My Data Career Journey So Far
After graduating with a BA in Economics in 2017, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career.
I eventually took a logistics role at a third-party logistics company, where I managed customer shipments. The job was fast-paced and demanded constant flexibility. Shipments always had issues, often at odd hours, and customers expected quick solutions.
What fascinated me the most were the market forces behind these transactions (maybe I am applying my economics degree after all?). You had customers focused on minimizing freight spend and delivering on time, logistics providers trying to maintain a 10–30% margin while keeping clients happy, and carriers who needed that freight.
That’s when I realized: data is the life force behind most businesses.
Determined to understand it better, I learned every Excel shortcut I could, analyzing freight market data to help my customers.
By 2020, I was in a senior role overseeing domestic distribution for all shipments, inbound and outbound. But our systems were inefficient. We had no clean TMS or ERP database, so we constantly exported and cross-referenced spreadsheets just to track orders. It was a painful, time-consuming process that I wanted to fix.
That’s when I discovered Python. I found a class on DataCamp that taught how to join files, clean data, and automate reporting. At first, I was intimidated. I genuinely thought I wasn’t “smart enough” to code. But after trial and error, I learned how to use the pandas library and began automating real workflows at work.
Before long, I was known as the logistics reporting guy.
That experience convinced me to pivot from operations to analytics. I started learning SQL and database design in my free time, realizing that Python was just one piece of the puzzle. Once I felt confident, I applied for data analyst roles and eventually broke into the field.
Fast forward to today, I’ve moved beyond analytics into backend development working with frameworks like FastAPI and Django, cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Snowflake, and building data engineering pipelines. I even “riced” my Linux distro (I use Arch btw) and am developing personal projects I plan to share soon.
If I had listened to that voice in 2017 telling me I wasn’t capable of coding, I would have missed out on so many incredible experiences.
If you’re where I was, overwhelmed and unsure how to break into a new domain, don’t give up. Keep going. You got this!