Some Takeaways from My First Coffee Chat

I just try to put some notes here, and I don’t expect many views. I learn a lot from Phil and he really gave me a glimpse toward the real business world. Wanna to put down as much as I memorize, hoping these notes can be a reminder for my future career.

1. I think GAP is quite a suitable word and topic for the coffee chat this time. It does take much more time to clean the data, which cast a big difference from those cleaner data set in class. And the dirty data originates from the data generation process, which is another way to think about it. Maybe go upstream to the data engineer and warehouse aspects.
2. GAP between a business analyst and the real world employees in the companies is really really huge. Polishing the communication skills, persuasion skills and story-telling abilities is way more important than I thought before. I got to practice that harder and train myself in a more serious manner. // Practice, pitch to class mates and use metaphors are some of the good ways. // Always deliver the value and recommendation, trying to use number to depict expected performance.
3. Consultants are rarely becoming the interior data scientist within the client companies. Companies won’t let consultants conduct ds/ba project, because of the domain boundaries and some privacy issues. That is the main reason consultant usually turns to data engineering and data deployment, which is some kind of huge market I never noticed.
4. Companies are reluctant to change. And the data digitization as well as some transformation are gradually adopted by companies now, but in different regions the phases are different. Bay area, west coast, NY might be faster, but the tide of data is just coming to the Midwest. And therefore it is so important to polish the communication skills, for persuading organizations to adopt new technologies is very very difficult.
5. Two roads for career as a BA professional. a) Data engineer, who go more upstream of the process of data generation. b) Data scientist, whose career scope grows bigger with the team he or she leads and the product he or she is in charge of.
6. Always know how to learn, it is not about the technical skills one has, but the willingness to learn that matters for every and each fresh analyst in the workplace.
7. Know clearly about your goal is essential. You might go stray, but always put that final destination in minds, learn, network and approach, you will finally get there.
8. If I want to be a good and exceptional product manager, I have to be the very top of that product who knowing the market and the product landscape more than anyone else.
9. Advice for freelancer consultant, always manage time and the expectation for your clients.
10. Keep doing what I am doing now: writing, doing projects and knowing myself.