased with the solution that we had built and she actually was working to try to get it expanded to be used in multiple other regions and mainly used globally for the company when my boss and i talked to all our different counterparts and all the different regions globally we found that a lot of them were interested in the solution and wanted to implement it well we talked to her boss her boss's boss and her boss's boss's boss and we had meetings and we had another meetings and eventually it was decided that we weren't going to go with the solution and that we weren't going to expand it globally and this was pretty disheartening to me as i had put my time and effort into building the solution and i could see the need in these other regions but it was ultimately decided by management not to use the solution now i share the story not to say that hey you don't have any pull as a entry-level data analyst i do feel that you still have some pull and i feel like this story specifically really influenced me to work on my negotiation skills in order to better capture and showcase what a potential tool or solution will give now wrapping up all the sections with this final thought being a data analyst and also those that work in data science it's all about being a lifelong learner so if you're aspiring to be a data analyst and you think you're only going to have to learn one skill and that's it once you land your job you won't have to further develop it all i think you're pursuing the wrong job and wrong passion personally i'm always working to learn and explore new skills in order to accomplish my tasks i actually find that this is the most beneficial aspect of my career because there's always something that i can strive towards accomplishing and something new for me to work towards and to me this is really exciting because i always have something to strive towards in order to become a better data analyst so the goal of showing those nine or so different things was hopefully not to deter you from becoming a data analyst but more to share insights of what is a role of a data analyst as always if you got value out of this video smash that like button with that i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Luke Barousse

Views: 183,242

Keywords: data viz by luke, business intelligence, data science, bi, computer science, data nerd, data analyst, data scientist, how to, data project, data analytics, day in the life

Id: NAuuqdzC_rI

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022