A Few Lessons From My Young Career

I’ve wanted to write a post about the lessons I learned during my first year as a data analyst for a while. I started writing it numerous times but never finished. I’d write detailed outlines then lose focus or motivation shortly after.

Things are different now. Don’t ask me why I’m suddenly more motivated. The time feels right to write, and I’ve finally progressed beyond the outlining stage.

My original title, however, no longer feels appropriate: “What I Learned During My First Year as a Data Analyst.” While refining my thoughts for this piece, I noticed the lessons do not apply strictly to data analytics. Instead, they are general lessons anyone early in their career may resonate with and benefit from—no matter what field they work in.

Before continuing with the lessons, let me give you some background knowledge of myself.

I started my first data analyst job in September 2023, so I am 1.5 years into my career as of posting this. I previously spent a year and a half after college working for my family’s manufacturing company. However, the work I did there was primarily administrative and felt like a big summer job instead of the beginning of my career. So, I consider my current data analyst role as my first corporate job.

My duties at work are split between two types of tasks. One involves providing business intelligence and reporting support to various operational teams in my company, and the other involves supporting an engineering team with data management and software development tasks.

People tend to associate data analyst titles with tech companies. I do not work at a tech company, though. Instead, I work for a vitamin/supplement company. Our IT and engineering teams are not as large as the companies most data people seem to work at. I’m fortunate for this.

Being part of a small team in a small department—also within a rapidly growing company—has involved me in projects that most people with my experience would not have the luxury of experiencing this early in their careers. That’s why I feel I have learned a lot during my 1.5-year career so far.

With that said, here are a few lessons I have learned from my young career…

Communication skills matter A LOT more than you think

The people I collaborate with at work are mostly managers or department heads. Often, they are highly important individuals who have driven the organization to its current success. Participating in meetings with these people has taught me that communication matters A LOT.

Good communicators save their organizations time. There are two primary ways I have seen them do so:

They prevent unnecessarily long email chains and meetings from happening
They clarify project scopes and expectations early on, thus preventing missed deadlines and late submissions

From a personal perspective, being a good communicator has the following benefits:

You appear more competent and intelligent amongst your peers
You are more enjoyable to work with
You open up opportunities to work on more meaningful projects

As someone obsessed with semantics, I realize there’s a big difference between good and great. Good communicators are like post mail, while great communicators are like email. Both deliver their message, but great communicators do it in a fraction of the time. Since beginning my current data analyst role, I have met a lot of good communicators. But there are only two people I classify as great.

That’s a problem. If communication skills matter as highly as I believe, I would have assumed more people (especially those with 10-15+ experience in their fields) would be great communicators.

I could view this as a negative. Instead, I see an opportunity. My sample size is currently small, but I’m sure other companies have the same shortage of great communicators. This means that by deliberately developing my communication skills, I open up opportunities to advance my career into more prominent and lucrative roles.

You can do the same, too.

I began with this lesson because communication skills are the highest ROI skill you can learn early in your career. The beginning will be difficult—I struggle with it myself frequently—but by being aware of your communication skills early in your career, you will put yourself in favorable positions down the road.

Everyone should know how to write well, and they should do it often

Warning: I’m biased on this one because I have been writing since Covid hit in 2020.

During that time, I realized that in order to be a great thinker, you must be able to write well. Thinking and writing are synonymous. When you write, you force yourself to think differently than you normally do throughout your day. All of the greatest minds and thinkers throughout history have been great writers as well. I cannot name one person who was a great thinker yet terrible writer. That combination does not exists.

Now, when I say that everyone should know how to write well, it doesn’t mean they should strive to become famous authors, bloggers, essayists, or tweeters. Those were some of my original reasons for writing. But, now, I primarily write for two reasons:

To think better
To communicate better

Regarding the first reason, remember that writing and thinking are synonymous. This is true because when you think without writing, your thoughts lack order or structure. Ideas move in and out of focus with no rhythm. Writing helps you calm that hectic flow. It organizes your mind and allows you to think with clarity.

When tasked with solving complex problems at work, I often begin the problem-solving process by writing. This writing is never public. That’s another thing you should know. You don’t have to write in public. Doing it for yourself is enough.

By writing my thoughts during the problem-solving process, my mind focuses on bits and pieces of the problem, allowing me to be more perceptive and observant. This enables me to identify patterns or make connections that lead to solutions.

The second reason I write is to communicate better. I previously said that communication skills are the highest ROI skill you can develop early in your career. Unfortunately, I do not know the best way to improve those skills. A good start, however, is by writing often. This is especially useful since you will spend much time communicating through writing (emails and instant messages) in your career.

I learned that written communication matters the hard way. Last summer, I wrote a message asking my coworker about a business process I helped automate. Since this person owned the process, I assumed she would understand my question without me having to put too much effort into choosing the correct words. That backfired. After hitting send, I waited three days for a response. Nothing. Eventually, while in an unrelated meeting with this person, she told me she did not answer my message (despite seeing it) because it confused her. Fortunately, the problem was not urgent. So, the delayed response was okay. But this event made me realize that if the situation were serious and required immediate action, my poor written communication would have hurt me. Since that moment, I have been intentional and focused in my writing.

I write often and it benefits my thinking and communication. So, I will continue to do it.

Be a problem solver

My boss taught me this lesson during my first few months on the job. I think about it almost every day. I don’t remember his exact words, so I’ll paraphrase them here:

There are two things you do do when you find a problem.

The first is going to your manager and saying, “Look at this problem I found. We need to fix it.” You may think this is okay, especially if you went out of your way to find the issue. However, taking this route means you bring your manager more problems to deal with. You put more work on their plate.

The second thing you can do is go to your manager and say, “Look at this problem I found. We need to fix it. Here’s what I propose we do…” That extra sentence makes all the difference in the world. What happens here is that you solve problems before reporting them up the chain. Instead of going to your manager with problems, you go to them with solutions.

The short version of the lesson is to bring people solutions, not problems.

By doing this, you become valuable. Your manager and subsequent managers above them already have a lot to deal with. So, they want to work with people who make their lives easier. If you are the guy that brings problems to others, they won’t enjoy working with you. They’d much rather work with the person who brings solutions. So, be that person.

I often go out of my way at work to identify problems with my organization’s data and business processes. Every time I discover something, my first instinct is to go to my boss and show him what I found. But, I don’t do that. I remember the “be a problem solver” lesson, instead. I take time to come up with different solutions and test them to find the best one. By the time I’m ready to present the issue to my boss or the relevant stakeholder, I’m giving them a lot less work to do than the person who would have reported the problem immediately.

This habit has helped me gain recognition from many people in my company and develop a good reputation.

Do work that’s high ROI for your career

Sometimes, you have to be selfish and do good things for yourself.

Everyone has different career aspirations. You and I are likely motivated by different things, and we likely see ourselves ending up in different places. So, it’s impossible to generalize what high ROI work. The best I can do is explain what I consider high ROI work for people with a similar drive to me.

First, what motivates me? What do I aspire to accomplish in my career? The truth is that I’m not entirely sure. I don’t know the specific type of work I want to pursue long-term. I’m still young, so I have time to figure the details out. But what I do know is that I like to build things. So, I want to build something great and be involved in work that matters.

Again, that’s a bit vague. But I figure the best thing I can do right now is become involved in meaningful, top priority projects at work. I can’t simply ask to become involved in this type of work. I have to develop trust and prove my worth first. So, that’s what I’ll focus on here—how to prove your value to your company.

I have progressed faster than most people would in my position. After reviewing the projects and tasks I have worked on, I noticed a pattern. I often solve problems that fit into at least one of the following categories:

Problems others don’t want to solve
Problems others don’t have time to solve
Problems others can’t solve

Focusing on these problems has helped me make a name for myself in my organization.

It’s important to mention that it’s not enough for your problems to only fall into one of these three buckets. What matters most is that the problems you solve provide value for your company. No one will notice if you work on things that deliver no results or value. And if they do notice, they won’t care. So, before choosing to solve problems within the above buckets, first take time to verify they matter.

If you decide the problem is worth solving, go for it. Solving these types of issues can provide the following benefits:

You expose yourself and your value to important people in your company
You open yourself to promotions and/or big salary increases
You become involved in bigger, better projects

Document your work

One year passes quickly. Yet, at the same time, it passes slowly. Performance review season hits before you know it, and you must review your work over the previous twelve months. You probably find it difficult to recollect what you worked on 9+ months ago. Or, if you’re like me, you struggle to remember what you worked on 2-3 months ago. If you’re in a fast-paced environment, you’re even more vulnerable to forgetting your accomplishments from the past year.

And if you don’t remember everything you worked on, I guarantee your manager will not remember either. Think about it. They not only have to keep track of your work, but they have to keep track of their work and the work of anyone else they manage. Depending on your organization and/or department, that can range from two to ten people’s work to account for.

So, when it’s time for them to write performance reviews, they are at risk of not accounting for all of your key achievements. That hurts you more than it does them.

This is why I like writing self-performance reviews. I didn’t do it during my first performance review, but I did it for my second one. I kept things simple, and focused on what I did well versus what was expected. My goal was to provide my boss with a summary of my accomplishments to refresh his mind on my performance.

Writing the self-performance review was more difficult than I expected. Not because I did nothing worth highlighting—that’s certainly not true. No, it was difficult because I did not document my work in an organized way throughout the year. This meant I had to review my closed JIRA tickets, read random notes from text files and notebooks, and parse old SQL files to identify the important work I forgot I did. The process was too time-consuming.

I didn’t want to make the same mistake this year, so I began documenting my work and accomplishments. I keep a Notion file dedicated to my daily and weekly wins at work. I jot down achievements, milestones, praise, and anything else that may benefit my performance review at the end of the year.

I wouldn’t say documenting work is the most important thing to do. It’s certainly not the highest ROI habit. However, by keeping track of the value and results you bring to your company, you prepare yourself with ammunition for more than performance reviews. It’s also helpful to have when it comes time for salary negotiations, landing promotions, and interviewing for new roles to advance your career.

Final Thoughts

Once more, I want to clarify that my career is young. I work with people who have more experience in their respective fields than I have lived on this planet. So, while the lessons I have discussed are ones I believe in now, I will not be surprised if some of my current viewpoints change in the future. It’s only natural.