I've always worked on the business side (marketing, finance, sales analytics), but I'm mostly a light tech resource. I build analyses and reports and automate processes using SQL, BI Tools, and programming (mostly python and VBA). I have about ten years experience and have been an analytics manager for 2 years. I'd like to break into IT and tech. I'm wondering what kind of jobs I'd be qualified for given my background and where I should look. Edit: Any data engineers out there? Seems like an interesting position I might want to work towards. Any insight you can share? Projects/responsibilities, skillset, experience, companies, salary?
PM for BI tools company (Tableau, MSFT Power BI, etc.). Make sure you play around with different BI tools.
I've used power BI, Spotfire, and TM1. I mostly use SQL/light programming to get and format specific information and BI tools to organize and visualize. SQL really enables you to get any information you need at granular or higher levels. So flexible. I can't praise it enough.
You can be a data scientist, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, that’s the “new” career track for analysts. You’d need to study a lot but you have the mindset and experience to cut through the BS. Avoid going into a cost center (at all costs... ha ha) PM is gonna be a narrower path with less ambiguity but also fewer job opportunities.
Thank you! I've looked into this before. I think I have the data/tech/BI skillset, but the statistics and math side is challenging.
If you learn how to apply your skillset to a realtime streaming data platform, you can go into “data engineering” instead, which will be more lucrative initially than “junior data scientist” but with a lower ceiling.
Any data engineers out there? Seems like an interesting position I might want to work towards. Any insight you can share? Projects/responsibilities, skillset, experience, companies, salary?
Ingest data at webscale (30k TPS minimum), shove it into HDFS/S3 and pipe that into Vertica/Redshift and then merge/enrich/data science/repeat. Or, ingest data into Kafka/Kinesis and fan it out into other Kafka/Kinesis clusters, add enrichments, feedback signals into decisions made in the customer facing product, rinse repeat. Can’t speak firsthand about CA/SV salaries but in Texas I made 125-140k/yr doing this type of work in ecommerce, social media analytics, and connected fitness.
Thank you! What's your background? Did you start at a lower level?
I am self taught and started with Excel/Access/Outlook as my tech stack — ask me about invoking shdocvw.dll from VBA before Selenium was a thing. Your mention of VBA caught my eye. My first programming job was 27k/yr and i am over 10x that 14 years later. My advice is geared towards trying to help you skip my “lost years” as a Java/.NET/PHP dev.
Thanks so much! Really great responses and community so far. I'm shocked how much I use VBA. So much demand and need automate Excel processes for myself and colleagues. Alot of programmers I know pick on it and me for using it so much, but it's so valuable for how simple it is and for what it can do for simple business processes. What do you do now and what skills would you advise focusing on do I don't get "lost"?
Also, any alternatives to VBA that accomplish the same thing as robustly?
Blind UI is so bad. Lol
You could be a DBA and enjoy a fully remote position
Thank you! Definitely something I will look into further! I've nearly always been on the SQL developer side, side from setting up and admining some smaller databases. Would be a new skillset to learn, but if love to start at a lower level, learn, and work my way up.