Is it normal for overqualified employees to work on relatively "entry level" technical analysis due to inability to hire a business analyst because of fund constraints?
For startup nothing is called overqualified!!!
Yes, that is classic early startup culture.
Yep. IMO being at a startup means you do what you need to do to get shit done. If that's not your thing then maybe startups isn't either...
It’s common for every level of employee to be working to ship anything that needs to shipped and create a positive customer/user experience. I’d take the perspective thinking about what a founder has to do when launching a company. The reality is everything.
Yep, happened to me while I was at a "fast-growing" startup. My situation was more like "We don't think your team needs a business analyst. You already have an engineer that knows SQL. Just have them spend 2 weeks doing that."
Yes. In my experience, it is too often bc the company didn't hire or realize they needed to hire a data analyst or data engineer. I don't think it is bc of funding, but rather a lack of understanding or appreciation for how complex and difficult analytics actually is. It's not just some Excel magic or some SQL. It includes thinking durably and scalably about data collection, organization and usage.
Thanks for the insights guys!! Follow-up: is this due to funding constraints or lack of data since a startup is likely not generating too many data points?
Yes part of being at a startup is willingness to do any type of work, sometimes for months on end.
Yes
They just don’t want you that much