Discussion: The Data Analyst Job Market & Remote Work#
I was searching on Spotify for some data podcasts when I came across a man named Avery Smith - a Data Career Coach.
He spoke about the market and how it is nearly impossible to get data analyst positions at the moment. I have definitely felt that - truly entry-level positions do not exist anymore unless you are a social butterfly or have the right connections. However, the same could be said for many other fields - especially software engineering.
One of the things Avery mentioned is the popularity of remote roles. A figure like “97%” jumped out to me when he spoke about how many people prefer remote roles.
As someone who currently works remote part-time, I definitely know how convenient working from home is - you do not have to pay for gas, you don’t need to buy a car, you don’t have to spend 2 hours of your free time each day driving and losing your mind around bad drivers. Financially and work-life balance speaking - it’s a great time!
However, there are some downsides. It get’s quite lonely and there is not a lot of social interaction between coworkers. If you live with parents like I do - who are off of work the entire summer - things can get loud and distracting at times. They may even bother you because you are technically in their house (“My house, my rules”, amiright?). And on top of that, my desk is right next to my bed - less than a full arms distance away. Doing work in my room really blurs work and outside life together.
I guess my unpopular opinion - especially within this loneliness (with lack of community) epidemic - is that going into the office half of the time could actually be beneficial. I would actually prefer to live within walking / public transportation distance to an office than to work from home - or at least be hybrid. However, living close to where the jobs are are usually too expensive for the pay offered. Additionally, USA public transportation is pretty abysmal.
All this to say, lots and lots of people are applying to remote jobs - but when I look at the applicants for positions - the in-office positions are nearly just as popular. This gave me lots of motivation to work harder - for the job market is harder than it has ever been!
2 Week Tableau Challenge#
Speaking of Avery Smith, I also decided to look him up on Linkedin to gather some advice. If I want to jump into an entry-level data position as soon as possible - it seems that the general consensus is to do the following:
- Save Python for later (thankfully, school taught me this!)
- Choose Microsoft Power BI or Tableau and learn it immediately
- Learn SQL (school taught me this too! But I am going to practice cleaning data with it)
- Post on Linkedin 3 times a week (Are you asking me to become a social media guru!? I barely used it in the first place)
All in all, with the amount of interactions he was getting and his bootcamp - I figured that he is probably giving some solid advice. So I decided to jump the gun!
… …
No, I did not buy his bootcamp - I am too poor. BUT, here is a pro-tip. A lot of library systems offer free udemy courses with your library card number! Although my county doesn’t have it, I was able to use a library card from a different county to use Udemy. And lucky me - there is plenty of Tableau courses to go around!
Yes - I chose Tableau. It just sounds cooler. Plus - SuperDataScienceTeam and Mr. Kirill Eremenko seemed like a very solid choice as teachers according to reddit.
So today I did my first data visualization in Tableau. Tableau is so EASY - I can’t believe it. Seeing so many software listed for Data Analyst positions was daunting - but once one finally dips their toes in some - it is easy to see why these jobs are so popular. Data visualization in itself is a creative experience, and showing data in different ways is just a fun thing to do. Who wouldn’t want this to be part of their job?
The Case Studies for Section 1#
There were two simple case studies we went over.
The first was to figure out which state brought in the most profits after transferring in an excel sheet with data.
Hopefully I finish quickly because there are some cool prizes for those who finish the course within 2 weeks. Fighting!
