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You say you want to get to a director level or higher. Given the industries you listed no technical skill is going to put you in the Director or Exec seats at

You say you want to get to a director level or higher. Given the industries you listed no technical skill is going to put you in the Director or Exec seats at a larger organization. If you were talking SMB then yes, technical skills could assist you to getting that next level, but even then it is more about people skills, planning skills, budget management and most of all how to affect revenue. What I would say is that people are finally waking up and realizing the data we collect is where the gold is at, not in selling a widget for $5.99. The data tells us what to sell, when to sell it, what to price it etc. So everything you know is driving business today, especially in insurance, finance and advertising. So don't run from what you know, change your focus into leading others to do the "tasks" of what it takes and switch your brain to architecting solutions that make companies more money. Don't be a manager of people, be a thought leader, an inventor that can turn an idea into action and quickly. As for what to do to grow. Seriously, if you don't know a lot about accounting, learn the basics of how a company runs accounting. Learn how what you are involved in might affect revenue and how you can personally help affect revenue with your team. Stop just taking orders to create this next ETL or report, and invest some extra time to figure out how you can invent a solution (doesn't have to be fancy) that can help senior execs or help the company make more money. That is how you can move up, even if it isn't in your current organization you will be able to say, I thought of, designed and implemented X that brought the company Y more revenue through Z means. Or I created X report that allowed the senior team to see data in a way that they weren't prior and it has lead to Y changes etc. As a last thought, go spend time with sales teams, they will complain a lot about things they need and aren't getting. Help them get some of those done and they will love you and brag about it. They will also then want to see you move up to help them more.

astazangasta 11y ago
>The data tells us what to sell, when to sell it, what to price it etc. Does it actually? I believe this is conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley, hence the billion analytics startups, but where is the actual paydirt? How do we know that data analytics produces anything other than cool graphs?
- davismwfl 11y ago
  Well a few points below, but probably the most important one is you are right, a pretty graph is useless without context and a person to put it into perspective, which is why doing the analysis and then selling the perspective of how it impacts the business is critical and can help advance a career. But for example, Wal-Mart. They use the data in near real-time to make a huge amount of decisions, among them is pricing, what is selling, where it is selling best and with a little work they know the price sensitivity for a product in each market allowing them to maximize revenue. I think there are some Wal-Mart devs on here that know far better than I do, if they can comment. Or another, Ford. I was on a team that built analytics for them that drove their supply chain decisions in near real time based upon a huge number of inputs and it saved them massive amounts of money by reducing supply chain inventory. Insurance analysis is done via collected and publicly sourced data to determine risk profiles, rates and a host of things. So yes, the data is driving what policies to sell, when its best to sell it and how much they should charge to maximize revenue. In addition market analysis tells them which policies to offer where. A number of the big box hardware type stores use analytics to determine where to move product and and what time of year to move it to maximize product revenue. This can go on and on. Silicon Valley is isn't really where I would look for valid references to how this works in the real world, because I think to your point their view is sometimes skewed towards producing the analysis but not converting that into action. But enterprises use data everyday, and are getting better at it to make these decisions. So when you can show a company how to use data they already collect to make a better decision or maximize revenue you can absolutely make an impact and help your own career.
- collyw 11y ago
  I kind of agree with you here, bu people do seem to be willing to pay for it at the moment.
rokhayakebe 11y ago
Given the industries you listed no technical skill is going to put you in the Director or Exec seats at a larger organization. I wish you could expand on this topic. I agree with you and I cannot articulate why being a director in a larger company does not have anything to do with raw skills. For example Exxon Mobile Director of Products & Innovation could work at Dell as a Director of Products & Innovation and they will possibly do a better job than Facebook's Director of Products or Google's at that same position.
- tonyarkles 11y ago
  I think the point was that it's not necessarily technical skills that land someone in that role; it's vision, execution, ability to get shit done, and politics.
  - davismwfl 11y ago
    Sorry for the late reply, but yes, the biggest difference is the ability to be politically aware, and learning how to keep your team out of the politics as much as possible so they can get the job done. Getting stuff done at any organization is more about finding out who the stakeholders are and getting as many to neutral or positive as possible so that you can execute. But in a large politicized organization it requires significantly more political navigating and energy compared to say a startup where usually a good idea can win even if the person isn't that great at the politics.

astazangasta 11y ago

>The data tells us what to sell, when to sell it, what to price it etc. Does it actually? I believe this is conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley, hence the billion analytics startups, but where is the actual paydirt? How do we know that data analytics produces anything other than cool graphs?

davismwfl 11y ago
Well a few points below, but probably the most important one is you are right, a pretty graph is useless without context and a person to put it into perspective, which is why doing the analysis and then selling the perspective of how it impacts the business is critical and can help advance a career. But for example, Wal-Mart. They use the data in near real-time to make a huge amount of decisions, among them is pricing, what is selling, where it is selling best and with a little work they know the price sensitivity for a product in each market allowing them to maximize revenue. I think there are some Wal-Mart devs on here that know far better than I do, if they can comment. Or another, Ford. I was on a team that built analytics for them that drove their supply chain decisions in near real time based upon a huge number of inputs and it saved them massive amounts of money by reducing supply chain inventory. Insurance analysis is done via collected and publicly sourced data to determine risk profiles, rates and a host of things. So yes, the data is driving what policies to sell, when its best to sell it and how much they should charge to maximize revenue. In addition market analysis tells them which policies to offer where. A number of the big box hardware type stores use analytics to determine where to move product and and what time of year to move it to maximize product revenue. This can go on and on. Silicon Valley is isn't really where I would look for valid references to how this works in the real world, because I think to your point their view is sometimes skewed towards producing the analysis but not converting that into action. But enterprises use data everyday, and are getting better at it to make these decisions. So when you can show a company how to use data they already collect to make a better decision or maximize revenue you can absolutely make an impact and help your own career.
collyw 11y ago
I kind of agree with you here, bu people do seem to be willing to pay for it at the moment.

rokhayakebe 11y ago

Given the industries you listed no technical skill is going to put you in the Director or Exec seats at a larger organization. I wish you could expand on this topic. I agree with you and I cannot articulate why being a director in a larger company does not have anything to do with raw skills. For example Exxon Mobile Director of Products & Innovation could work at Dell as a Director of Products & Innovation and they will possibly do a better job than Facebook's Director of Products or Google's at that same position.

tonyarkles 11y ago
I think the point was that it's not necessarily technical skills that land someone in that role; it's vision, execution, ability to get shit done, and politics.
- davismwfl 11y ago
  Sorry for the late reply, but yes, the biggest difference is the ability to be politically aware, and learning how to keep your team out of the politics as much as possible so they can get the job done. Getting stuff done at any organization is more about finding out who the stakeholders are and getting as many to neutral or positive as possible so that you can execute. But in a large politicized organization it requires significantly more political navigating and energy compared to say a startup where usually a good idea can win even if the person isn't that great at the politics.