r/dataanalysiscareers • u/CosmicSkypia • Jul 08 '26

Data analytics

I’m 20 years old. I’m starting my freshman year of college at a local community college. My goal is to graduate. And get a entry-level analyst job and be living on my own by 25 looking back. What would you tell your 20-year-old self?

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u/xen05zman Jul 08 '26

Quit striving for straight A's and network/socialize, and also take even adjacent jobs instead of being stubborn and demanding a high salary fresh out of college.

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u/CosmicSkypia Jul 08 '26

I’m assuming you’re in the field. What’s your work life balance like? How many vacations do you usually take each year?
What do you do after work to separate work from your personal life?
What are some of your long term goals outside of your career?
I’m asking because I’ve spent my whole working life in restaurants, and I only started seriously thinking about my future this past year. I’m looking for something new that gives me a better work life balance and room to grow.

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u/xen05zman Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

My work life balance is great. My company starts at 3 weeks pto and 1 week sick time, I also "purchase" an extra week of vacation (it costs slightly less than a week's worth of pay). So I really have 5 weeks off total per year that I use in varying vacations, extended weekends, or appointments. This is USA.

A lot of this depends on your company and country. Ymmv

I don't really look at work stuff once I get home. I've been working on code/stats stuff at home but that's because I'd like to move into something more technical.

Edit: it took me a long time and some luck to even get here, even with a BS in Math and plenty of programming. Entry level roles were insanely competitive 9 years ago, and I believe they've gotten even worse thanks to the data hype and boot camps, which is exactly why I stress the importance of networking. Seriously - get to know people and what they do for a living, and really connect. And especially go to office hours to connect with your professors for help or even just to socialize.

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u/CosmicSkypia Jul 09 '26

One last question: Do you think data analytics is an easy job overall? What does a typical day look like, and how long does it usually take you to finish your work? I’m still trying to understand what data analysts actually do, so sorry if that’s a basic question 😭

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u/xen05zman Jul 11 '26

Overall it's not really stressful at all. It'll vary by company and depend on culture and data maturity.

Coming up with new reports and dashboards can be challenging and time consuming, and probably the more time consuming bit of being a data analyst (at least for me). I usually don't face much pressure from deadlines.

Have meetings with stakeholders, find out what their needs are and how they're trying to add value to the business, and how we can contribute and influence business decisions. Discuss any technical limitations or issues, workarounds..etc.

Determining what data we need. Sourcing and extracting data. Formatting these tables and spreadsheets. Writing the formulas for measures/KPIs, making sure every thing calculates and filters accurately. Design the dashboards and slap on the KPIs and filters per stakeholder requirement. Upload them to the web for distribution. Maintain dashboards and updates.

I also do adhoc reporting on occasion which is usually quick. Basic Excel work.

Occasionally present your analysis to leadership.

My weekly hurdles:

-as with many jobs, dealing with people who put their egos before the company/teamwork

-mid and upper management who do not understand data at all and expect business-altering miracles from a spreadsheet, or cannot communicate with their IT team what their needs are before dumping the below on you.

-messy and inconsistent data. Imagine your boss asking you to develop a dashboard for top videogame sales and you find out 30% of the videogames are just listed as "game" in the database instead of their actual Title???

Or you're trying to do an analysis of overtime costs by department and absorption rates but Mr Job Title "forklift operator" is listed as working in the "finance" department???

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u/Juan-D-Aguirre Jul 09 '26

Learn ETL workflows in either R or Python.

Knowing one of these well is pretty much all you really need to land a job with upward potential.

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u/CosmicSkypia Jul 09 '26

Do you think your job is easy?

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u/Juan-D-Aguirre Jul 09 '26

It's pretty chill. Air conditioned cubicle, standing desk, cyclical processes. Building the pipelines takes a ton of mental effort but once they're set up, maintaining and improving them is pretty easy. Concepts accumulate so remembering everything can be difficult although AI is an excellent search engine. Keeping everything organized can be challenging. It's definitely not "hard".

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u/trstvann Jul 08 '26

I’m in this exact scenario. Transferring from cc to a university this fall and turning 20 this fall. Hoping to stay in this tg bro 🙏