Random thoughts about my career path

I recently received so many emails and messages, which makes me start to consider the difference between IT data analysts and business analysts.

After Google these two job descriptions, I don't consider myself a business analyst. Instead, I'm an IT data analyst on the path to become a data scientist.

First, my daily routine at work contains lots of programming processes. When I was pursuing my Master's degree in Information Technology, my school mainly focused on Java. But after I came to the San Franciso Bay area, I realized that Python is one of the most popular languages in Silicon Valley. So I started to learn Python by myself. Every day, after work from Tesla (2018-2019), I would go back home to practice programming in Python for around 2 hours per day. Right now, at my current job, data cleansing is a big part of my daily routine. So I use Python(Pycharm/Jupyter) to create codes concentrating specifically on the data cleaning requirements from my current company. Whenever I receive the files which need to be cleaned, I need to run those codes and adjust different lines based on the new requirements.

Second, I started building the data warehouse using Google Cloud Storage(GCS) and Google Cloud Platform(GCP). The majority of my colleges are extremely professional in the Oracle database. So it becomes my main focus to build the data warehouse. GCS and GCP are brand new to me too. So I keep learning all the new processes, just like when I was learning how to program in Python. After several months, the data warehouse has been built, of course with my colleges' support too, and the data will keep growing.

Third, I started to get professional training in Power BI in March this year. Whenever people talk about Power BI, you will think about all the beautiful charts to improve, execute, and effectively communicate significant analyses that identify meaningful trends and opportunities across the business. I agree this is part of my Power BI training and future tasks. But what I'm focusing on is how to automatically transfer the database to Power BI using parameters or even more complex functions through Power BI. This is different from what I can only create those beautiful charts.

Now, I understand clearly my career path is to become a professional data scientist.