The two islands of data in the business world
Coders and Non-Coders. Yet, coders get all attention.
The data space is divided into two islands. One consists of data teams wanting everything as code. There is a much larger island of functional knowledge workers who can't code, are not allowed, or do not want to.
At data teams, the focus is on tools, technologies and processes. They prefer to learn SQL if they choose between learning no-code or SQL. In their eyes, it saves money and helps their career.
But another set of users in the organization also works with data. For them, their tools of the trade are Excel and Tableau.
These knowledge workers must do reports, run analyses and transform data, but they can only become data scientists after prolonged studies and dedication. Becoming a data scientist takes years. As a result, these professionals must choose between being data science or marketing and sales experts. They can't be all, and they won't be.
Moreover, there needs to be more data scientists worldwide. The shortage is acute. And this is reflected in their price tag.
Last year Deloitte reported that the combined number of jobs posted by tech companies for machine learning, data science, data engineering, and visualization surpassed traditional skills such as engineering, customer support, marketing and PR, and administration.
The only alternative is to transform functional knowledge workers and provide them with solutions that automate their output.
Experts in product development, sales and marketing should be able to extract analytics insights without involving engineering resources.
The financial planner and the supply-chain analyst must be able to become automated and excel at what they do with data insights. And for this, they should not require spending five years studying computer science or mathematics.
These knowledge workers must upgrade their workflows, which currently consist primarily of spreadsheets. It is estimated that there are 800m to one billion Excel users worldwide. Compare this to the estimated 8 million Python developers working only with data. And we see that the gap is gigantic.
This gap between Excel users and other data experts was highlighted by a 2021 study documenting that out of the 700 plus million Linkedin members, over 75 million list Microsoft Excel, VBA or Microsoft Office as their skill. Hence, over 10% of users on Linkedin self-declare themselves as skilled in Excel. The study compared this to Google Sheets, where the number was 0.1%. But also programming languages for data manipulation, such as Python, with 9 million Linkedin users, and R, with over 6 million.
Let's look more broadly at data-related skills. The 13m of business intelligence and 2.3 million data modelling experts are far from those reported 75 million Excel users.Â
Therefore, it is even more striking that in the data world, we talk about enabling technical data teams.
We read daily about new announcements for data tools requiring programming skills. And we talk about concepts, ideas and tools that have little relevance in the knowledge worker's workday.
Instead, let us think about up-skilling and amplifying the abilities of the line of business users and knowledge workers. With tools that are easy to use, intuitive and powerful. And that they do not require coding.
The attractive professional opportunity of the week for data leaders
Chief Data Officer at Financial Times
As the FT embarks on its next phase of growth, we are hiring this critical role, to lead a newly formed data group which brings together all of the product and technology talent focused on delivering our data platforms and systems, our data science capability, our data strategy and governance teams as well as our analytics teams. The CDO role leads a team of approximately 100 people within Product and Technology. This encompasses Analysts, BI Engineers, Data Scientists and Data Engineers. These roles are based in London and Sofia, Bulgaria. This role reports directly to our CPTO (board member) and is part of the product and technology leadership team consisting of a Chief Technology Officer and a Chief Product Officer (amongst other roles). The triumvirate of these three roles are central to our success.
Why do I like this opportunity?
The most significant impact for any data leader occurs at organisations whose core business is not technology. The Financial Times is one of the world's most recognisable brands, and the role offers significant impact. As a business whose main product is text, the opportunities for automation using NLP, chatbots and similar are almost unlimited.