What "Being a Data Analyst" Looks Like for Me

Every data analyst's job is different from each other, so here's what it looks like for me!

Hello all, and welcome to my first post on Substack! This has been in the works for a while now - I was hesitant to launch a newsletter until I had enough content planned out to last me a few months. I will be releasing monthly, at least for now. Thanks for subscribing and following along!

And please shoot me a message or comment if you notice something terribly wrong with the formatting of this post, I can’t figure out how to send myself a test :)

For my first topic, let’s talk about what I do every day. I often get college students and hopeful job seekers reaching out to me, wanting to hear what my normal workday looks like and what it is like to be a data analyst. I can’t respond to these requests as I don’t have the time in my day to be giving out 1:1’s multiple times a week, unfortunately! However, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about what it’s like for me to be a data analyst.

Before I get started - every data analyst has a different job, and many people’s workdays won’t look like mine! This is because the things I do every day is heavily based on what industry I am in, what company I work for, and what ‘tech stack’ (set of tools) my company decides to use.

My Daily Job

I work at a tech company that sells software for people who make software. That’s the simplest way to describe it. And within that, I am on the central data team. So instead of being on a functional team (sales data analyst, or financial data analyst, for example), I work on the team that analyzes my own company’s performance.

We also set standards, and broker cross-functional relationships. AKA if sales and finance can’t agree on how to calculate or report on something, we step in and help get alignment.

In my day-to-day I use the following tools:

• GitLab for managing projects and using Git to create and update database tables

• DBT via the GitLab interface/a SQL code UI called VS Code (I use DBT as a middle-person between myself and the database to essentially perform transformations on my SQL code)

• DataGrip for running and testing SQL

• Tableau for dashboards & data sources - as well as assisting others with Tableau

• Slack! This is primarily where we all communicate, not email.

• LucidCharts (occasionally) for mind-mapping, wireframing, and editing shapes

• Zoom - meetings!

• Google Sheets for data validations

Day-to-Day

So what does my day-to-day look like?

On a typical week, I do a mixture of meetings, troubleshooting ad-hoc problems that arise, communicating about projects in Slack channels, independent development time, and collaborative development time.

Meetings

My team tries to concentrate our meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays (called a ‘makers schedule’), so on those days I might have 3.5-5.5 hours of meetings. Wednesdays I will often have ad-hoc meetings (not recurring meetings). On Tuesdays I have a recurring 1:1 with my manager where we touch base about my career progression and what I am working on.

That leaves Fridays and Mondays - I have noticed that managers seem to have more meetings on Mondays, but mine are usually fairly open. I leave that time for things like coffee chats and mentorship meetings. As a data team and company in general we try to avoid meetings on Fridays. It used to be a company policy, but they removed that earlier this year. The data team still generally follows this rule. I personally have been very protective of not having meetings on Fridays, because:

1. I like uninterrupted development time and Fridays are the only days that I can count on that.

2. We are encouraged to explore and grow our skills and spend some time on personal development, and Fridays are good for that.

3. I am not a 9-5 kind of girl. I prefer to work a very flexible schedule. My company supports that (we are global, so expecting people to work in a certain time zone is silly), and so I will often work a few hours on the weekends, or get up early or work late during the week - so that I can take advantage of relatively crowd-free spaces on Fridays. This might be the climbing wall, grocery store, or interesting local attraction when I am traveling.

The time of day my meetings happen will depend on whom I am working with and what time zone I am in. In Q4 so far most of my stakeholders have been in Europe or India, so I have had early meetings. In Q1-Q3 of this year I worked with West coast stakeholders, so I got used to never having morning meetings.

Development

My independent development time can take a variety of forms, depending on the project. In the first 10 months of my job I was working on developing 3 KPI reports for the company, so I primarily spent my time in Tableau - developing dashboards and data sources. I also spent a lot of time during that period validating the numbers that I was getting using SQL or an export to Google Sheets.

During my development time I also always have GitLab open, because it is where we do our project management (like JiRA). All of my projects have an “epic” which is like the parent description of the project which you can comment on, assign people, and link other items. Then each sub-portion of the project gets its own “issue” which is like a collaborative document which you can add tags, a timeline, assignees, pictures, and commentary on.

Not only are all of my project planning details in GitLab, but also it is the primary location where I will converse and comment on my projects with my bosses and stakeholders (in ‘issues’), so it always has to be open when I am working on a project. It has a user friendly web interface that I use for it.

In the last quarter or so, my work has been shifting to be focused on more strategic goals such as working with various teams to help them make their reports more scalable by taking custom logic (custom SQL, CASE statements in their code) and moving them up out of Tableau and into our database where it can be centrally managed and used by everyone more easily. This has required me to upskill in using GitLab + DBT better in the GitLab web IDE and the application VS Code.

This work has taken me away from development in Tableau as frequently (although it does still happen), and brought me more often into GitLab + VS Codel. It has also shifted a lot of my work from independent development into project management, and collaborative work which takes the form of working sessions (over Zoom), and more frequent communication over GitLab and Slack.

I will often get off of a working session with a peer and then spend independent time pushing updates to the code, documenting the next steps, updating others on our progress, and doing some exploration and scoping of the upcoming items to prepare the project for collaborative work.

I also try to set aside time each week to prepare for meetings by updating agendas with notes, collecting a list of what needs to be done and forming a game plan, and recapping what I have accomplished at the end of the week.

Everything Else

The things I have described so far generally fall under the umbrella of my “normal and predictable” job. However, a good amount of my time each week winds up being spent on unexpected other things. This could take the form of:

• A Slack message in a “Go-to-market” channel asking about why the numbers on one dashboard don’t match the numbers on another. This sets off troubleshooting on my part, which almost always involves SQL exploration and sometimes requires some pivot tables in GSheets from data exports.

• Someone in our Slack #tableau channel asking a question about refreshing extracts, developer problems, access, or other miscellaneous asks. These requests usually take about 5-10 minutes for me to resolve, but sometimes require jumping on a 15 minute Zoom call.

• Training and documentation - I am one of the primary SME’s (subject matter experts) in Tableau at my company, and so people will occasionally reach out to me to do some training for their team. I also do my best to document helpful information as I use it, such as adding tips and tricks to our public Tableau Developers Guide.

What is My Team Like?

As I mentioned above, I work for a global company that also happens to be 100% remote. As a company we believe in asynchronous communication when possible, and flexible working schedules. We also have unlimited PTO. This works very well with my lifestyle.

Some of my coworkers do seem to generally work 9-5 or their version of it, Monday-Friday. Actually, most of them seem to do that. But, I have never had issues with being much more flexible than that. I sometimes work from 9am-11pm because I am just really into what I am doing. Other days, I work from 10am-noon, take a break to go climbing and to the grocery store, and then work from 3pm-7pm.

Sometimes I work on the weekends (by choice). It just depends on the week! I have never been asked or expected to work over the weekends, and generally nobody will ping you over the weekend, at least for the teams I work with.

We are also one of those companies (or at least my team) where unlimited PTO is not a scam. I don’t feel like taking PTO is going to be a problem, nor do I feel guilty while I am on PTO. It is normal for my team-members to take more than one full week off per year. I like to strategically position my PTO with my travel - and tend not to take off on the holidays.

I love my team. The data team at my company is the best team I have ever worked on. Everyone is kind, respectful, and helpful. If I am working with a coworker on the data team I know that they are going to do a good job, and be receptive to input. Generally, most people I have worked with at my company (on my team and outside of it) have been great to work with.

My team has a really good culture as well- and that is top-down. It is our CEO’s decision to be an all-remote, asynchronous first company. The VP of my department sets a good example for us by taking PTO, cheering others on for taking PTO, and being generally proactive about making sure her team does not get burnt-out.

I remember recently I had provided an update with a coworker on a new tool we were exploring and basically said “we spent a good amount of time investigating this and we don’t think it is a value-add for us”. Many executives would ignore that and move on, but my VP commented on it and thanked us for the time we spent investigating and the perspective that we brought to the evaluation.

My manager is the best manager I have ever had, and I imagine it will be hard for anyone to top her in the rest of my career! Since I am still early in my career it is helpful to have a manager who can help me learn things like “communicating in corporate speak” and progressing my own career while accomplishing results, and she does a great job at that.

I feel that my manager, and the other managers on the team, really respect our team. They don’t micromanage our time - and they trust us to deliver results and communicate with them if there are blockers. This is helpful because it gives me the freedom to work on my projects without having to look over my shoulder for my manager’s approval. It also gives me the freedom to identify potential problems for new projects, and raise that for discussion.

Something else that is nice about my company is that we have a public handbook and we do use it. For example, if you want to read about the promotion process (which I am currently applying for / going through) and see the exact document that we all fill out when we apply for a promotion, you can find that here. If you want to read about my company’s remote work philosophy, you can do so here.

I can’t say that the experience I have on my team translates well to other teams at the company. I know that different teams operate differently - for example we are a public company, so during the time period where we report our Earnings numbers, the finance team has to be all-hands-on-deck. In contrast, I almost never have urgent requests or hard deadlines.

I feel very lucky to have landed where I am. I am constantly learning new things - since I started I have learned how to be an SME and admin in Tableau, and I have upskilled (a lot) in SQL, learned some DBT, and understand the benefits and processes of using Git in a tool like GitLab for version control and project collaboration.

I have also learned a lot about ‘working cross-functionally’ which is a buzz-word but also a real skill, and navigating corporate landscapes. If I wasn’t so happy I might have started considering a job-hop at my 1-year mark, because I could probably make more money elsewhere. But for now, and I imagine the immediate future, I am happy right where I am.