Getting into tech mid (analyst) career

I’ve spoken with a few friends recently who have worked with data for 10+ years outside the “tech” industry and now want to make the jump to a more traditional tech business. (One was in public policy, another higher ed, and a third consulting.) All three have the core skills required to do the analytics work a tech company needs — SQL, stats to one degree or another, team leadership responsibilities — but they’re not sure what kind of role to look for or how to position themselves.

There are a bunch of questions specific to each person that I can’t generalize. These are the typical tradeoffs one makes when looking for a job: whether you value getting deeper technically or going broader, whether it’s essential that you have management responsibility, whether you’d prefer a big company or a small one, whether you want to be remote or in person, etc.

Rather than dig into these personal factors, I want to give you insight into the thinking of the prospective hiring manager. The interviewing process is a matter of trying your key in a bunch of different companies’ locks. You hold the key; I’ll give you a sense of which locks to try.

So let’s imagine I’m considering hiring you onto my team. And let’s stipulate that you have the general skills that will benefit the team: You write excellent SQL, you have some statistical expertise if the job requires it, and given your experience you work well with people across functions and levels. What are the questions running through my mind as I interview you?

Ramp Time and Upside

My baseline question as a hiring manager is: “How long it is going to take for you to ramp up?” The team has needs now and every month we’re not at full capacity is expensive. I generally don’t want to hire someone who’s going to take six months or more to be operating at the level expected in the role. Most likely I want to hire someone who can be productive within a month, is at three quarter speed within a couple months, and is running at full speed in less than six.

Assuming I’m confident you’ll be able to get up to speed quickly, my next question is about upside: How high is your ceiling? A year from now, or three years from now, what will your impact be? In an ideal world, I’d like to hire someone who has the potential to operate above the level I’m hiring for within a year or two. Your advantage here is going to be your professional seasoning. You’ll probably be making a downward move in terms of level at first — taking less scope to give you time to really learn the industry and the specific business — but that means once you do learn the industry and the specific business you’ll be able to draw on your reserve of broader management experience.

Okay, so: Ramp time and upside, that’s what I’m looking to understand. How am I going to test for it?

Specifics: Tools, Playbooks, Professionalism

First, I want to know if you can work the way we work. Have you used git extensively? Will you be used to code reviews? Are you familiar with how data flows through our systems? None of these tools are rocket science, but each takes time to learn, and the less familiar you are the longer your ramp time will be.

Second, I want to know if you have any instincts about how to understand our business. One of the advantages of hiring someone who has worked at similar companies before is that they bring playbooks that can be applied immediately. There are pitfalls to this — sometimes playbooks interfere with critical thinking or cause you to see patterns where there are none — but knowing best practices and how to apply them means you’ll ramp faster. It also affects upside, because you’ll have already explored the tradeoffs of different approaches.

Third, I want to know how you’ll work with others. We’ve already stipulated that you’re experienced and personable, so let’s set that aside. I want to know how well you can manage others, how effectively you can collaborate with people in adjacent functions (product, engineering, marketing, etc.), and how well you can communicate with leadership. The expectations here are level-specific, so what is “overqualified” as a senior individual contributor is part of the baseline expectations as a manager and might not be enough to hack it as a director.

I’ve summarized what this looks like below:

 
 

The Ladder

Now that we know what the hiring manager is looking for, let’s talk level. Below I’ve laid out a simplified version of a standard tech career ladder. This ladder will look roughly similar for all technical or technical-ish roles — engineering, analytics, product, etc.

There are two tracks: IC and management. There’s lots of variation around these tracks. Some companies, especially smaller ones, won’t have staff and principal ICs but will instead assume you transition to management as you get more senior. Some companies may have team leads, which sort of straddle the arrow between senior IC and manager. And many younger companies will only have a loose idea of their levels rather than a structured ladder like what you see above. (levels.fyi gives you a pretty rich sense of the variation across bigger companies.)

You need to know where on the ladder you’re interviewing. If you’re interviewing to be a senior IC, the expectations will be different than if you’re interviewing to be a VP. But generally speaking, you’ll probably be looking at roles one or two levels below your current level to make up for shortcomings in tools and playbooks.

Where Candidates Fit

A perfectly calibrated candidate would look something like the gray boxes below:

Let’s score the hypothetical candidate above as an even 0 — exactly calibrated for the level. A candidate with no relevant experience across any of the three dimensions would score a -6, and a candidate with experience well beyond expectations across the board would score a +6.

From the hiring manager’s perspective, I know I’ll likely compromise somewhere. For instance, if you’re looking for someone who knows all your tools and has worked in a directly analogous business, you may have to stretch on level and offer them a chance to grow into it. Or if you’re going to hire someone really senior, you may have to accept they’re coming from a totally different industry. You’re excited to hire a 0, you’re willing to hire a -1, and you might be okay with hiring a -2. Anything lower than that and you’re not making an offer.

From the candidate’s perspective, you should try to get a role where you score a -1 or -2. These are the roles that will stretch you and they’ll likely involve more responsibility, more learning, and more compensation. Stretch any further than this and you’re not set up to succeed even in the rare case where you do get an offer.

What This Means For You

  • If you’re interviewing for roles where you’re totally unfamiliar with the tools (-2) and in an entirely new industry where you don’t know any of the typical playbooks (-2), you’re unlikely to get the job in my opinion — even if you’re taking an IC role several notches below your current level (+2). The net of this situation is -2 and that’s not a great place to be. The ramp up time will be too long for the hiring manager to accept.

  • There are many ways to get to -1:

    1. Develop a conversational understanding of modern tools (-1), step into an adjacent industry (-1), and take a role just one notch below your current seniority level (+1)

    2. Develop a conversational understanding of modern tools (-1), step into a totally new industry (-2), and take an IC role well below your current seniority level (+2)

    3. Don’t learn the modern tools until you’re in the job (-2) but stay in the same industry (0, +1, or +2), and take a role around your current seniority level (0)

  • Two things I strongly recommend:

    1. Familiarize yourself with some of the core tools of the modern data stack. Set up a data warehouse yourself, put some data into it, and build some dbt models. Doing this will allow you to speak to how work happens in many of these tech companies. You’ll develop an understanding of how data moves around and gets modified. (The precise tools you choose don’t matter so much, and having a cool idea doesn’t matter at all, but proving you can learn new tools and assuage manager concerns about ramp up time will be valuable.)

    2. Mostly focus on companies in industries immediately adjacent to what you know rather than venturing further afield. If you work in higher ed, consider ed tech companies more seriously than fintech companies. If you work in health care consulting, consider health tech companies first.

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