Question for my fellow data analysts/scientists/etc.

Anonymous

August 9,2022 at 3:07PM UTC

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Question for my fellow data analysts/scientists/etc.

I'm in my second year as a BI engineer at a popular global manufacturer that hired me mid-MBA. Prior to this role I had a 6 month internship with another global auto manufacturer and worked in several small start-ups (5 year history).

I'm curious for others working similar positions if your company's data structure/quality is as dismal as mine? Half the battle I face with my role is incredibly poor data quality, a sluggish momentum towards creating an effective data lake, and in order to put together the KPIs/visuals that benefit the business my team have to make ad hoc rogue changes to the data for it to be effective.

I certainly anticipate data manipulation/massaging as part of the role. I just wonder if very poor data quality is the norm for others?

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AnonymousAugust 9,2022 at 3:39PM UTC
Yes- poor data quality is pretty common. See if you can find a champion within the org - could be an ops manager, finance or IT. Someone else who really wants the data and could have the influence to help make it happen.
Barb HansenAugust 9,2022 at 3:50PM UTC
I'm not a data scientist but data falls under my scope of work, and data scientists report into me.
My experience is "it's more common place to have horrible data (structures, reporting policies, management and security of, and transparency) than not"
There is a reason that there is a multiple tens of billions of dollar industry built to help companies fix their data problems.
This is especially true for data security - most companies are absolutely horrible at data security.
Anne KrookAugust 9,2022 at 5:40PM UTC
It depends on when your company realized that data quality matters; whether they grew organically and scaled up recently; whether they were founded a long time ago; and whether they have acquired companies with different / terrible data structures and data. What you describe is not atypical, and what you need is a senior champion to make clean data and disciplined changes a priority. Do you have one of those?
AnonymousAugust 9,2022 at 6:07PM UTC
Depends on the industry and the end-use, I find. Insurance has a great record for data quality....for actuaries. Not so much for tracking efficiency of internal processes/KPIs.