Analytics Professionals Don't Fit In with Tech
That's why you feel suck.
When people think of tech, they don't think of analytics.
They think of engineers, product managers, data scientists, and AI.
Analytics professionals don't fit in.
So we feel stuck in our careers.
We aren't in love with the tech as much as the engineers, we don't have the statistical depth of the data scientists, and we don't own business processes like our stakeholders.
Where do we fit in? What's the point of being in analytics?
The point is to be at the intersection point of the tech and the business.
Here's how we do it.
Choose a path: management or technical IC
The first step to get unstuck is to choose between the management or IC path.
The skills you build and the strategies you implement are different if you are responsible for leading people vs being responsible for implementing a technical solution. Knowing how you fit into the organization will help you understand how to integrate with other teams. Managers will talk more about people and strategy, ICs will talk more about technical solutions.
Either way, you're collaborating with other people.
Build strong relationships with other groups
Regardless of the path (management or IC), you need strong relationships with the other groups in tech:
Software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and business stakeholders.
Identify the key players, set up 1:1 meetings, learn about their problems, and help solve those problems. Don't allow yourself to fall into a silo where you do your own work without collaborating with others in different parts of the business. This is the surest way to remain stuck.
Build important relationships, then leverage them.
Leverage your relationships to enhance your impact
Once you've built leadership capital with other groups, it's time to cash in.
Get the engineers to build the bullet-proof pipeline you need.
Get the the data scientists to build the predictive model that will support the business.
Get the stakeholders to reveal their biggest problems so you can make the biggest impact.
Since you have relationships in every part of the business, you can pick and choose who can help you accomplish your goals.
Sometimes you need deeper technical expertise to bring an idea to life, engineers are there for that. Sometimes you need business sponsorship for your process change, stakeholders can help you. Sometimes a predictive model will solve a nagging business problem, the data scientists are in your back pocket.
Analytics professionals can talk the talk: the tech talk and the business talk.
We make an impact by having a baseline of technical skill, the ability to work with different groups, and speaking the right language to get problems solved.
Sure, analytics professionals don't fit in.
But we make everyone else fit together.