You Don’t Need an Analyst

In high school, I wanted a career in interior design, a far cry from the title I now hold in data analytics.

Life happens and college didn’t pan out to my original expectations. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have been good at picking out paint colors. I stumbled into a business degree and then later an entry-level position as a systems analyst with a benefits administration company.

Like many people in this field, I did not grow up as an aspiring data scientist, rather I learned SQL, had access to databases and was in charge of building reports. That access is what sets an analyst apart. It is not that SQL is especially difficult or understanding relational databases are hard. Analytical thinking does take some practice, but most of these things do not require a college degree. An analyst knows where the data lives and how to get to it and that, historically, has been unique. But the times are changing and the push for data democratization means that most companies have data models and tools that have made this process much easier. Thankfully, I haven’t had to touch an Access database since 2017.

I’ve been in this field for almost nine years, and I’ve worked at four very different companies. From a Series A startup to a company of close to 1,000 employees, each has taught me vastly different skills and I’ve learned to work with many types of people and in varying organizational structures. I’ve worked on analytics teams made up of more than 20 individuals but I’ve also been the only analyst at a company. These things have formed and molded my viewpoints around the domain of analytics as it exists in most companies.

I hold a different, albeit probably controversial, opinion of the analytics team in an organization: many companies do not need or are not ready for one.

“Analytics” and “Data Science” have become such buzzwords that many companies think they need these roles because they’ve heard they need to be more “data-driven.” If your current employees are not data-driven, hiring a data analyst will not change that. In fact, I’m of the opinion that it will actually hurt more than help.

In these companies, the data analyst becomes a crutch, and questions that should be answered by marketers, product, or anyone else for that matter are off-loaded to the analytics team. I was under the impression for many years that it was a part of my role to be a teacher. It was my responsibility to train those around me in how to ask the right questions and how to be an analytical thinker. Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve decided the only thing I’ll be training at this point in my life is puppies and data models. Employees must take on the responsibility to learn and understand the results of their own work. Unfortunately, that’s not something I can teach, and even more, unfortunately, it’s a common culture in many organizations.

Most likely, your data analyst wants to do advanced analytics. They want to grow their skill set. They want to solve more challenging problems than the ones they solved last quarter. They want to be the ones finding insights that make huge impacts on the business. For this to happen, they have to be given the time. That means others in the company must sharpen their analytical skills. This means answers to questions such as: “How is [insert any project here] performing?” Should be answered by those in charge of said project.

Analytics is less of a role and more of a skill that every member of an organization should have.

My jaw hit the floor when I began working at Ethos and realized that many of the product managers already knew SQL and wrote their own queries. If they need a change to a dashboard, they make it and ask for a review. More often than not, it’s correct. If eight of my teammates take an hour of their time to make simple, necessary adjustments to reports, that gives me an entire day back. It also alleviates the amount of context switching my brain needs to do between these tasks. That’s not just one day — that’s one focused day.

I’m currently working with a cross-functional team to launch a brand new growth funnel. It’s a large project full of ambiguity and opinions, but it’s also exciting and hopeful. I have built zero dashboards for it. Will I? Of course, but for the last month I’ve been working in a more collaborative role where everyone is bringing something of their own to the table. Analytics will not be an afterthought, it will be woven into every question we ask along the way. It will not be about building a performance dashboard, but about building the product we launch.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. The role of a reporting analyst is valuable and needed. However, analysts often interview and are hired into a role with a much more robust job description only to realize that description is not the reality of the job. If this happens, rest assured this analyst will not stick around for long.

If you realize a high level of turnover in your analytics department, ensure you are not lowering the expectations of your analyst’s role and that you are raising the analytical mindset of everyone else. The impact of this will be profound. You will not just be hiring one analyst, but raising an entire company of them.

Nicole Darnley joined Ethos in January 2022 as an Analytics Lead. When Nicole isn’t telling stories with data at Ethos, she enjoys sewing and baking with her two-year-old daughter. Interested in joining Nicole’s team? Learn more about our career opportunities here.