Behind the Scenes: Jason Khu’s day in a life as a Data Analyst

Posted on: February 2, 2024

Last Updated on: February 16th, 2024

Post Category: Professional Development

---

So for formalities sake… my name is Jason Khu. I’m an alumnus from UNSW, and I’m currently a data analyst at Quantium.

During my graduate program I got to work for Quantium’s internal Finance team and broader Group Services division.

My job is to help people within the business have better visibility and reporting capabilities, using their internal data.

And THIS is a day in my life.

Obviously keep in mind, this is MY experience, and it may not be representative of the broader graduate cohort; I’m pretty fortunate to have a manager who cares alot about my health, and the output I deliver, as opposed to when and how long I work.

Without further adieu, let’s get into it…

9:00am – 9:30am

On a work-from-home day, I typically start my day before 9 or at 9:15 (there’s kind of no in-between).

And at 9:15 I take part in my team’s daily huddle – which involves the three of us.

The three of us would go through a quick round-robin meeting (which lasts for 15 minutes), where we’d talk about any updates and what we’re planning to work on for the day.

On an office day, (I’m gonna be completely honest) I’m still commuting to the office at 9:15; my commute takes about an hour AND I’m not a morning person.

And oftentimes, while my colleagues are doing the huddle, I’m either sending in my updates/intentions for the day on Slack or tuning into it via Zoom while I’m on the train.

On occasion, my team members, and myself included, would check our monitoring dashboard, which is used to oversee our internal data pipeline.

From that monitoring dashboard, we can see any issues regarding the data we process, and we typically convert those into a ticket that we could resolve straight away.

9:30am – midday

A typical workday for me is a day without meetings, and if there is a meeting, there would usually be one (and this excludes informal catch-ups).

A lot of my working hours is dedicated to technical work, and this includes the following:

• Creating/altering workflows within our internal analytics data pipeline, using Alteryx or SQL
• Writing/altering scripts for a piece of automation, using Python or UiPath
• Building and modifying reports/dashboards, using Power BI

And oftentimes when it comes to these tasks, I’m either building something from scratch, or responding to feedback shared my manager while the piece of work is approaching its end state.

Whenever I make a change/update, I would do following:

• I’d update my manager through Slack, and
• I’d update the ticket on our JIRA board, tagging my manager with a written summary of my updates, and assigning it back to him for review.

If there is a meeting during the day, it would typically be for:

• scoping out and gathering requirements for a new piece of reporting/automation that needs to get done,
• updates from the Finance or internal operations executives, or
• getting feedback/clarity on a piece of reporting/automation I’m currently working on.

Midday (~12pm – ~1pm)

• Lunch at home
• lunch in the office with colleagues, or
• lunch at a restaurant in the city, with someone I met at Uni or through LinkedIn.

1pm – 5pm

Aside from continuing on the technical work (and asking for more work whenever I had capacity), I would go for a walk.

Walking and coffee catch-ups are a big part of the culture at Quantium.

I’d go for walking catch-ups most days I’m in the office, and I could walk for 30 minutes to an hour (but most of the time, 30 minutes).

But for catch-ups generally, I could be doing a lap around the office, I could be sitting in the area in front of the Quantium in-house café, or I could be sitting at one of the couches near the kitchen next to the pool tables (just chatting).

In conjunction with my day-to-day work, being a graduate analyst, it is a also requirement of all of us (in the graduate program) to fill in something called the GPC.

The GPC is a Graduate Proficiency Check, and it gives us a list of technical and professional/personal skills to develop before getting promoted to an actual Data Analyst (or Contributor) at the company.

And so during my work hours, I would dedicate some time to tick off a couple of items, so I can show my manager during our one-on-one catchups (and get them ticked off).

When it hits around 5pm, I usually head home.

And on occasion, I do stay later than 5 because I have something I want to wrap up quickly (or because of the little bit of shame I have – coming late into the office and missing the daily huddle).

Closing remarks…

So yeah, that’s pretty much a typical day for me as a graduate data analyst at Quantium.

My work was indeed pretty chill and I shouldn’t take that for granted. And I imagine the next team I will join will change my experience dramatically; in what ways, I’m not too sure yet.

Hopefully, in 6 months time, once I’ve been with my team for a while, I can report back and share my typical day-in-a-life again.

But that’s all for now.

If you have any questions or would like to have a chat, or you would like to see more data analytics content, do follow me or reach out on LinkedIn.