Decoding Data: A Glimpse into my Life as a Lead Data Analyst at Inato
Hey, I’m Alexandre and I’m a lead data analyst at Inato.
The lead role is a bit of a mix between an individual contributor role and a managerial role and I like it! I usually split my time between:
- supporting the team in being happy, successful, and efficient while driving value to the company
- running end-to-end data projects and improving my data analyst skills
Here is an example of a typical day for me at Inato as of June, 23.
9:15 AM: Start the day
I arrive at the coworking space. I’m working 100% remotely from Annecy and I joined a coworking space called La Cordée. I’ve just moved in so it’s a great opportunity to make new friends and have company during the day. Plus it’s paid by Inato as part of the remote life budget granted to all employees working remotely. I grab a coffee, have a quick chat, and launch the day.
9:15–9:45AM: Inbound
Usually, I start the day by answering messages on Slack, Notion, or emails. I like having a focus time for inbounds at specific times of the day otherwise it would be too much of a distraction. I can use that time to adjust my plans for the day if other priorities arise and stay focused for the rest of the morning. I’ll take another look at my inbox at the beginning of the afternoon. If you want to hear more about best practices to manage your time, read 3 tips to take back control of your time from our CTO, Bastien Duret.
9:45–10AM: Asynchronous daily stand up
All the data team and I share a summary of what was done and what’s coming on the team’s Slack channel. It’s a good opportunity to highlight learnings, ask for help, and prevent duplicating work. Performing this task asynchronously reduces constraints by eliminating the need for a daily meeting at the beginning of each day. It works well now that we are three, but it might change as the team grows.
10-10:45AM: Take a step back and self-reflect
Part of the lead role is to help the team continuously improve. This often requires taking a step back. We recently decided to remove the planning part during our bi-weekly meeting but did not find a replacement for it, so I’ll suggest the team share their big goals for the week asynchronously every Monday. Note that everyone else in the team often pushes and implements improvements. It’s just that it’s part of my role to do it frequently. During that time, I’ll also prepare the material for our team bi-weekly retro.
10:45–11:30AM: 1–1
It’s a discussion time between me and a team member. It’s the time for them to share openly how confident they are to be successful. My role as a team lead is to listen and offer support. It’s also a time for mutual feedback. I like this moment because it’s also an opportunity for me to improve. Today, my teammate shared that I should reference the work I do in my daily retros using links to make it more accessible. I agree, we log it, I’m now committed to improving.
11:30AM–12:30PM : Team bi-weekly retro
We regroup as a team and take a step back after two weeks of data project delivery. My role as a team lead is only to facilitate the meeting, take notes, and prepare the material so that the team can only focus on the good stuff: share successes and suggest improvement opportunities. At the end of the meeting, I consolidate action items and share them on our Slack channel.
12:30–13:30PM : Lunchtime
One of the good things about living in Annecy is the beautiful landscape. Today I’ll grab a sandwich and will go have lunch near the lake in front of the mountains. I read a chapter of my book… It feels like holidays.
1:30–2PM: Inbound
2–2:30PM: Synchronous meeting with a stakeholder, for a reporting automation project
As a lead, I also contribute to delivering data projects. This one is about reporting automation for our partnerships with pharma laboratories. It’s the time to align expectations with the project’s stakeholders and challenge the need during a Zoom call. One concern I have raised is that we currently have too many figures in the report which makes it hard to digest. I suggest we set targets for each partnership metric to make the report more insightful by highlighting over/underperformance. Targets need to be defined on the stakeholder’s side so in the meantime I can start working on the data modeling part which I plan for another day.
2:30–6PM: Delivery time, for a database reconciliation project
This is the hands-on time where I actually play with data. Today I had planned to explore the reconciliation of two of our databases using fuzzy matching. I start by documenting my delivery plan on Notion to make it clear for me (and the rest of the company) what I intend to do and why I’m doing it. It’ll be useful in a few months if we want to reuse this work. I usually use Excalidraw to make it more visual and easier to understand. I read about the different types of fuzzy matching, pick the one that makes the most sense and start scripting. I use a Google Colaboratory notebook to fetch the data and apply fuzzy matching to reconcile my database. I’m pretty happy with the results so I log my progress and ping another team member to get feedback on the methodology and results. Tomorrow, I will focus on leveraging the results in our data pipeline using dbt.
6-6:30PM: Wrap up the day
I wrap up my current work by making sure the notion card for my data task is clean and clear. I have a look at my inbounds and check my calendar for the next day: only one Zoom meeting tomorrow. How good it is to be in a remote-first company that promotes asynchronicity!
6:30PM: Time to close the computer
It’s Tuesday night which means board games night at the coworking space !
Hope you enjoyed this day in my life. If you did, check out the day in the life of our Product Data Analyst or our Data Analyst.
Not all days are exactly like this, but this is a pretty good depiction of the average day.
If you too would like to know what it’s like to work for Inato’s data team, we’re hiring! Have a look at Inato’s career page.
