Cresting the Learning Curve, a Personal Solstice
On my quest to become a self-sufficient analyst I first had to overcome the learning curve of several technologies AND change the way that I think about problems. This dual task was initially trying at times and I’m not going to pretend that it was a cake walk. I would also like to make it clear that the right side of my progression chart looks asymptotic; there isn’t a prize or even an ‘end’ to my “becoming a full on analyst”. Once our contract comes to an end and I begin being pulled towards another direction there will of course be a whole new “second series” of issues to size up.
Why am I doing this series?
Switching jobs, changing the way you think, developing a new skill in a stressful situation…metamorphosis is required and it’s freaking hard! It can be depressing for anyone who is graduating without a job prospect and then having the revelation that you’ve already lost that initial all important first job search. Or the graduate who happily accepts employment and then realizes that their promotion ceiling is too low. The goal of this series is to paint an honest picture of my experiences. My hiccups, my frustrations, my successes, everything that I went through.
The reality is that I was washing dishes on a river boat a few years ago, and now, for once, I have financial security. I know the struggle and I know it sucks. Follow my series for a how to guide of what I did, the company where I gained stability, skills and knowledge and how my environment kept me moving forward.
“Go to school and get a good job” was the biggest lie ever told to me.
Corsairs Institute offered me the environment and training I needed to gain real life skills. Plain and simple.
What is working as a JR. Analyst really like?
My brother recently had the opportunity to see me work from home at the end of a Friday. I asked him to describe back to me what he thought that I was doing. He said “You’re taking huge amounts of raw data, transforming it for yourself to work on then doing a final transformation where you prepare it for distribution.” And I think that sums up the last stage nicely! As you may have read from the PREVIOUS post that the gathering of the raw data isn’t as easy as I suggested above and that I actually had to go through several detailed time consuming series of audits to get ‘Raw’ data that was usable.
George and I chat on the phone, I fill him in on where I am, what I’ve done and where I plan on going from here. He then either reinforces what I said or helps re-direct me away from some unforeseen future blunder. This iterative process continues on with varying frequency until the task is done. At this point I can find my way through some problems but if it’s outside the scope of what I can do, well, George and I chat a lot in those circumstances. It is an “always learning mode”. He’s on-site once or twice a week where we usually take strides forward and I try to incorporate and work through what we did that day for the next several days.
This type of assignment based, monitored and unstructured learning took some getting used to but in a few short weeks “The Apotheosis of SQL Zack!” began to emerge.
I went from saying: “Man, I wish we could tag these better.”
To: “While you’re on vacation I’ll make a data silo of level-two marketing information.”
There you have it. In a way I am an analyst. If I walked away from Corsair’s now I would be a much more marketable employee than before I started. Why don’t I leave now then? Because I believe I have a lot more growth in-front of me and Corsair’s remains the best choice to achieve my own professional, and personal, potential.
