Christian Wanser

Data Wizard & Mentor | Helping data nerds launch & advance their data careers | Sr. Data Analyst | MS Analytics

(All of my content is my personal views and opinions) 

Thanks for checking out my page! I am a data professional with years of experience in data analysis, data visualization, machine learning, dashboarding, and other data requirements.

I am an engineer turned data expert with extensive experience providing insights through data. I discovered my passion for data while completing my B.S. in Chemical Engineering and I went on to receive my M.S. in Data Science & Analytics!

I am a strong critical thinker, with robust technical skills that are healthily balanced with intuition and an innate ability to communicate data. I live to see the lightbulb moment when I’m discussing topics with people!

How can we help each other?

Throughout my schooling and professional career, I have always enjoyed helping my peers and coworkers. With LinkedIn and Medium, I'm casting a wider net! Reach out, connect, follow, or just pass through. Whatever floats your boat and best of luck on your journey!

Sr. Data Analyst

Data Analyst | Tableau Consultant | Author of How to Become a Data Analyst

If you're reading this you probably either:
1. Want a job in data. 
2. Want a friend in data.
3. Need a data analyst. 

If you're #1, I was you, just one year ago! I've shared how I went from beginner to experienced data professional since the beginning.

Its my goal to create the kind of content a younger version of me would have wanted to consume!

#2, thanks for being here! Feel free to give me a wave. Lets be social!

#3's, hello 👋. If you haven't yet, check out my portfolio site, or my Annie's Analytics company page on here where I offer consulting services.

Heres my story. 

In February of 2022, I decided to learn data analytics for fun. I created a Tik Tok account, and started documenting my journey to learn this new hobby (@anniesanalytics). 

Very soon, I realized that every day I was waking up and just wanting to write SQL, build visualizations, learn Python.... Work with data! So, I decided that once I finished graduate school (in Healthcare) in July, I was going to become a data analyst. 

Along the way, I have shared here and on Tik Tok everything I can about what it's like to learn data analytics, and how you can do it for free or at least very cheaply. I've shared about the ups and downs of job searching. I've even shared about how I have built a portfolio, and set myself up as a real analyst. 

Now I also do YouTube videos, especially my series where I invite other data analysts to have a coffee chat with me, but we live stream it! We talk about our journeys into data and what our jobs look like now. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3wIL0Blsv2vf8aAjTQXo017YntAXqrZc


Want to see my Portfolio as it was when I got my first job in analytics? I left it here in exactly the same state that it was when I got my job in July of 2022 to serve as an example to you, if you are a job seeker now! https://anniesanalytics.wixsite.com/annie-nelson/projects-6 

Want to see my current portfolio I am using now that I have gained some more skills? https://anniesanalytics.carrd.co/

Or the LinkedIn group here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12635532

Discord here! https://discord.com/invite/m9vZKtReFM

Annie Nelson

Why have a big profile if you can't use it for fun sometimes? Eveyrbody, Meet Harper! 

Harper is a goofy, loving, playful, and beautiful 1yr 7mo old girl and she is available for adoption with the San Diego Humane Society! (pet ID #977211) 

We are fostering her and spend a lot of our day going "look at Harper!!!!" because she's constantly doing something adorable. 

She's so easy to love. I hope she finds her forever home soon 🫶

If anyone's interested in learning more, you can find her profile by searching the adoptable pets list on the SDHS website. She's a gem!

I made a rookie error the other day. I asked AI to help me with some code that generally it is pretty well suited to handle.

But it got it wrong the first time. And rather than resetting the conversation, I tried to reason with it to change it's approach.

The code was really just dealing with sequential logic that at the time of writing I felt too lazy to do myself.

I spent over an hour going back and forth with it when I could hhlave probably just done it from scratch in 15 mins.

Lesson learned: once AI makes a decision, it sticks to it. If it's way off base with its first answer, stop. Reset. Start fresh.

Have we hit and are passing a golden 'easy' age for being a data analyst?

In the past, getting access to data was messier and required a higher technical skill set.

Today, a combination of advances in technology and a well saturated market (aka, having coworkers who handle the data /analytics engineering) means that there are many people with data analyst titles who get by exclusively building dashboards or even only using Excel.

But technology is still progressing. And it's taking away the edge that these people have enjoyed by making it easier for * everyone * to do those things. 

Although I think the "AI is going to take your job" argument is lazy and overblown, it likely is true that standing out from the competition is going to take more than the ability to build a sleek dashboard or write a complicated formula.

Not to mention, the way people access and use data is continuing to change. Why rely on a dashboard to load that takes 40 seconds and has a limited number of cuts when you could ask [AI tool] instead? 

Again, I think there is still a lot of value to the data analyst role and am not saying AI is replacing it, but I am saying I think that the role is changing and it seems that all of the "easiest" parts are the first to go.

Luckily for me, the parts of my job that I enjoy the most are the parts that are not going to be automated away any time soon 🤠

How many interviews do YOU think are necessary to fill a data analyst role? (or similar)

As everyone knows, tech companies put people through 5,6,7,8 rounds - some of which take hours!!

Someone mentioned to me the other day that while the current market is really tough, it's also hot. Some companies are moving candidates through their pipelines quickly.

In my opinion, this puts the companies with a long and arduous process at a competitive disadvantage.

But competition aside - how many do you actually NEED?

I've never hired someone, and can empathize with the stress (especially for less experienced hiring managers) that you'll make a bad choice. I've seen the impact that can have on teams, and I know it can be hard to get rid of someone.

But as a candidate.... There's nothing new you're getting out of me after a hiring manager interview, technical, and exec/stakeholder interview.

And the technical doesn't need to be some long rocket science experiment. A good interviewer (which I have experienced more than once) knows how to ask questions that help them understand if you actually understand the concepts, and how you approach problem solving.

I'd be really curious to see if you could put together a study correlating interview length & candidate success. At what point do you hit "diminishing returns" territory?

If we were ready for AI to take over all of our work then we also would have already nailed self - serve analytics.

In order to be ready for true self serve analytics we typically need a huge budget for a great, large team, or a business that moves slowly and has time to pay down all tech debt.

In order to pay down tech debt we need the people making the reports to change their behavior to stop creating so much in the first place.

Welcome to the real world.

We talk about self serve analytics and we dream about zero technical debt. But then we get back to work in the messy middle, doing our best and moving as fast as we can.

The view out of the train window on my commute to a coworking spot. My life is so hard! 😉

Petition to replace the sycophantic AI slop comments with the good, old fashioned "Interested".

The only people who use that anymore are creators who remember when their posts/feeds were flooded with a wall of "Interested" 😕

You don't know how good you have it until it's gone!

Everyone, meet Terk! He is available for adoption with the San Diego Humane Society and just looking for a soft place to spend his Golden years 💛

Terk is 16lbs, and enjoys your company and having a good sniff while out on a walk. We normally foster larger dogs, but our last sweetie was a handful so we asked for a mellow, easy dog to balance it out! 

As you can tell Terk is an old man, so he walks with a bit of a wide gait but if you look closely you can still see a little tail wiggle as he sets off on walks.

So far it seems like he is fairly indifferent to other dogs (not reactive!) and will sometimes solicit attention from passerbys out on walks.

He prefers to hang out at our side while we work from home, and enjoys a good head scratch every now and then.

If you know someone in SoCal looking for a mellow companion who they can spoil with love during their golden years, Terk might be your guy!

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Christian Wanser

Annie Nelson

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Annie Nelson's LinkedIn Performance

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