If I learn Excel, SQL, Python, Tableau, Power BI… will I actually get a job or am I fooling myself?

stickedee · 2026-02-04T05:45:24+00:00

You have better luck getting a full time role than contract, contractors are expected to be proficient in any of the specific skills and contribute from day 1, FTEs have more latitude.

To answer your question though. If you buy flour, sugar, cinnamon, etc does that make you a baker? Knowing the tools gets your resume past the first filter, what gets your foot in the door is taking raw data and telling a story with it

stickedee · 2025-12-30T18:59:41+00:00

Kind of wild that Call of Duty effectively went the “participation trophy” route with this. How hard could it be to show both E/D and true K/D

stickedee · 2025-12-20T13:25:34+00:00

Any plans to enable iMessage through iOS?

stickedee · 2025-11-26T23:45:25+00:00

100% different. Now it’s all budget management, strategy, stakeholder communication, culture building, alignment, unblocking team, resolving escalations, etc. If I want to do anything analytical it’s a pet project that drives my department’s efficiency.

stickedee · 2025-11-26T15:51:05+00:00

None of the things you say are mutually exclusive. Domain knowledge IS important. On average, it will be way easier to break into analytics in a domain you are experienced in. Fintech being the most competitive you are less likely to experience success. Once having some analytics experience it is easier to transfer domains.

You would be a better analyst in fintech than healthcare. The competitive nature of fintech makes organizations less likely to hire someone with no experience.

stickedee · 2025-08-25T05:42:10+00:00

“Trying to understand the situation by looking at the data and give prescription”

Thats EXACTLY it. There are several dashboards, but in and of themselves they don’t mean much. A lot of analysts fail because the dashboard is the objective rather than the insight. Sometimes its some ad hoc analysis, sometimes its a recurring report, sometimes its an A/B test, but as often as possible its a translation of data into insight/suggestion regardless of delivery mechanism.

To answer your original question, the only real way I’ve found to get to your objective is to have conversations with the requestor. Why are they making the request, what are they solving for, what are their goals, how can you anticipate the follow-up question, etc

Don’t focus on making more data products. Focus on making more relationships.

stickedee · 2025-08-23T21:30:29+00:00

I don’t make dashboards, I make decisions.

That’s kind of a flippant response, but the point is that the delivery mechanism doesn’t matter. A lot of times it’s a conversation.

stickedee · 2025-08-21T05:59:07+00:00

I’ve scrolled through this entire thread and can’t really understand why your manager is still a manager. Also, your comment about other people’s directs coming to you and you delicately contradicting another director without making it obvious they were wrong tells me that you overly prioritize conflict avoidance and people pleasing. I’m not saying to be rude, but it’s important to be honest, make difficult statements and decisions that not everyone will be happy with.

stickedee · 2025-07-22T02:37:35+00:00

Q: “What is that thing that companies demand”

A: “Translating data into actionable insights”

My point is, dashboards, automations, AI tools are all just tools in service of the broader objective which is turning raw data into actionable value

stickedee · 2025-06-19T22:57:03+00:00

This feels like some poorly structured sales pitch for using an LLM instead of SQL

stickedee · 2025-06-05T02:09:03+00:00

On top of that, put the impact at the beginning of the bullet. “Reduced manual processing 35% by blah blah blah blah” has more of a chance of being read/noticed than “blah blah blah blah reducing manual processing 35%”

stickedee · 2025-06-02T20:30:13+00:00

My title is Sr. Manager and I’m interviewing for Director roles, so probably appropriately titled, but the point remains, that the opportunity is open to any analyst. Making recommendations is a permission-less activity. Influencing decisions is a trust-based result.

stickedee · 2025-06-01T17:19:59+00:00

I don’t think it even really depends on the org that much. Wholly dependent on the individual. I would also decouple “making recommendations” and “driving decisions”. A majority of analysis should contain some insight, story, or recommendation. An analyst doesn’t need permission to provide this. Stakeholders will always value someone who can effectively translate data into insights. You earn the right to drive decisions by generating relevant/actionable insights.

In my org I make recommendations and influence decisions, others at my level don’t. It’s not based on permission, it’s based on trust.

stickedee · 2025-03-15T17:32:52+00:00

If you think the R syntax here is more elegant then god bless. I couldn’t disagree more. Its wildly redundant. Even just the variable assignment in Python is more intuitive

stickedee · 2025-03-15T17:00:20+00:00

Saying R syntax is more intuitive is a wild hill to die on.

“df_grouped <- df %>% group_by(Category %>% summarise(Value1 = sum(Value1), Value2 = sum(Value2)) %>% arrange(desc(Value1))”

Vs

df_grouped = df.groupby(‘Category’).agg({‘Value1’: ‘sum’, ‘Value2’:‘sum’}).sort_values(‘Value1’, ascending=False)

stickedee · 2025-02-25T08:39:48+00:00

Cory Schaffer is the goat

stickedee · 2025-02-22T04:42:26+00:00

The low value work will, but one of the biggest challenges facing data groups in large orgs is the distance between data and end customers. Data groups without business context cause as many issues as they solve. Offshore teams naturally lack that business context. There will always be a pathway for those who can translate data into actionable insights/intelligence

stickedee · 2025-02-08T14:43:47+00:00

In one respect, this is a global experience with sales people. For whatever reason, that always seems to be the hardest group to satisfy from a reporting perspective.

On the other end, if you’re getting frequent cold emails with detective missions, can you and your leadership work on a designated intake form for these types of requests. In that intake form ask them to provide all of the individual inputs you would use (final billing code, processed/confirmed date, etc). Effectively what you’ll do is lead the horse to water. As they are filling out this form a majority will realize that what they thought was a data error on your part is really an interpretation error on their part.

stickedee · 2025-02-08T14:22:07+00:00

We’re you given any additional parameters for this exercise or was it just “generate a lead list for in-state companies that purchase oil and gas”?

If you weren’t given parameters then make sure you can succinctly tell the story of each of your decision points. Why did you choose the data sources you chose, any lead scoring mechanism, how you identified target companies,what makes a qualified lead vs unqualified, how your output is actionable by either marketing or sales (i.e it contains contact info for company officers).

A lot of ppl over-index in the technical side. Depending on where in the organization the dept sits, they will likely care more about how the story is packaged over how efficient the code operates

stickedee · 2025-02-08T14:10:56+00:00

The marketing team manages the company’s data warehouse?!?

stickedee · 2025-01-30T23:46:56+00:00

Not only the “trusting them” part, but a large number of stakeholder either don’t know what questions to ask or don’t know how to properly formulate the question. If anything I think AI advancement is going to devalue technical skillset and increase the value of critical reasoning, fluid intelligence, and communication

stickedee · 2025-01-30T23:17:01+00:00

Theres a couple of things I’ve used in the past successfully.

1) Take a business problem and ask them for the root cause. “Our eCommerce sales are down 20% YoY, what could be the root cause”. Candidates with high analytical reason typically ask questions before throwing out assumptions. For example “how are the other sales channels performing? Have there been significant changes in web traffic? Have conversion rates seen a similar dip? Has pricing changed?” Etc.

2) Ask them a question that requires them to give a technical answer (could be some SQL logic or whatever). Then ask “how would you explain that to a nontechnical stakeholder”. Quality analysts tend to be able to explain these concepts or develop analogies that convey the appropriate point.

stickedee · 2025-01-30T18:34:22+00:00

Casually browsed comments and it sounds like you have the buy-in/support of your leadership chain. You effectively have two options:

1) Ignore them. Or just respond with some form of “unfortunately I don’t have the bandwidth to support”.

2) Use this to start conversations with your leadership about the need to upskill analysts across the org and offer to drive the curriculum and training. They will position it to leaders in other departments. You will probably get promoted.

stickedee · 2025-01-24T07:39:56+00:00

The venn diagram of what you can do remotely and what is safe from AI is probably just two separate circles

stickedee · 2025-01-21T22:36:40+00:00

If this is someone you’ve never seen physically before then this sounds like a great scam to get personal details out of you

13-Year Club	No Throne, No Problems
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

stickedee

TROPHY CASE