Behzad Sajed Khosrowshahi

You need technical skills to get a data job, but you need business skills to keep one... Data people generally know they need to learn those technical skills themselves. But often don't have the same expectations for their business skills. In my experience, passively learning business skills will not get you where you need quick enough. I've spent A LOT of time and money learning all kinds of different business skills, and it's made a huge difference in my career. Senior and mid-level data folks especially, can move up based on their data skills, then really struggle because they didn't sufficiently develop on the business side as they moved up. This is one of the main reasons I launched a professional development program. Instead of just creating content and sending it into the void, I thought it would be great to also spend some time helping people actually implement the lessons in their jobs. If you're a data person who wants to be more impactful at your job with all the benefits that come along with that, check out Top Data People. And regardless of HOW you learn, developing your business skills will have a massive ROI for your data career.

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SQL Date/time functions throw me off from time to time. I had to resort to drawing it all out on a board placed on my desk so everytime I look that way my brain registers it subconsciously too. Anyway, there’s a simple breakdown below to extract dates and return current date/time with MYSQL, Postgre and SQL server 1. Date_trunc [MySQL, Postgre] = Datepart (Microsoft SQL server) : For date/time extractions 2. Now() [MySQL, Postgre] = Getdate ()[Microsoft SQL Server] : Return current timestamp What SQL funtions and commands throw you off everyone you think you’ve hacked them? #SQL #datanalysis #datafam

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Hi #datafam, Branden addressed a common pain point that many Tableau developers encounter at some point in their early journey. I personally think he nailed the explanation of Tableau’s behavior in handling the “Aggregate and Non-Aggregate” error. I especially appreciated his comparison to Excel, which made it even easier to understand for folks with Excel background. It's definitely worth reading. Note: Just make sure you know the order of operations in Tableau, especially if you decide to take Fixed LOD route. Because Fixed LOD takes precedence before other filters, such as dimension, measure, table calculation, are applied to data unless they are in context filter. Just side note.

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Getting a full list of requirements from a stakeholder about their request is hard, here are 5 questions I ask as a data analyst to get as much info as possible: 1. What is the business question you are trying to answer? 2. What are you hoping to achieve or understand with this request? 3. What would the totally completed request look like? 4. Are there any constraints or limitations I should be aware of? 5. So this is what I heard you say … is that right? The first two are very similar questions said in different ways to understand the big picture of what the stakeholder wants. Then you can follow up with “tell me more about pain point X?” to get the full picture. #3 is all about understanding what your stakeholders mental picture of success looks like for the request. If you can understand it and provide it, you will have very happy stakeholders! #4 is about managing scope creep or the tendency for a project or request to change and grow into something unattainable considering the constraints. Don’t overburden yourself, keep the request lean and achievable! #5 this question can be used after the stakeholder has answered any question. Use it to validate that you truly understand what they said. Whats your favorite question to ask when gathering requirements? #dataanalytics #requests #success 

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