What Do I Do For Living

I’ve got a request from my friends to describe and explain what do I do at my work as everyone knows that it is something related to computers and programming, but none can say what is it exactly. So in this post I would like to put some light on it, although I never hid this information.

Officially my position is Data Analyst – this is what written in the work contract – and my main tasks are related to the operations with data. I call myself Data Scientist as I work with much wider spectrum of tasks as usual DA does and I love to experiment a lot. I provide decision making support to our sales people by giving them information about market, analysis of prices from customers and suppliers, different comparisons, summaries and so on. I make life easier for my colleagues by providing them valuable information. Also if someone needs a specific report / information we solve this problem together.

But the truth is that a lot of tasks from above now are automated as I built a reporting system that does all this by itself: download the data, process it, create necessary reports and move the data to the storage. With this system I have much more time that can be spent in other projects, so I continuously learn new tools and try myself in new areas. Among these new areas: Web development, Back-end development, Telecom server administration and lately I started to expand my analytic skills with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Web development: don’t do this anymore, but the knowledge is in my head, so any time I can get back to it. This was a project where I built an ugly beta interface to test the back-end for our platform and understand the flow. The goal was to make it work and no one cared about beauty or optimization at that time. Our web developer that was working on a different project told me to learn Angular 2 and I did it. And with this I was able to create that first solution.

Back-end development: I was bored one day and my colleague suggested me to learn Golang (the programming language created at Google) and I did it :D. As I have no knowledge of C or Java it was quite a good option. So when I learned it I worked on few projects – including API development, call simulator, little platform to help with everyday tasks. And actually I still work with this language in the current project as we build the Anti-Fraud System. So yes, you can call me data analyst slash go developer.

Administration of telecom servers: I also learned the Asterisk – language to program telecom switches, – and now I use it internally to expand our company’s network. I build some servers that help to filter the traffic that is coming into our network based on some common rules, parameters, indications etc. Currently I manage 3 machines that perform around 10 different operations at different time on different conditions. They do their job actually, when it’s necessary.

And the last but not least – Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This is kind of new level. Those are the skills that are already valuable, but in the near future will be even more. Now for example, demand is bigger than a supply for these professionals, but that won’t last long and I want to be on the top. I haven’t use my new skills in big projects yet, but there were first tests and they were successful.

In the end, actually by finishing this, even I now can explain better what I do for living and I finally found a complete name for this: Data Scientist Slash Developer. And I am thinking to move completely to the data science projects only as I understood that I love data. This is something that really keeps me moving, that motivates me. To be able to find something valuable in the tons of mess is incredibly awesome. I know it’s not for everyone, nor anyone can understand the beauty of this, but I realized this is my thing. I hope you, my the only one reader also know your thing. Have a nice day!