I enjoy playing tennis in my free time but I’m nowhere near the level of a professional tennis player. When I observe tennis pros in action, I can see how different they are from me in experience, skill, and attitude.
First and foremost, the pros don’t make as many mistakes when they play. They know how to handle high-pressure situations, and they can move faster and more smoothly. They’ve also been playing longer and have more experience, and so have learned a great deal from their past mistakes. In addition, because of their high level of skill, they have a great impact on the sport as a whole.
Someone who’s still trying things out and learning from their mistakes may eventually become a pro, but it’s a long journey to get there. And that’s true no matter the discipline—whether it’s tennis, which I do for fun, or data, which I do as a career.
What sets a data pro apart?
I was recently asked what it takes to become a data pro. The fact that I was asked this question made me realize I must be considered one, but I had to stop and think about what that means. I certainly have the experience to be a data pro as I’ve been working in technology for over 25 years now, chiefly in the data space. I’ve had a lot of time to learn from my mistakes. But what is the value of years of experience in technology anyway, especially since new technologies are constantly emerging?
The truth is, most technologies are not groundbreaking innovations—they’re usually incremental improvements on existing tech. For example, Oracle and SQL Server were great on-premises databases. Later Snowflake came along with something similar but in the cloud instead. Certainly, part of being a data pro is being knowledgeable about this evolution and having experience with previous technologies.
But in my opinion an important part of being a data pro is not just having an understanding of the technology, but a deep understanding of the business as well. Data pros don’t operate in IT vacuums—they understand the business problems that the larger organization is grappling with, and how technology can best be leveraged to solve those problems. This is where they can rely on their experience and say, “This seems like a good solution for this problem I have seen before.”
Data pros over the years
In much the same way technology has evolved over the years, so too have technology jobs. In the early days, most businesses just had an information technology (IT) team or even an individual IT person. The common image was of the employee who helped manage the technical equipment—they set up desktop and laptop computers, maintained the servers, installed software.
As both systems and organizations grew in complexity, different IT roles emerged. Database administrators (DBAs) maintained the databases and ensured they were running at optimal performance; database developers were essentially coders; data modelers helped model the data before development. After this, analytics systems began to emerge, and we started to see roles such as data warehouse architects, ETL programmers, and business intelligence (BI) developers.
That led to the modern landscape in which we see the emergence of data engineers, AI/ML engineers, inference engineers, prompt engineers … the list goes on and is constantly changing. That’s because as the data space continues to grow in scope and complexity, you need a dedicated role for each area of it. In most organizations, all of these jobs are still considered part of the IT department, which really is just a business term CTOs use when trying to put all technical roles into one bucket.
The rise of data and the CDO
As the data space has grown, so too has the value of data to nearly every organization. Data used to just be a resource to run a business, and it wasn’t always used strategically. It was used to answer questions like How many of each product did we sell last month? How much revenue are we expecting in the next quarter?
Over time, the proliferation of data and the new levels of insight it offered led organizations to rely more heavily on their data to strategize their business decisions. More nuanced questions were possible, such as Based on sales trends we’ve seen over the past years, how many products do we anticipate selling in the next few months? How can we leverage existing customer data to reach more buyers, and in which channels?
Organizations today understand the immense value of data, and are eager to do more with it. A big reason for this was the emergence of BI tools, which put data directly into the hands of nontechnical people across the larger organization, a trend often referred to in business as “data democratization.” Once these teams saw the levels of insight they could get from data, they wanted more of it.
Today, data pros are more important than ever. It may seem like a paradox that data pros have risen in importance in an era when nontechnical users have more and more tools to work with data directly, but as the value and appeal of data has grown (not to mention the complexity), so too has the need for more data professionals to help manage it all.
This has even led to the emergence of an executive position fully dedicated to data: the Chief Data Officer (CDO), now a common role in many companies. Business leaders realized they needed someone who understood all the data across the organization, and who would be responsible for it from a strategic standpoint. Because it’s not just visualization tools—there are also master data management (MDM) tools, data quality tools, and security tools, and everything that goes into bringing all that data together.
6 habits of true data pros
You don’t need to be an executive to be a data pro, however. Regardless of your title, skills, or scope of responsibilities, you could be working in any of these technical roles and be considered a data pro. That’s because a data pro is someone with six essential career habits that set them apart.
If you want to develop into a data pro yourself—or become even more of a data pro than you already are—start cultivating these powerful habits in your own career:
1. A data pro is active in the data community
Data pros stay engaged with the industry and the data community around them. They regularly attend conferences to network with their peers and stay abreast of emerging trends in the world of data. They share solutions and knowledge, whether via online forums, by writing articles or books, appearing on conference panels, or guest hosting podcasts. Pros know how to connect with peers and expand their influence—not just for career advancement but also to teach and mentor others.
2. A data pro is genuinely curious and eager to learn new things
People are pros because they’ve invested a lot of time in understanding the space and learning from others. As much as a pro is eager to share their knowledge, they’re also eager to learn from those around them. They pay attention to how other people tackle challenges in their work. They constantly read books and articles to learn how other companies or data teams solve their problems. They’re eager to take on new duties or responsibilities in their own job in order to push themselves to learn and grow.
3. A data pro is adaptable and open to new ideas
Just because you think you know the solution to a problem doesn’t always mean it’s the best one. Consider AI—when it first emerged, many people believed it would be the answer to everything, but now we’re seeing that’s not necessarily the case. A real data pro keeps an open mind when approaching a problem or a challenge, and is willing to embrace new ways of thinking. While they understand what usually works and what doesn’t, they’re quick to adjust and adapt to new technologies or new approaches.
4. A data pro adds significant value to their organization
A lot of people are good at talking about things but not actually doing them, or else they focus too much on a narrow area of their job which might seem important to them, but ignores the bigger picture. A data pro is someone whose work and contributions make a measurable difference to their team and the larger organization. For example, you could be an incredibly effective coder but if that’s all you’re focused on, you’re not bringing the business into the equation—this is essential to be considered a true data pro.
5. A data pro is an effective communicator and collaborator
One sign of a true data pro is someone who serves as a bridge between the technical teams and the business teams. The ability to clearly communicate and connect with people is important. There may be others who are more technical, but if they fail to communicate effectively with the nontechnical teams, they’re not having much of a positive impact on the larger business. This goes beyond just an ability to communicate—you must also be able to collaborate and work well with other teams to solve the big challenges.
6. A data pro knows how to choose the best tool for the problem at hand
Your job is not to be good at one tool, it’s to solve the business problems in front of you. A data pro knows how to assess which tool is best for solving the present problem, and saves their team time and stress by making those informed decisions. A data pro’s technical skills help them to understand and leverage the best technology, while their business skills enable them to use those tools to deliver value to the organization.
The age of the data pro
It’s a very interesting—I would even say exciting—time to be a data pro in our industry. There’s so much more awareness of how critical data is to an organization’s success, and the different technologies have come a long way. This means that traditional problems are now easier to solve. For example, 10 years ago it would have taken a highly skilled person at least two weeks to set up an Oracle database server. Today, you can simply right-click and create an entire database.
But while modern tools make tasks easier, the problems that data pros are tasked with today have grown continuously alongside the volume of the data itself, which is growing exponentially. The goalpost keeps moving, and that means data pros need to keep learning and growing. Who knows? Maybe you’re gaining the skills and experience you will need to step into one of those jobs of the future that don’t even exist yet.
Ready to data like a pro?
Coalesce is the secret weapon savvy data pros use to transform data and their data strategy. To see Coalesce in action, take an interactive tour or contact us to request a demo.
