TLDR: look for 'analyst' or 'analytics' jobs where the challenges are less mathematical and more organizational. Personal connections (even tenuous) make all t

TLDR: look for 'analyst' or 'analytics' jobs where the challenges are less mathematical and more organizational. Personal connections (even tenuous) make all the difference. One approach is to pick a vertical in which you have a secular interest that is unlikely to flag (e.g. finance for me), and be open to making the most of opportunities that might have non-obvious embedded call options. Then look for opportunities to be informally helpful to people working in that vertical (if starting at 0, look for a meetup or other public event to attend). This can often look like a lateral or downward move to a job at which your outperformance is likely. In most analytics or adjacent roles there is still plenty of low-hanging fruit for automation, which frees up your time to add value on domain problems. YMMV, but I found it helpful to not highlight the automation work (in fear of being pegged the "tech" guy). Instead, using the earned time to do exploratory analyses on root causes (or sensitivity or whatever) paid real dividends. Adding that kind of value has its own gravity, and my experience was that it opened other opportunities.