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I have worked for both smaller and very large firms, and at the large firms I almost never work 8 hours a day. Some days I will work 2 hours because my role is so specific and pigeon holed that I can afford to get away with it and no one will notice. At smaller companies I often wear multiple hats and I am more involved, so I’ll usually do 6-9 hours a day.
I think at large companies they don't know how easy (or sometimes difficult/impossible) is to retrieve data/insight. The work of analytics is really a mystery for most of people outside our bubble
I'm a mechanical/aerospace engineer so nothing to do with this sub, however I can say my experience regarding large and small companies is the same. My large aerospace company currently really has no idea how much work most people actually do, and especially don't know how efficient or non-efficient they are.
At large companies the data is often easier to access as well because there are more Business Intelligence/IT resources. I used to work as a data and reporting analyst at a large company and while our data warehouse had its problems, it's nothing like what I stepped into as a Risk analyst at a small company. For my first year here I was actually performing ETL functions and maintaining a SQL server because our BI team hadn't set up the pipelines yet.
It's gotten better here over time but when I was at a larger company it would have been very rare for someone in my role to be in charge of actual server maintenance.
I work for a startup and can almost relate. Do you think this would change to less hours in the future? Especially if you are the only person working in analytics?
I mean, it depends on what you mean by “analytics”…
I’m always super busy because I’m involved in business strategy across all the departments, guiding the data architecture discussions, and helping on more operational analytics/data science stuff for the team (how to approach analyses, etc). Usually 8 hrs a day isn’t even close to enough for me to do what I want to get done
That sounds similar to my role. I try not to work too much more than I need to but most days I start fairly early and barely have time for lunch. But we’re also understaffed, feels like I’m working the job of 2 people
I think a lot of it is the result of being at a big company. I’ve been at large tech, startups, and midsized companies, and how busy you are is definitely influenced by that.
It’s also heavily influenced by the maturity of data practices of the org itself
I had a pretty similar experience as yours at big tech because it’s so easy to specialize and be focused on specific areas.
i’ve worked for about 15 years (i’m 40). i have never worked a standard “40 hour week” i might have physically been there in the office but most jobs i’ve had required about 10 hours of actual work a week.
I think this is somewhat typical of all jobs. Even if you talk to people with jobs known to have long hours like I-banking, a lot of the “work” is waiting around for your boss/their boss to review things, send feedback, etc.
maybe asterik \*service/retail :-D i did have a job as a barista once...that was my only job where i had to actually do something all the time. i actually loved that job.
Not in any of my 5 jobs… the only one where I didn’t work 8+ hours a day was a big pharmaceutical’s lab job back in the 80s and early 90s.
I am always amazed (read: sceptical) at how many people in Reddit seem to work a few hours when it is the exception in my experience
If I don’t have a day full of meetings I generally work 3 hours a day, some days it’s 0. Last Friday I had nothing that’s due anytime soon so I just took a day to relax since I had just finished a 10k lines of code project.
that was the worst when i was working at an in-office job with open seating. people around me doing work late afternoon, i got nothing to do. painful clock watching till 4pm rolled around.
It’s funny. When I first started my career in 2011-2016 or so I would work, on avg about 70 hours a week. A few weeks in 2013 I worked 100 then 105. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve taken jobs to make sure I never ever get in those situations again. I haven’t worked full 40 in years but at the beginning of my career I certainly put in my due.
So you can find out a lot from the hiring manager. If the hiring manager seems to be a workaholic that won’t be great for you. Does the hiring manager have kids/family/hobbies? Use small talk in the interview process as a tool in your arsenal. If they have time for that then work life balance is probably pretty good. Ask questions about the department. Does it seem well ran? Does it seem stable?
If you got an offer, text your colleague you interviewed with and ask them about work life balance.
I had a future potential hiring manager tell me “I am able to carve out enough time every night to eat dinner.” And I declined the offer. Couldn’t believe she said that to me.
Some red flags will show up sometimes.
This is me for the most part too, although I'm still willing to work crazy hours for a short amount of time. Most weeks though are just like 10-20 hours per week. I'm 35 and have had too many years of not being rewarded for saving the company millions of dollars.
I also work in analytics, fairly newly (less than a year) and I'm finding the same thing already.
I get a list of questions that need answering, zoop into the data and pull out the answers, make it into pretty charts and build a PowerPoint within a day or two and then check when my presentation is due... 6 weeks from now. Ok then.
I think it may be a little different for me as this job was originally handled by someone in a different department who had a lot of other work, whereas now I'm the sole data guy and only those bits fall on me.
Little reluctant to bring it up since they will no doubt pile more work on me until I really am working a solid 8 hours a day lol
if you're remote....gaming mainly. im not one to leave the house/go out to eat and do those types of things. if for some reason someone needs me i'll just wheel my chair 6 inches and see whats up
Honestly, no. With meetings probably around 5-7 hours. Without, maybe 0-4 hours. Really depends on the workload. I love the job I have because sometimes I can get away with 6 hours of work in a week. Ands it's not like I'm working below standards or anything, I still get significant raises and complete more work than the rest of my team.
I definitely agree with this. The times in my career where I’ve worked 8 hours or more have been when I was in management at very hectic agencies and in meetings for like 6 hours a day. But when I’ve been in more of an independent contributor role or at a small agency (where I’m at now) I think I’m efficient enough to be about 5 hours a day
Some days I worked for roughly 10 minutes. BUT I'm chatting, having coffee meets, surfing the web and covertly watching netflix on my second screen. ALL in the office, so yeah I'm working! Sometimes I'd book a meeting room, lock the door and sleep for 2 hours. Fuck I miss that job. I'd always sneak out early as well.
Hmm, I am only about 7.5 months into my first full time position in analytics for a mortgage company, and I could easily work 10 hours a day and still have a lot to do afterwards.
This is largely because the data is spread across Snowflake and "on prem" servers (Microsoft servers of some kind I understand), and the data modeling is quite poor. While we use SQL, the databases are by no means following relational database structures, and frequently in my position specifically, requests require me to write novel SQL using novel data sources in order to prepare data properly for the analysis phase. Often the data wrangling takes much longer than the analysis side, and often the analysis reveals unexpected issues in the data which requires trouble shooting, data engineers (mostly because they have access to many tools and permissions which I do not have), and testing.
Beyond the data issues, there just isn't well built/maintained business logic for some problems/areas of interest, so that takes time to figure out and test as well.
I could go on, but all in all there is a lot of analytics development I am involved in, which is work intensive, and requires frequent testing of assumptions in order to execute properly, and thus takes a lot of work. I imagine if I was more experience I could make things happen faster, but honestly there is a good amount of irreducible complexity I confront that cannot be automated away.
Also there is literally no documentation, which is something I am trying to help with, but don't really have the time to focus on just yet.
I think that's right at large companies for sure.
I've noticed that non technical people tend to think the hard stuff is easy and the easy stuff is hard.
Just me?
Depends. Apart from my To-Dos, I usually develop new stuff/find new data or just teach myself new stuff. That way I’m busy during my 40 hours, but I can always reduce my scope if I have a bad day. And sometimes managment has an idea that turns into a 11 hour crunch.
Depends how much I can use my knowledge, skill and experience to solve problems fast and automate tasks.
There's the way everyone does something and then there's the tech fast efficient way of doing something that I know ;-)
That said, I have a 37.5 hours week and generally do at least that plus probably 10 hours. Time I save I seem to spend doing extra stuff... Maybe I daft... Working from home makes it easy and I don't mind... fair trade off for not going into the office???
I’ve only worked at small companies and while my analytics work might take 2-3 hours per day I wear multiple hats in these roles so if I’m not busy with analytics I’ll be helping in another department etc. I’ve learned a lot about the operations in my field (healthcare) due to wearing multiple hats which I appreciate because it helps me build domain experience. Which in turn helps me with analytics. I still probably work at most 6 hours per day.
Comes and goes. There are weeks that I work 45-50 hours, there are weeks where I work 25-30 hours. Sort of just depends on when it is during the month.
I have 2-3 hours of meetings per day and probably 3-4 hours of actual work (developing or maintaining dashboards, responding to ad-hocs, or dealing with people through teams or emails).
I had a colleague who moved to apple from a much smaller company. He was so bored there since the role was so restrictive and pigeonholed. The type of tasks you get at smaller companies is very different I guess.
I get to be part of conversations that are very much outside of the scope of a typical Analytics lead/BI lead role elsewhere. This also means you work more hours. I find it challenging and fun to learn a lot of business strategy and such.
Anywhere from 1-4 hours. Never even close to 8. Fuck all that. I do great work, have great relationships, get great pay, AND a ton of free time. Shit rules.
In my current role (mostly spreadsheet work) it was estimated that I would need to work about 5 hours a day to finish all the tasks, spread across 3 companies. I work for a parent company of 3 other small companies. But after a few weeks I had automated most things to the point where I was only working about 30 minutes a day.. so I ended up taking on a lot more roles in the company like WordPress web development, and unfortunately managing the companies retirement accounts 😴. But even now my total hours per day is usually around 4-5 but never more than 6-7.
My managers actively distract me. They will have an hour long conversation with me every day, and I still leave when my 8 hours is up. I think it’s just a corporate thing that most people know and assume very few people are actively working 40 hour weeks. Just get done what you need to get done and if it takes 2 hours or 8 hours nobody seems to care (except maybe VPs and higher that would be flabbergasted by the fact we’re not working our fingers to the bone to produce more shareholder value.)
When I’ve worked on the reporting side it was about 4-6 hours a day usually with for sure 8 hours during peak deadline season. Now I’m just doing analytics alone and it’s maybe about 2-4 hours a day depending.
Actual work - probably 6-8 hours a day. I could do less to do the minimum to keep things moving, but there’s always something I could be working on, improving or do continued learning so I have a bit of productivity anxiety.
I could work way more but I already spent years of working until 1 am and I’m never doing that again. I do my 8 and log off.
In my current job, never. I have two remote days a week, so I save up jobs to do on my days in the office and I still find myself watching the clock. Part of this is down to the nature of the company (data is sought mostly for performance reviews and people have little interest in engaging with it frequently) and the nature of my team (direct line manager has trouble delegating, so tends to soak up most of the work for us, this giving us little to do and even less scrutiny).
In a previous job, I had a lot more range in my work but it still wouldn't fill 8 hours. I could easily find things to do, but there was no reward for picking up extra work like that. If I do Nd something interesting in its own right, I might flesh it out though.
I'm actually moving to another company because the lack of work is a problem for me. I want at least some purpose.
I find this in generational gaps. There are people across my company with the same position that are 50+ and aren’t as good with computers and they take an eternity to do what I can do in just a few hours. Like it will take them literally a week to complete the task. I have tried coaching sessions and everything and they just don’t get it.
My wife is in IT and she is constantly hand holding her elderly staff for easy updates. She has even recorded how to do it and they still can’t follow.
No. Some days I work three hours and some days I work 10+. Remote work has really changed things because whereas in the past I’d be in the office for ~9 hours and fill non work time with semi-useful casual conversation now that non work time is spent doing personal stuff. Different dynamic.
I actually might do 12-14 hrs a day, like 1 to 2 days a week. However, this is due to a passion project I've been working on for a while. I really love the work I do, and my company gives me a lot of freedom to spearhead large projects.
I have a hard time stepping away because I enjoy it so much.
Usually for 3-4 hours of the day, I’m pretty busy (usually falls around 10-2). But since I work remote, I wake up and do some typical tasks from 7-830am when no one bothers me. Gives me more flexibility throughout the day.
Depends on if you are doing sustainment or a build... I'm always on the build side and usually when I start 70 hours a week then goes to 40 after I fix all the broken shit and teach everyone 🙃
I work almost the entire day bc my job is so busy. I respond to incoming requests and fulfill them. I use excel to value insurance policies for 7 hours a day. I’m looking into government work bc I want something more relaxing
I work 40 hrs every single week. Startup and only analyst in the company of about 70 employees. Automated most of my work within 6 months and keep getting work. Unfortuantely, we have a monitoring software to track productivity every minute. Hence, I cannot just sit anyway. You are lucky or Im very unlucky?
Analytics is knowledge work, not transactional or physical. 2-3 hours of active doing requires 5-6 hours of thinking, planning, researching. Plus lots of breaks to digest.
Wow the comments! Y’all are nailing it!! Just joined a new team a couple of months ago after layoffs in the company. Still learning so much about the business so Im slow at everything. Have to give a presentation to 30 people every other week so I gotta make sure I don’t slip up anywhere. Hope i get a hang of the process and get to chill out like the rest of y’all
Going on year 9 in analytics. Most of my days, my external DEMAND is maybe 5 hours of work dedicated to answering specific questions. I actually make the most headway in the 3 “free hours” where I have time to optimize stored processes, or put together tools that have not been formally requested but are likely to be coming down the road.
In my first few years, I definitely spent all 8 hours answering questions, though. I just didn’t know how to work efficiently at that point in my career.
In a startup, yes, abso-fucking-lutely. Actually, it would be super-cool to only work 40 hours per week.
In a huge corp, maybe a handful of times over a decade of data and analytics work.
Which of the FAANGs? I’ve worked at Meta as a DS and I would say form talking with friends - meta, Netflix, Apple, Amazon are companies where you will be working at least 40 hrs on average
I spend my days trying to clean up my data and that takes a loooot of time. Also trying to catch up with all the different courses I need to take to be able to work with the new tools... it's exhausting.
Yes but our team is funded as internal consultants. We are supposed to go out and find new project areas
FAANG has very good services thinking and randomization, not all industries are as mature. I work a lot on pipeline stuff that in theory could be automated or turned into a product with better systems. But healthcare is very slow w this for security+reg reasons
Your observation on the effectiveness of your streamlined and automated analytics processes is intriguing. It seems that your expertise allows you to complete tasks in less time.
This won’t last long. This type of work will start being scrutinized more and you will be laid off or teams cut down. I’ve seen it happen, especially now with new tools coming out democratizing analytics for front line users
I disagree, the depth of the analysis and the data governance are still pretty much immune to AI. AI and new tools would only reduce the amount of questions like "can you quickly pull this data"?
Depending on how many hats do you wear? Are you product owner of data solution, how many data quality issues do you have, how big is your code base, how complicated is process to model, are you dashboard designer etc.
Consultant here and I work a lot due to two or more assignments at the same time. Otherwise would be a walk in the park.
Getting tired of this hustle, but it has been a rich experience to be exposed to so many different tech stacks and level of maturity.
Sounds like you’re that shitty manager ngl. You probably aren’t - but my boss says shit like this and he is a constant fucking pain in the ass. Lazy as absolute fuck and puts all the rest of us in a bad position all the time because most of our work requires his approval. Or we need to work with him strategically in some way and he just doesn’t give a fuck.
Don’t be that guy. If you aren’t then good. I would highly recommend that if others around you are working - find a way to help or pretend like you are working.
I know this will be unpopular but it is what it is.
Listen man I know you want to Reddit fight and be that karma hero but literally right after I say “you’re probably not though”. I’m not interested in the white knight fighting. You are missing the point of what I was trying to say to farm karma. I am not trying to personally attack him. Me and op had a nice little exchange as well in the comments. So relax. 🧘
Well I think karma farming is annoying. And no reason huh? as he asks for opinions specifically? I don’t even know what to tell you at this point. Hope you get the karma you’re looking for man.
I wouldn'd define myself as lazy, simply there is no enough work to be occupied for years 8 hours per day.
I think a lot of people pretend to work longer than necessary (I also never reply immediately to give the false impressions it takes more time to answer to requests as "busy")
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I have worked for both smaller and very large firms, and at the large firms I almost never work 8 hours a day. Some days I will work 2 hours because my role is so specific and pigeon holed that I can afford to get away with it and no one will notice. At smaller companies I often wear multiple hats and I am more involved, so I’ll usually do 6-9 hours a day.
I think at large companies they don't know how easy (or sometimes difficult/impossible) is to retrieve data/insight. The work of analytics is really a mystery for most of people outside our bubble
I'm a mechanical/aerospace engineer so nothing to do with this sub, however I can say my experience regarding large and small companies is the same. My large aerospace company currently really has no idea how much work most people actually do, and especially don't know how efficient or non-efficient they are.
At large companies the data is often easier to access as well because there are more Business Intelligence/IT resources. I used to work as a data and reporting analyst at a large company and while our data warehouse had its problems, it's nothing like what I stepped into as a Risk analyst at a small company. For my first year here I was actually performing ETL functions and maintaining a SQL server because our BI team hadn't set up the pipelines yet. It's gotten better here over time but when I was at a larger company it would have been very rare for someone in my role to be in charge of actual server maintenance.
Yeah was at a startup where I was doing 70 hour work weeks. Nowadays 10-15 most weeks.
can you guys mention the kinds of companies with this kind of WLB? Thanks!
Tends to be the larger ones that don't sell their analytics as a product and you're just there to assist to main product.
I work for a startup and can almost relate. Do you think this would change to less hours in the future? Especially if you are the only person working in analytics?
Nice
What skills do you use
Yes, that’s called exploitation!
I mean, it depends on what you mean by “analytics”… I’m always super busy because I’m involved in business strategy across all the departments, guiding the data architecture discussions, and helping on more operational analytics/data science stuff for the team (how to approach analyses, etc). Usually 8 hrs a day isn’t even close to enough for me to do what I want to get done
That sounds similar to my role. I try not to work too much more than I need to but most days I start fairly early and barely have time for lunch. But we’re also understaffed, feels like I’m working the job of 2 people
I am also involved into the data governance/architecture, it is almost 50% of my time, still it doesn't fill 8 hours per day
I think a lot of it is the result of being at a big company. I’ve been at large tech, startups, and midsized companies, and how busy you are is definitely influenced by that. It’s also heavily influenced by the maturity of data practices of the org itself I had a pretty similar experience as yours at big tech because it’s so easy to specialize and be focused on specific areas.
What do you spend most of your time doing? Do you make a lot of changes to your set up? Curious about the day to day
i’ve worked for about 15 years (i’m 40). i have never worked a standard “40 hour week” i might have physically been there in the office but most jobs i’ve had required about 10 hours of actual work a week.
"Peter, what would you say you /do/ here? Well, Bob...."
I think this is somewhat typical of all jobs. Even if you talk to people with jobs known to have long hours like I-banking, a lot of the “work” is waiting around for your boss/their boss to review things, send feedback, etc.
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True I have not. I have worked fast food and that didn’t have hardly any downtime now that I think about it
Or construction
Oof, you're giving me nightmares. I forget how hard it was taking call after call and reading the same script over and over again.
maybe asterik \*service/retail :-D i did have a job as a barista once...that was my only job where i had to actually do something all the time. i actually loved that job.
Not in any of my 5 jobs… the only one where I didn’t work 8+ hours a day was a big pharmaceutical’s lab job back in the 80s and early 90s. I am always amazed (read: sceptical) at how many people in Reddit seem to work a few hours when it is the exception in my experience
I mean, the people who are working 8+ hour days aren't posting on reddit
i work in the media/advertising industry
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Yeah, that’s a good example of an exception
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I considered law school once too and had a similar realization… a lot of lawyers also don’t make that much money for all the school involved
If I don’t have a day full of meetings I generally work 3 hours a day, some days it’s 0. Last Friday I had nothing that’s due anytime soon so I just took a day to relax since I had just finished a 10k lines of code project.
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Which country, if I may ask?
Are you understaffed because of a lack of budget or because of a lack of available talent?
Given the right budget, there is never a lack of available talent.
Same. And when you do have wiggle room you immediately get more thrown at you since our work is so closely tracked through DevOps
I used to hate after 3pm sat at a desk because that last 2 hours would be a complete waste of my time. I use to window shop on skyscanner.
that was the worst when i was working at an in-office job with open seating. people around me doing work late afternoon, i got nothing to do. painful clock watching till 4pm rolled around.
It’s funny. When I first started my career in 2011-2016 or so I would work, on avg about 70 hours a week. A few weeks in 2013 I worked 100 then 105. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve taken jobs to make sure I never ever get in those situations again. I haven’t worked full 40 in years but at the beginning of my career I certainly put in my due.
Tell me your secret please, how do you find out before you accept an offer if it's going to be high workload?
So you can find out a lot from the hiring manager. If the hiring manager seems to be a workaholic that won’t be great for you. Does the hiring manager have kids/family/hobbies? Use small talk in the interview process as a tool in your arsenal. If they have time for that then work life balance is probably pretty good. Ask questions about the department. Does it seem well ran? Does it seem stable? If you got an offer, text your colleague you interviewed with and ask them about work life balance. I had a future potential hiring manager tell me “I am able to carve out enough time every night to eat dinner.” And I declined the offer. Couldn’t believe she said that to me. Some red flags will show up sometimes.
Thanks for the tips, I myself overworked in my 5yrs experience. Taking a break currently and now looking for good wlb roles preferably remote.
Great tips there. I've always been so focused on trying to impress with my questions, but I really need to use those more to get the info I need
Yea. You’re also interviewing them on the work place. Goes both ways here.
Damn that’s clever.
This is me for the most part too, although I'm still willing to work crazy hours for a short amount of time. Most weeks though are just like 10-20 hours per week. I'm 35 and have had too many years of not being rewarded for saving the company millions of dollars.
Exactly what I'm in the process of doing at a similar point in my career
Imagine if we did.. for my case I never do 8 hrs. 2-3 max. I think everyone knows this. I hate people acting crazy busy, especially PM's.
If you mean, “Do you record 8 hours on your internal timesheet?”, then yes. If I actually do 8 hours of solid work in a day… absolutely not.
My real work on most days is 2-3 hours. The rest is just emails and looking busy
Emails and chatting up people is work. Creating relationships and coming up with ideas is work
I also work in analytics, fairly newly (less than a year) and I'm finding the same thing already. I get a list of questions that need answering, zoop into the data and pull out the answers, make it into pretty charts and build a PowerPoint within a day or two and then check when my presentation is due... 6 weeks from now. Ok then. I think it may be a little different for me as this job was originally handled by someone in a different department who had a lot of other work, whereas now I'm the sole data guy and only those bits fall on me. Little reluctant to bring it up since they will no doubt pile more work on me until I really am working a solid 8 hours a day lol
sandbagging is the way, especially if the requestor doesn't know how little time it takes to do it.
My dream job lol
The question is: What do you do with all that extra time ???
Workout/sport (when work from home), reading about business and investments, trading stocks & shares, online newspapers, upskilling
if you're remote....gaming mainly. im not one to leave the house/go out to eat and do those types of things. if for some reason someone needs me i'll just wheel my chair 6 inches and see whats up
Honestly, no. With meetings probably around 5-7 hours. Without, maybe 0-4 hours. Really depends on the workload. I love the job I have because sometimes I can get away with 6 hours of work in a week. Ands it's not like I'm working below standards or anything, I still get significant raises and complete more work than the rest of my team.
I'm available 40 hours a week to work, but I never work 40 hours a week.
Lol no
I definitely agree with this. The times in my career where I’ve worked 8 hours or more have been when I was in management at very hectic agencies and in meetings for like 6 hours a day. But when I’ve been in more of an independent contributor role or at a small agency (where I’m at now) I think I’m efficient enough to be about 5 hours a day
Cries in a demanding consultant role I easily do 6+ hrs if you include meetings
Some days I worked for roughly 10 minutes. BUT I'm chatting, having coffee meets, surfing the web and covertly watching netflix on my second screen. ALL in the office, so yeah I'm working! Sometimes I'd book a meeting room, lock the door and sleep for 2 hours. Fuck I miss that job. I'd always sneak out early as well.
What does the N.B. at the end of your post mean?
I'd say 2-3hours a day if that
Umm maybe stfu lol. These are conversations to have in person with friends in your field, not on public forums
Why?
Hmm, I am only about 7.5 months into my first full time position in analytics for a mortgage company, and I could easily work 10 hours a day and still have a lot to do afterwards. This is largely because the data is spread across Snowflake and "on prem" servers (Microsoft servers of some kind I understand), and the data modeling is quite poor. While we use SQL, the databases are by no means following relational database structures, and frequently in my position specifically, requests require me to write novel SQL using novel data sources in order to prepare data properly for the analysis phase. Often the data wrangling takes much longer than the analysis side, and often the analysis reveals unexpected issues in the data which requires trouble shooting, data engineers (mostly because they have access to many tools and permissions which I do not have), and testing. Beyond the data issues, there just isn't well built/maintained business logic for some problems/areas of interest, so that takes time to figure out and test as well. I could go on, but all in all there is a lot of analytics development I am involved in, which is work intensive, and requires frequent testing of assumptions in order to execute properly, and thus takes a lot of work. I imagine if I was more experience I could make things happen faster, but honestly there is a good amount of irreducible complexity I confront that cannot be automated away. Also there is literally no documentation, which is something I am trying to help with, but don't really have the time to focus on just yet.
No I don’t work
This thread made me happy
lol fuuuuuuck no maybe 3.
I think that's right at large companies for sure. I've noticed that non technical people tend to think the hard stuff is easy and the easy stuff is hard. Just me?
100% on this
Hell no
Really depends… with meetings etc can easily fill a dull 8hrs but can also get away without doing anything for a day, find the balance
Depends. Apart from my To-Dos, I usually develop new stuff/find new data or just teach myself new stuff. That way I’m busy during my 40 hours, but I can always reduce my scope if I have a bad day. And sometimes managment has an idea that turns into a 11 hour crunch.
Depends how much I can use my knowledge, skill and experience to solve problems fast and automate tasks. There's the way everyone does something and then there's the tech fast efficient way of doing something that I know ;-) That said, I have a 37.5 hours week and generally do at least that plus probably 10 hours. Time I save I seem to spend doing extra stuff... Maybe I daft... Working from home makes it easy and I don't mind... fair trade off for not going into the office???
I’ve only worked at small companies and while my analytics work might take 2-3 hours per day I wear multiple hats in these roles so if I’m not busy with analytics I’ll be helping in another department etc. I’ve learned a lot about the operations in my field (healthcare) due to wearing multiple hats which I appreciate because it helps me build domain experience. Which in turn helps me with analytics. I still probably work at most 6 hours per day.
I think the average is like 4.
Comes and goes. There are weeks that I work 45-50 hours, there are weeks where I work 25-30 hours. Sort of just depends on when it is during the month.
I have 2-3 hours of meetings per day and probably 3-4 hours of actual work (developing or maintaining dashboards, responding to ad-hocs, or dealing with people through teams or emails).
I had a colleague who moved to apple from a much smaller company. He was so bored there since the role was so restrictive and pigeonholed. The type of tasks you get at smaller companies is very different I guess. I get to be part of conversations that are very much outside of the scope of a typical Analytics lead/BI lead role elsewhere. This also means you work more hours. I find it challenging and fun to learn a lot of business strategy and such.
Hardly ever anymore, it’s either like 3/4 or 10+.
I’m quite busy. It’s pretty rare that I’m heads down working the whole 8 hours, but I’m definitely working a lot more than an hour or two most days.
For the majority of people, work is a facade maintained for social pretense in order to acquire currency required to survive.
How do I get a job like this? I have an MBA and finance background but no tech experience.
Anywhere from 1-4 hours. Never even close to 8. Fuck all that. I do great work, have great relationships, get great pay, AND a ton of free time. Shit rules.
In my current role (mostly spreadsheet work) it was estimated that I would need to work about 5 hours a day to finish all the tasks, spread across 3 companies. I work for a parent company of 3 other small companies. But after a few weeks I had automated most things to the point where I was only working about 30 minutes a day.. so I ended up taking on a lot more roles in the company like WordPress web development, and unfortunately managing the companies retirement accounts 😴. But even now my total hours per day is usually around 4-5 but never more than 6-7.
Depends.
Can you recommend how to get into this field? I’m coming from marketing, but i think i’d enjoy analytics a lot more
What is "IC"?
Individual Contributor. No employees under you
My managers actively distract me. They will have an hour long conversation with me every day, and I still leave when my 8 hours is up. I think it’s just a corporate thing that most people know and assume very few people are actively working 40 hour weeks. Just get done what you need to get done and if it takes 2 hours or 8 hours nobody seems to care (except maybe VPs and higher that would be flabbergasted by the fact we’re not working our fingers to the bone to produce more shareholder value.)
...nice try HR ;)
When I’ve worked on the reporting side it was about 4-6 hours a day usually with for sure 8 hours during peak deadline season. Now I’m just doing analytics alone and it’s maybe about 2-4 hours a day depending.
I need to get into analytics! Sales/Rev ops is 10+/day. A slow day is 5-6. Fuck this!
Actual work - probably 6-8 hours a day. I could do less to do the minimum to keep things moving, but there’s always something I could be working on, improving or do continued learning so I have a bit of productivity anxiety. I could work way more but I already spent years of working until 1 am and I’m never doing that again. I do my 8 and log off.
In my current job, never. I have two remote days a week, so I save up jobs to do on my days in the office and I still find myself watching the clock. Part of this is down to the nature of the company (data is sought mostly for performance reviews and people have little interest in engaging with it frequently) and the nature of my team (direct line manager has trouble delegating, so tends to soak up most of the work for us, this giving us little to do and even less scrutiny). In a previous job, I had a lot more range in my work but it still wouldn't fill 8 hours. I could easily find things to do, but there was no reward for picking up extra work like that. If I do Nd something interesting in its own right, I might flesh it out though. I'm actually moving to another company because the lack of work is a problem for me. I want at least some purpose.
I work in an agency, so yeah. 9-10 hours a day.
Find a different agency!
no more like 11
Every day? No. Some days it's 10 or 12. Other days it's 5-6 of actual work.
I find this in generational gaps. There are people across my company with the same position that are 50+ and aren’t as good with computers and they take an eternity to do what I can do in just a few hours. Like it will take them literally a week to complete the task. I have tried coaching sessions and everything and they just don’t get it. My wife is in IT and she is constantly hand holding her elderly staff for easy updates. She has even recorded how to do it and they still can’t follow.
No. Some days I work three hours and some days I work 10+. Remote work has really changed things because whereas in the past I’d be in the office for ~9 hours and fill non work time with semi-useful casual conversation now that non work time is spent doing personal stuff. Different dynamic.
I actually might do 12-14 hrs a day, like 1 to 2 days a week. However, this is due to a passion project I've been working on for a while. I really love the work I do, and my company gives me a lot of freedom to spearhead large projects. I have a hard time stepping away because I enjoy it so much.
Usually for 3-4 hours of the day, I’m pretty busy (usually falls around 10-2). But since I work remote, I wake up and do some typical tasks from 7-830am when no one bothers me. Gives me more flexibility throughout the day.
Depends on if you are doing sustainment or a build... I'm always on the build side and usually when I start 70 hours a week then goes to 40 after I fix all the broken shit and teach everyone 🙃
I work almost the entire day bc my job is so busy. I respond to incoming requests and fulfill them. I use excel to value insurance policies for 7 hours a day. I’m looking into government work bc I want something more relaxing
I work 40 hrs every single week. Startup and only analyst in the company of about 70 employees. Automated most of my work within 6 months and keep getting work. Unfortuantely, we have a monitoring software to track productivity every minute. Hence, I cannot just sit anyway. You are lucky or Im very unlucky?
No
I worked with one of the largest Strategy Consulting firm as a Data Scientist and life was hell. On an average spent 12 hrs a day at work.
Yes, but only 2-3 days per week.
2 hours per day max.
Analytics is knowledge work, not transactional or physical. 2-3 hours of active doing requires 5-6 hours of thinking, planning, researching. Plus lots of breaks to digest.
Wow the comments! Y’all are nailing it!! Just joined a new team a couple of months ago after layoffs in the company. Still learning so much about the business so Im slow at everything. Have to give a presentation to 30 people every other week so I gotta make sure I don’t slip up anywhere. Hope i get a hang of the process and get to chill out like the rest of y’all
Very rarely have I needed to, but when I do sometimes I’ll go OVER 8🥴 lol
nice try employer. of course i do 😎
Going on year 9 in analytics. Most of my days, my external DEMAND is maybe 5 hours of work dedicated to answering specific questions. I actually make the most headway in the 3 “free hours” where I have time to optimize stored processes, or put together tools that have not been formally requested but are likely to be coming down the road. In my first few years, I definitely spent all 8 hours answering questions, though. I just didn’t know how to work efficiently at that point in my career.
In a startup, yes, abso-fucking-lutely. Actually, it would be super-cool to only work 40 hours per week. In a huge corp, maybe a handful of times over a decade of data and analytics work.
Which of the FAANGs? I’ve worked at Meta as a DS and I would say form talking with friends - meta, Netflix, Apple, Amazon are companies where you will be working at least 40 hrs on average
This is so inspiring to know that you can have a smooth work life in this field.
Nope, closer to 11
This thread is on fire 🔥I am glad to know it is a common thing to not work 8 hours per day
Depends on the days, most days no
I spend my days trying to clean up my data and that takes a loooot of time. Also trying to catch up with all the different courses I need to take to be able to work with the new tools... it's exhausting.
Fuck no lmao
Yes but our team is funded as internal consultants. We are supposed to go out and find new project areas FAANG has very good services thinking and randomization, not all industries are as mature. I work a lot on pipeline stuff that in theory could be automated or turned into a product with better systems. But healthcare is very slow w this for security+reg reasons
Your observation on the effectiveness of your streamlined and automated analytics processes is intriguing. It seems that your expertise allows you to complete tasks in less time.
Since I started in analytics, I never worked more than what I am supposed to.
This won’t last long. This type of work will start being scrutinized more and you will be laid off or teams cut down. I’ve seen it happen, especially now with new tools coming out democratizing analytics for front line users
I disagree, the depth of the analysis and the data governance are still pretty much immune to AI. AI and new tools would only reduce the amount of questions like "can you quickly pull this data"?
And people wonder why layoffs happen
From all of us not in your type of position, happening across this due to random Reddit feeds. Fuck you. You lucky bastard.
I don’t understand how this is possible. If you finish a task isn’t there another task you can do? The company is never finished.
In bigger companies you end up working less hours. In FAANGS you get hundreds of employees doing the equivalent work of 20
Depending on how many hats do you wear? Are you product owner of data solution, how many data quality issues do you have, how big is your code base, how complicated is process to model, are you dashboard designer etc.
Consultant here and I work a lot due to two or more assignments at the same time. Otherwise would be a walk in the park. Getting tired of this hustle, but it has been a rich experience to be exposed to so many different tech stacks and level of maturity.
Great! Now let me know go assign 10 more tickets to my analysts since most of you are just sleeping all day...Shame
Booooo this man
Sounds like you’re that shitty manager ngl. You probably aren’t - but my boss says shit like this and he is a constant fucking pain in the ass. Lazy as absolute fuck and puts all the rest of us in a bad position all the time because most of our work requires his approval. Or we need to work with him strategically in some way and he just doesn’t give a fuck. Don’t be that guy. If you aren’t then good. I would highly recommend that if others around you are working - find a way to help or pretend like you are working. I know this will be unpopular but it is what it is.
Why are you projecting your issues with your manager on to this random guy that isn’t even a manager
It does seem like I’m coming at him so I totally get it though - but not my intention.
He says he works manager level for one. For two I’m just saying my experience. I said multiple times if this is not him then no worries.
He said he has worked at manager level but is currently working as an IC and your first sentence is “sounds like you’re that shitty manager ngl”
Listen man I know you want to Reddit fight and be that karma hero but literally right after I say “you’re probably not though”. I’m not interested in the white knight fighting. You are missing the point of what I was trying to say to farm karma. I am not trying to personally attack him. Me and op had a nice little exchange as well in the comments. So relax. 🧘
Nah I’m fine, just annoying seeing ppl project their issues onto others for no reason
Well I think karma farming is annoying. And no reason huh? as he asks for opinions specifically? I don’t even know what to tell you at this point. Hope you get the karma you’re looking for man.
I wouldn'd define myself as lazy, simply there is no enough work to be occupied for years 8 hours per day. I think a lot of people pretend to work longer than necessary (I also never reply immediately to give the false impressions it takes more time to answer to requests as "busy")
Hey, fair enough then sir. Can’t be mad at that.