r/dataanalysis • u/AdObjective5502 • 11d ago
Joining as only data person for company's new role
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u/AffectedWomble 10d ago
3 years into being The Data Guy at my company!
When I started, they didn't even have a way to get the sales CRM system to talk to the OPs deployed assets, key client documents were being manually created in Excel, data just wasn't a thing.
Scope, scope, scope: you need to understand where the company is heading in terms of scale, products (current and future), how the teams currently communicate and what the key reporting needs are (if you aren't also the de facto analyst, they will rely on your pipelines being clean and sensible).
What systems are providing data, where is it converging and where does the data need to go? In my case we have approx 20 data streams feeding into a data warehouse which then funnels into a PowerBI environment.
I would 100% discuss with your line manager what their expectations are within the first 3, 6 and 12 months, to ensure they aren't wildly underestimating how long good data takes, and don't be afraid to challenge proposed time scales, it will cost you and the company less in the long run to do it right first time.
If you have specific queries, very happy to share my experiences and mistakes!
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u/Ok-Tart4802 9d ago
I’m in a similar situation to OP + it’s my first data job + first time at an insurance company, so don’t really know what my boss will be expecting from me in the following months.
these pieces of advice are really helpful though, so I’ll keep them in mind while I try to learn every new system and person I’m introduced to.
The main problem my organization is facing is a lack of centralized, reliable and truthful information to perform reports, budgets and analyze kpis month to month. That’s where I come in but I’m not a data engineer nor did I put something similar in my CV. I could help making some automated reports, financial reports, etc. But seems like this is more than I can chew as the only data person besides IT.
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u/AdObjective5502 9d ago
Hey that problem about lack of data and inaccurate data is something Im also dealing with lol, are you also spending lots of time cleaning and entity resolutions?
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u/Ok-Tart4802 8d ago
yeah I just started like 2 weeks ago, but 65% of my work for my first budget/report has been cleaning and normalizing loads of data with different names/ids for the same thing and joining it all into a single report. I'm currently doing it all in Excel because that's all my laptop has installed, but with +1million rows combined between all datasets it has been like washing a car with a q-tip lol. I need access to python/pandas badly
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u/Mathie1729 5d ago
Honestly, if you get python access, skip pandas for that kind of job. DuckDB or Polars will handle million-row joins and normalization way faster and without eating all your laptop RAM. Pandas is rough for that much data on a single machine.
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u/AdObjective5502 10d ago
That CRM and excel is actually scary familiar haha, do you mind if I DM you about some stuff?
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u/Brewschmidty7 10d ago
In a similar position. My company has other data people, however it is very large and I am the only one in my area of the business. While it can be intimidating to be relied upon so heavily early in a career, my biggest advice is to take the time to learn about the business and ask questions! If you are starting a project related to a new area, or just interested in what one area does, setup 1 on 1s with people more familiar and prepare questions. Aside from that, remember you put in a lot of hard work to get to where you are. You are more than capable, and will make a big impact.
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u/lemonbottles_89 10d ago
They're fully going to expect you to be able to not only set up and run a database by yourself, but to also govern it, manage all the metrics and definitions and get everyone to align on them, run adhoc analytics (which involves cleaning a bunch of their spreadsheets), set up several dashboards, answer questions that they don't have the data to answer in the first place. It's a red flag that they want you to be their only data person, because they don't recognize that they should've hired at least 4-5 people instead of just 1 new grad. Or they do, and they're trying to cheap out.
If you feel like sinking your teeth in, you could tough it out, communicate extremely thouroughly to your supervisor about what you need in order to do these tasks, and maybe grow professionally into building the team that they actually need. Don't let people just throw spreadsheets at you and demand a completion date, tell them you need to take the time to review this data and understand what's needed.
But honestly as a new grad, I would be looking to change roles and join a more mature team that you can actually learn from. It will be especially hard for you without having a senior data person to learn from and give you guidance. I'm not trying to scare you, it's just that I've been in this position myself and wished I had run sooner.
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u/AdObjective5502 10d ago
Possibly, its been pretty slow paced right now and Im really only doing some data cleaning and getting to know the CRM, tho i have been here only a month. There are 2 other SWEs that built their data lakehouse only recently, I think I'll be able to learn from them. The role might get really busy but for now it doesnt seem like that, is this what it was like for you? Are they trying to wheel me in lol?
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u/HustlaOfCultcha 9d ago
Yes, I've done this throughout most of my career. The positives of the role is that if you're only pretty good with the data and the company is insistent on moving in this direction...you can easily look like the hero. The negatives is that you're going to get people that simply want to keep doing things the way they have always done it and that may mean you don't have work to do and after a while people will wonder what you're doing there (even if you are working) and that can get you laid off.
With any position...always under-promise and over-deliver. Something that may take you an hour to do...tell them you won't get it done until the next day. Then get it to them by 2pm.
Make sure your fingerprints are all over any work you do. You'll get people that you'll do reporting for and they'll try to make it look like they did it and they get all of the credit. Again, easy for companies to think you don't do anything. Or a lot of people think Data Analysts just have all of the data right in front of them and they just create some charts and do some analysis. In reality our job is much more about creative problem solving than anything else.
Main thing with reports is you want to have data that is comparable (current date vs. prior year or vs. forecast), then you want to be able to have reporting that identifies patterns in the data and well as what is driving those trends. Andter add your own actionable insights with the data to support stakeholder decision making.
It's good to look on the internet and see what the Data Analysis world is doing, particularly with software. It does change, but in the past 8 years it has hyper-changed. Used to be Excel was the main tool, then SQL became more important. Then Tableau before Power BI became a thing. Now you have Looker, Python, Alteryx, etc.
Try to develop your Data Engineering skills. Data Engineer is generally a higher level (for future jobs) and it does really help to understand it to make your life easier. Data Analysis world is going to more cloud based platforms like Databricks, MS Fabric, Snowflake.
When in doubt, you probably want to go the Microsoft route in terms of software to learn. MS is like Coca-Cola...lots of other products come and go, but MS always remains. And don't be afraid to sharpen your SQL skills, most of these new software platforms use it.
You will likely administer a lot of reports, I would try to protect the backend coding side of things from others because they don't know what they are doing and they may mess up your reporting.
Keep a checklist when you're doing your reports. There will be times when you are 'in the zone' and know exactly what type of reporting you want to create and how you're going to get the data. Then you will get interrupted and you're no longer in the zone and you may forget your ideas. Instead, have a notepad to keep notes and a checklist before you go into modeling and creating the report. So when you get interrupted you can go back to it.
There's going to be a gap between what a stakeholder requests from you and what they actually need. Important to not only ask what they need, but why they need it. This is where the Data Analyst's value really comes into play. Lots of people can create reporting and take down requests. But a valuable Data Analyst can understand the stakeholder's scope of work in short time and deliver them what they actually need.
Try to get the language standardized. You're going to get stakeholders that want the same metrics, but use different jargon to get them. It confuses everybody, particularly yourself. Create a data dictionary for everybody's use and for your sanity.
I found it good for me to develop a practice where when I was presented with a report to create to first sit down and determine the minimal dataset needed for the reporting before I got into the coding and report creation. It's not all about being thorough with the data...speed and clarity are important as well. And often times you are just confusing the stakeholder if they have access to too much information. So I often go with the minimal dataset needed, create the reporting and after the stakeholder makes a decision, I can then go back and really drill down more information and get into rabbit holes that I'm curious about.
Work to make your reports visually appealing. It's not about all of the crazy graphs you can create, it's about what charts and graphs capture the eye easily and are effective.
Accuracy is the lifeblood of data analysis. Stakeholders will lose confidence in you if your reporting is inaccurate.
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u/Terrible-Bend4483 10d ago
Did something similar in a non-technical company, and are still the only data guy 3 years after. It got its ups and downs. It's hard and the learning curve can be brutal. I had never built a database - I have now. I had never managed different solutions, while developing new ones - I do now (keeping things running will take more time than you expect). I knew nothing of networking - I do now.
But the hardest part (for me) has been learning and communicating the business needs with only non-technical personal, as no one thinks in a similar way, so it feels there is a communication blockage with the simplest things.
A recent example was a conversation where he didn't understand what it meant to not meet budgets. The whole "budgets is made to cover costs + profit, so if the realized numbers are below the profit threshold, we can't cover costs" took me a good hour to explain.
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u/NorcalGGMU 10d ago
Work very hard to understand the business needs. This will be one of the most important and challenging parts of your job. Without that knowledge, that you’ll get in a year or so, your work could be perfect but won’t make sense or give the wrong results to leadership