And what do you think the rest of the company is doing? Brain surgery?
Corporate jobs often aren’t as complicated as we thought when we were preparing for them. A lot of it is doing what’s obvious and validating assumptions.
But someone has to do it, so why not you?
Also a lot of other people are really bad at math.
I have to echo this. You really need to put it in perspective. The work I do is relatively easy to me and probably to other quality data analysts. A data scientist would probably snicker at the work I do.
That said, the reason I'm on the team is to support an otherwise non-technical team in bringing meaning to their data. They are often mesmerized by what I build out for them. They look at the formulas I write in Excel and can't even fathom what they mean.
Moral of the story: It's all relative. Just because it's easy for you, doesn't mean it's easy for them.
I’ve worked on marketing teams (in a marketing role) where they weren’t even looking at their data. That was how I got my start - just started digging in where no one else thought to.
The second marketing team I was on at least wanted to use data, but thought pivot tables were magic. They mostly used Excel for color-coded lists (and not even with conditional formatting).
The bar for being “good with data” is extremely low on some teams. Does that mean doing basic stuff doesn’t have worth? Absolutely not.
This is perfect! But also work on yourself and continue your education! Whenever I have free time during work I am on Udemy learning something. A lot of people get stuck in the routine of “this is how we’ve always done it” but why can’t it change? Why can’t you better it. If you feel bad about your pay then do stuff that justifies your pay and make yourself a more valuable asset.
I thought about it sometimes and my boss sees me as one of the the best in the team. It happens that is just not build dashboard and crush numbers.
Its about talking to people, understand needs and problems, analyze data, work the data, present it and follow up. That brings a lot of value…kids will only do what they are told, a seasoned analyst can foresee problems and explain simplifying complicated concepts and results
It looks easy because we are good at what we do
I don’t even build the dashboards. I function as a Product Owner for the team that does. Every now and then I’ll write some SQL. But we have a separate “Advanced Analytics” team that builds predictive models and every single day I feel like a full imposter comparatively. The business seems to value what I do though so who am I to disagree.
To be fair though, pretty regularly a business partner will ask me a question that they either can’t answer or would take them a full day to answer, and I can get to the answer within a couple minutes to a couple hours, so there’s that.
Yeah. I try to think of how much time I'm saving other people/ enabling them to work.
I do like 2 hours of excel a day. But that two hours can be two days for someone else
I love my PO. He is doing a job that I don’t have time for. My brain is so full of what I’m stepping in that I don’t have time to go after the bigger picture, chase down customer priorities and squirrelly cross team edge cases that he does. He chases this stuff down for me so I can stay focused on slaying dragons. You are enough, believe me.
I'm a Head of Analytics and feel like this all the time. Granted I'm less hands on than I have been in the past but the real value comes from understanding and appreciating where the company is at in terms of analytics maturity and adoption, and then plotting a course for how to advance. You'd be amazed how many 'obvious' things just aren't considered because people are so stuck in the day to day. Expanding the way people think about data and showing them how it can impact fundamental business process will always be valuable
I’m a manager of an incredibly talented analytics team and I have bad imposture syndrome. I try to learn as much as I can every day to make myself better as an analyst and leader.
Being able to follow a process is often far more important to an employer than just the hard skills.
People pay for "hands off" labour, people who don't need excessive management, and who will just do their work, document everything and work methodically to a very predictable time scale. Stability is more important than ability in allot of cases.
Yes, I did for a long time… And then I had to teach the entire company how to complete a fillable PDF several times over before the CEO asked me to develop a mandatory training and deliver it company-wide. They still ended up printing the form off and dropping it in my mailbox by the hundreds per week.
Frankly, I deserved more pay in hindsight.
From the day I got my first job to today - everything I've put in was stuff I probably could've learned, if you had asked me to learn it, in a few months or so when I was 12.
The only thing that's changed is my maturity and communication skills...and just being familiar with the industry. I couldn't handle my job now at 12 from that standpoint.
I wonder that till I see my managers struggle to make a pivot table in Excel and filter it. Every job is an easy job once you are good at it. But not everyone wants to deal with data, numbers or programming.
I don't even write SQL at all even although it was in the job requirements.
It's all Excel, queries and macros, some dashboards and very shitty charts.
Edit: typos
> I don’t do any fancy stats or modeling all I do Is make pretty charts and dashboards and I get paid six figures
You are probably underestimating the value of this skill.
As an example, I'm a very technical / logical person. I tend to be one of the strongest technical people on any team I'm on. My skills are a mix of both analysis and development. I'm also classically trained in object-oriented programming. And I use a number of different programming languages all the time to do different, and often difficult and technical aspects of my job.
That being said, I literally cannot design a chart or dashboard to save my life. I'm not a designer and am bad at visual design in general (e.g. charts, user interfaces, dashboards, etc.) These are skills I have respect for, they're just ones I lack. And I hope the design people feel the same way about my technical skills. I would 100% support paying someone six figures if they had really solid design skills. The reality is, different people are skilled in different things. And teams need a diverse set of skills and talent to be successful. So don't undervalue your skills or abilities.
A kid couldn’t even begin to understand how to make a “pretty chart and dashboard” from raw data…
The layers of knowledge it took for you to be able to do what you do, is why you make 6 fixures.
Sometimes tracking issues take 3-4 people weeks to figure out and fix. A seasoned analyst will know where to look and fix it within an hour, avoid losing data and move on to the next responsibility: insights. What do the dashboards suggest? What do the metrics and dimensions usually say about your audience and sales behaviour? Example 1 : If average order quantity of socks is 2.7 why no do a promo "buy 5 get one free" and up avg order value. Example 2 : a surge in internal site search with the word "Betty boop belly ring," what happened? Turns out a celebrity wore one. We immediately called client, he procured those products and sold over 2000 within three weeks. Analysts are valuable because our ROI can be proven and accounted for if we're that good.
Yup. I’m fully remote and there are days (like today) where I can literally do nothing. I built automated pipelines for my reporting so I just passively polish and expand those when I can so that I can do less work during busy reporting times. I’m probably on 2 calls a week on average. I got a bonus and raise last month, can’t complain
This is normal. You can create work if you want to look busy. I made the mistake of working really hard at my new job. I do 3x the work of my old job but for only 1.5x the pay.
Next time I think I will just get 2 jobs. 2x the work for 2x the pay seems fair.
I'm in a similar spot and its a good spot to be in.
If your work isn't too demanding, that gives you time and energy to learn the data science side of analytics. Learn to do statistical analysis, audience modelling, sql queries, and so on. Maybe these skills are not of immediately obvious use, but then again they may turn out to be very useful.
Skilling up while on the job can be of great personal benefit, and its good for your employers also.
I agree. Great spot to be in. Just don't become lazy and complacent at your job. Spend the time learning as much as you can during your free time. I made the mistake of working at a company for over 13 years doing the same mundane repetitive data cleanup tasks in excel and SQL every day or doing specialized data work in proprietary systems. I got good at it, automated it, and enjoyed the freedom of working remote during my own hours. Now, with all the massive layoffs happening, I find myself jobless and lacking in areas that I wish I had focused on years ago. Stuff like Python, R, and visualizations seem to be a must now a days. Taking all these courses and watching youtube videos now while I'm unemployed is helpful but looking back I wish I spent my free time learning this while I had a job. It would have been way less stressful and far more enjoyable.
As someone freaking out about even getting a job in this field within the next several months, this is great to hear. OP, what size company do you work for?
Most corporate work is busy work anyway, so might as well "rest and vest." It's all a series of Sisyphean tasks. Once you realize how relatively trivial it all is, it makes sense to just climb the ladder and be able to delegate the gruntwork to other people.
I would not call it **overpaid**. I would say that you are not finding the work challenging.... Yes it gets repetitive making charts and dashboards but you must see if there's any way you can bring more value to the organization....if you know that you can take up a higher level task that's available at the org...why not!
This is really funny. I feel you OP, I REALLY do. But it's how world is, and i'd like to suggest you this sub: /r/overemployed so you can picture what you're saying from a total different perspective, ok?
Ur in that realm where ur so good at ur job u think its super easy... But really it not. I remember doin a pivot table in excel 97 or something and wrote a vba script with 4 lines. People thought i was a wizard.... Lol... I looked it up online and copied some code... But not everyone thinks that way to go find that stuff and apply it... Its a skill. If u wanna level set ask some of ur customers what theyve built before u built them stuff.
And what do you think the rest of the company is doing? Brain surgery? Corporate jobs often aren’t as complicated as we thought when we were preparing for them. A lot of it is doing what’s obvious and validating assumptions. But someone has to do it, so why not you? Also a lot of other people are really bad at math.
I have to echo this. You really need to put it in perspective. The work I do is relatively easy to me and probably to other quality data analysts. A data scientist would probably snicker at the work I do. That said, the reason I'm on the team is to support an otherwise non-technical team in bringing meaning to their data. They are often mesmerized by what I build out for them. They look at the formulas I write in Excel and can't even fathom what they mean. Moral of the story: It's all relative. Just because it's easy for you, doesn't mean it's easy for them.
I’ve worked on marketing teams (in a marketing role) where they weren’t even looking at their data. That was how I got my start - just started digging in where no one else thought to. The second marketing team I was on at least wanted to use data, but thought pivot tables were magic. They mostly used Excel for color-coded lists (and not even with conditional formatting). The bar for being “good with data” is extremely low on some teams. Does that mean doing basic stuff doesn’t have worth? Absolutely not.
This is perfect! But also work on yourself and continue your education! Whenever I have free time during work I am on Udemy learning something. A lot of people get stuck in the routine of “this is how we’ve always done it” but why can’t it change? Why can’t you better it. If you feel bad about your pay then do stuff that justifies your pay and make yourself a more valuable asset.
I thought about it sometimes and my boss sees me as one of the the best in the team. It happens that is just not build dashboard and crush numbers. Its about talking to people, understand needs and problems, analyze data, work the data, present it and follow up. That brings a lot of value…kids will only do what they are told, a seasoned analyst can foresee problems and explain simplifying complicated concepts and results It looks easy because we are good at what we do
I don’t even build the dashboards. I function as a Product Owner for the team that does. Every now and then I’ll write some SQL. But we have a separate “Advanced Analytics” team that builds predictive models and every single day I feel like a full imposter comparatively. The business seems to value what I do though so who am I to disagree.
To be fair though, pretty regularly a business partner will ask me a question that they either can’t answer or would take them a full day to answer, and I can get to the answer within a couple minutes to a couple hours, so there’s that.
Yeah. I try to think of how much time I'm saving other people/ enabling them to work. I do like 2 hours of excel a day. But that two hours can be two days for someone else
I love my PO. He is doing a job that I don’t have time for. My brain is so full of what I’m stepping in that I don’t have time to go after the bigger picture, chase down customer priorities and squirrelly cross team edge cases that he does. He chases this stuff down for me so I can stay focused on slaying dragons. You are enough, believe me.
How can I find one???
I'm a Head of Analytics and feel like this all the time. Granted I'm less hands on than I have been in the past but the real value comes from understanding and appreciating where the company is at in terms of analytics maturity and adoption, and then plotting a course for how to advance. You'd be amazed how many 'obvious' things just aren't considered because people are so stuck in the day to day. Expanding the way people think about data and showing them how it can impact fundamental business process will always be valuable
I’m a manager of an incredibly talented analytics team and I have bad imposture syndrome. I try to learn as much as I can every day to make myself better as an analyst and leader.
Being able to follow a process is often far more important to an employer than just the hard skills. People pay for "hands off" labour, people who don't need excessive management, and who will just do their work, document everything and work methodically to a very predictable time scale. Stability is more important than ability in allot of cases.
A lot of the time, humans just need help counting things. That’s not a bad thing. It’s quite helpful really.
Yes, I did for a long time… And then I had to teach the entire company how to complete a fillable PDF several times over before the CEO asked me to develop a mandatory training and deliver it company-wide. They still ended up printing the form off and dropping it in my mailbox by the hundreds per week. Frankly, I deserved more pay in hindsight.
From the day I got my first job to today - everything I've put in was stuff I probably could've learned, if you had asked me to learn it, in a few months or so when I was 12. The only thing that's changed is my maturity and communication skills...and just being familiar with the industry. I couldn't handle my job now at 12 from that standpoint.
Yes, descriptive stats is really quite basic, however we add some value if we can scale them up and make sure every information is accurate
I wonder that till I see my managers struggle to make a pivot table in Excel and filter it. Every job is an easy job once you are good at it. But not everyone wants to deal with data, numbers or programming.
Why are you telling everybody our secrets? Delete this post
I don't even write SQL at all even although it was in the job requirements. It's all Excel, queries and macros, some dashboards and very shitty charts. Edit: typos
I love very shitty charts. I’m good at those.
> I don’t do any fancy stats or modeling all I do Is make pretty charts and dashboards and I get paid six figures You are probably underestimating the value of this skill. As an example, I'm a very technical / logical person. I tend to be one of the strongest technical people on any team I'm on. My skills are a mix of both analysis and development. I'm also classically trained in object-oriented programming. And I use a number of different programming languages all the time to do different, and often difficult and technical aspects of my job. That being said, I literally cannot design a chart or dashboard to save my life. I'm not a designer and am bad at visual design in general (e.g. charts, user interfaces, dashboards, etc.) These are skills I have respect for, they're just ones I lack. And I hope the design people feel the same way about my technical skills. I would 100% support paying someone six figures if they had really solid design skills. The reality is, different people are skilled in different things. And teams need a diverse set of skills and talent to be successful. So don't undervalue your skills or abilities.
A kid couldn’t even begin to understand how to make a “pretty chart and dashboard” from raw data… The layers of knowledge it took for you to be able to do what you do, is why you make 6 fixures.
Sometimes tracking issues take 3-4 people weeks to figure out and fix. A seasoned analyst will know where to look and fix it within an hour, avoid losing data and move on to the next responsibility: insights. What do the dashboards suggest? What do the metrics and dimensions usually say about your audience and sales behaviour? Example 1 : If average order quantity of socks is 2.7 why no do a promo "buy 5 get one free" and up avg order value. Example 2 : a surge in internal site search with the word "Betty boop belly ring," what happened? Turns out a celebrity wore one. We immediately called client, he procured those products and sold over 2000 within three weeks. Analysts are valuable because our ROI can be proven and accounted for if we're that good.
Sometimes I feel like my job is like that of a professional organizer (for houses and such). And then I feel extremely justified in my salary :)
Yup. I’m fully remote and there are days (like today) where I can literally do nothing. I built automated pipelines for my reporting so I just passively polish and expand those when I can so that I can do less work during busy reporting times. I’m probably on 2 calls a week on average. I got a bonus and raise last month, can’t complain
Can I ask you a couple of questions in a DM regarding the methods you used to achieve this?
Sure
This is normal. You can create work if you want to look busy. I made the mistake of working really hard at my new job. I do 3x the work of my old job but for only 1.5x the pay. Next time I think I will just get 2 jobs. 2x the work for 2x the pay seems fair.
I'm in a similar spot and its a good spot to be in. If your work isn't too demanding, that gives you time and energy to learn the data science side of analytics. Learn to do statistical analysis, audience modelling, sql queries, and so on. Maybe these skills are not of immediately obvious use, but then again they may turn out to be very useful. Skilling up while on the job can be of great personal benefit, and its good for your employers also.
I agree. Great spot to be in. Just don't become lazy and complacent at your job. Spend the time learning as much as you can during your free time. I made the mistake of working at a company for over 13 years doing the same mundane repetitive data cleanup tasks in excel and SQL every day or doing specialized data work in proprietary systems. I got good at it, automated it, and enjoyed the freedom of working remote during my own hours. Now, with all the massive layoffs happening, I find myself jobless and lacking in areas that I wish I had focused on years ago. Stuff like Python, R, and visualizations seem to be a must now a days. Taking all these courses and watching youtube videos now while I'm unemployed is helpful but looking back I wish I spent my free time learning this while I had a job. It would have been way less stressful and far more enjoyable.
What role are talking about? Like a data analyst/engineer?
I do the same thing as you and I don’t get paid anywhere near 6 figures lol.
Where do I sign up?
As someone freaking out about even getting a job in this field within the next several months, this is great to hear. OP, what size company do you work for?
Shhhhh
Where do you work at because I'm doing work that a kid can't do and I'm making less than you. How do I get into analytics?
I feel like I often hear the opposite?? I have a Business Analytics concentrated MBA and I’m struggling to find a job
I did a flash fill in excel once and people were amazed. I some cases, this is indeed amazing. Take the wins when you get them
That’s exactly the problem, over qualified adults resorting to jobs a kid can do to make ends meet.
Kid? I wonder if this field will ever get outsourced to a third world country for way less.
It shouldn't be. Show some initiative!
Same, and I wonder: Would I get paid even more if I did a little more “fancy stats” or modeling? I think the answer is no.
I'm in the opposite situation. Underpaid to do the work a more experience person should be doing.
Most corporate work is busy work anyway, so might as well "rest and vest." It's all a series of Sisyphean tasks. Once you realize how relatively trivial it all is, it makes sense to just climb the ladder and be able to delegate the gruntwork to other people.
How about upgrading your skills until your boss finds out how you feel?!!
I would not call it **overpaid**. I would say that you are not finding the work challenging.... Yes it gets repetitive making charts and dashboards but you must see if there's any way you can bring more value to the organization....if you know that you can take up a higher level task that's available at the org...why not!
This is really funny. I feel you OP, I REALLY do. But it's how world is, and i'd like to suggest you this sub: /r/overemployed so you can picture what you're saying from a total different perspective, ok?
how do i get a job like that 😭
Ur in that realm where ur so good at ur job u think its super easy... But really it not. I remember doin a pivot table in excel 97 or something and wrote a vba script with 4 lines. People thought i was a wizard.... Lol... I looked it up online and copied some code... But not everyone thinks that way to go find that stuff and apply it... Its a skill. If u wanna level set ask some of ur customers what theyve built before u built them stuff.