Geeking Out.

I was given this article by a coworker today. He told me to feel free to nerd out. I’m gonna geek out, but since I’ve been writing “a little longer articles” recently, I thought I’d write on something that I don’t talk about much ….my job.

I’m a data geek. You can call it an analyst, a marketing manager,a strategic data hound, market research or whatever. My entire life I’ve wanted to have a job description like say…”Music Teacher” that folks can snap onto when you say it….nay says I. “What do you do?”

My easiest answer has been “I turn data chaos into grammatically correct sentences or graphical representations so that businesses can make better decisions for their future” and even that doesn’t cover it.

This article is a wonderful representation of what it takes to do my job and understand that “all those spreadsheets” aren’t “just a tweak” into a chart or graph – it takes someone sitting there understanding the “reality of an organization” , “when data could be wrong” and then “all the math” that goes with it that makes my job an amazing beautiful lifelong love story for the 20 years (!?!?!!) that I’ve done this. (FYI: my longest non-genetically-based relationship to date.)

When I started out as analyst…decades ago (seriously really?) ….I remember a phonecall to IT…”Ma’am is there another person with your job title we can test this error you’re having with”….”No?”…”Um…no one?”….”There’s only another me on the other hemisphere and they are asleep.” Being the only one back then didn’t make the me special….it just took time for folks to find a spot for what we did. It’s great to see the growth in my workforce now and the recognition as a skill to be valued. It’s changed alot – moving from paper/pen, to Excel, to Power BI to AI and coding….I can’t wait to see what’s next….that said – in the end – it’s still math. and math cannot be messed with.

Yahoo’s CEO once said: “Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter.” ….and they do. Happy Palindrome Days!
FMC

I was given this article by a coworker today. He told me to feel free to nerd out. I’m gonna geek out, but since I’ve been writing “a little longer articles” recently, I thought I’d write on something that I don’t talk about much ….my job.

I’m a data geek. You can call it an analyst, a marketing manager,a strategic data hound, market research or whatever. My entire life I’ve wanted to have a job description like say…”Music Teacher” that folks can snap onto when you say it….nay says I. “What do you do?”

My easiest answer has been “I turn data chaos into grammatically correct sentences or graphical representations so that businesses can make better decisions for their future” and even that doesn’t cover it.

This article is a wonderful representation of what it takes to do my job and understand that “all those spreadsheets” aren’t “just a tweak” into a chart or graph – it takes someone sitting there understanding the “reality of an organization” , “when data could be wrong” and then “all the math” that goes with it that makes my job an amazing beautiful lifelong love story for the 20 years (!?!?!!) that I’ve done this. (FYI: my longest non-genetically-based relationship to date.)

When I started out as analyst…decades ago (seriously really?) ….I remember a phonecall to IT…”Ma’am is there another person with your job title we can test this error you’re having with”….”No?”…”Um…no one?”….”There’s only another me on the other hemisphere and they are asleep.” Being the only one back then didn’t make the me special….it just took time for folks to find a spot for what we did. It’s great to see the growth in my workforce now and the recognition as a skill to be valued. It’s changed alot – moving from paper/pen, to Excel, to Power BI to AI and coding….I can’t wait to see what’s next….that said – in the end – it’s still math. and math cannot be messed with.

Yahoo’s CEO once said: “Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter.” ….and they do. Happy Palindrome Days!