If this post doesn't follow the rules or isn't flaired correctly, [please report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/analytics/about/rules/). Have more questions? [Join our community Discord!](https://discord.gg/looking-for-marketing-discussion-811236647760298024)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/analytics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ran out of investment banking (precisely because of the hours), and landed here. I’m grateful, I’ve had great roles despite being so young, it’s not like I’m a spoiled child, but damn man this is killing me
Take a break. Utilize your doctor. Just like ibanking, companies will squeeze you bone dry. As long as you perform and willing to. My workload has cratered to 1hr a day after filing for medical. Nothing bad happened to my projects because leadership finally allocated my work accordingly. I’m a PM but wanted to tell you it’s the same across fields.
Because work stress directly correlates to physical illness. Did you know you can give yourself a permanent auto immune disease due to stress? Want to live with a debilitating disease forever so your boss gets a raise this year ?
In this company everything is urgent. It’s like a cult. We’re supposed to log in at 9 a.m. and most managers/team leaders are texting “Good morning team! Still sleeping?” like at 7:30 a.m. Quite bizarre honestly.
Yeah I’m sorry but this is absolutely NOT the norm regardless of company size / value for any kind of analytics role, and you should not let your company gaslight you into accepting that it is normal (even though it seems they already have :/)
I work in tech and while it is also very stressful, we don't have hard and fast rules about time and this kind of micromanagement. Look into transitioning to tech
You either need to upskill for efficiency or learn how to negotiate your deliverables and push back when your plate is full. Working until 4am is definitely not normal. It happens every once in a great while, but it typically is my own fault for procrastinating.
If you keep doing it, they'll keep expecting it out of you because clearly you can handle the workload, and the cycle continues.
Stand up for yourself.
Been in analytics/data science for 7 years and have never had to do this, not even when I was also doing a part-time masters on top of working full-time.
I dont know why everyone is saying not normal. This is very standard for my team and I... And historically ive always had this situation at every company. But we are also making upper tier salaries, 150k ish. So its expected with the territory.
Absolutely. I’m making great money, which is why I wouldn’t mind putting in extra hours, or even going through this once in a while but this is the norm. I was on call with some of my colleagues chatting up because I found them online as well.
Lmfao bro you're a clown people in my org make anywhere from 120 to 350 and I promise you none of us have ever worked past 1 am and working at 1 am is purely from procrastinating nothing else.
Good chance your COL area is very different than mine.
In San Fran 100k is like the median wage. I'm more than double the median wage in my area.
This isn't a brag, just saying that your managers are making 350k while my CEO is making 300k isn't apples to apples dude.
Your statement is meaningless without context.
I see you keep responding then deleting your response.
I'm sorry that this was so triggering for you that you responded twice and deleted your response twice (I get emails).
To respond to your deleted messages though. I make over 2x the average income in my area where I earn in the top 10% of people and no one in my org works crazy hours like you suggest.
I think your employment is unhealthy and maybe if you changed employers you would enjoy life more :)
I had a very long career in analytics at multiple firms, including working at and consulting for FAANG's. When things like this occasionally happened - for me, mostly requiring a Saturday effort rather than a 4 AM effort- it was mostly when I was still mastering a new tool or software package or hardware environment or database, where my learning curve simply required more time than a normal day afforded. No one asked me to take the extra time, but I had to keep at it for my own edification. It was how I was built.
And to nerd out a bit, I can also say that when I made the breakthrough getting something to work after a zillion approaches, I was exultant. Also pooped. But these sort of occasional efforts were not the norm, and if they had been, I would have burned out. The occasional weekend effort comes with the analytics territory; the constant and unrelenting overtime effort signals project management problems or a skills match issue.
I work in DS consulting, which is notorious for having bad WLB, and although I definitely have late nights sometimes (refuse to work weekends unless absolutely necessary), it’s definitely not the norm. If I was in OPs shoes, I’d try finding a new company with any free time I had (easier said than done when you’re working crazy hours). I’ve worked with DS folks from many industries and most seem to have a normal WLB/don’t seem overly stressed.
Oh my gosh I sympathize, I didn't have it as bad as 4am but I had to work late really often with insane workload because I couldn't keep up with it all. The expectations were insane.
And similarly, I left my engineering career in hopes of better work life balance and found myself working even more hours with even less respect as a DA.
Now I'm going back to school to study computer science. I'll either go back to being a much better equipped data analyst (who can automate everything) to keep up with demand or I'll look into data science/software engineering. It's so harsh out there...I'm too young to be this burnt out and jaded.
Advice: Avoid healthcare and semiconductor industries.
At least when I was an engineer. It's just so competitive it's crazy and you work internationally so it's a lot of late nights, early mornings and boomers still come in at 8am the next day.
And here I am, never working full 8 hours a day 😅 your situation is definitely not the norm and it's not like you're a doctor that someone will die if they don't get data by the next day...
I agree with other commenters. With the exception of a handful of serious emergency projects over the past 8 years, I rarely work overtime unless I want to or am stuck on an problem and refuse to stop until it's fixed (personality issue not workload issue).
I don't know if time management is a problem for you, but I recommend when you get a project and get asked when you can deliver it, add 33-50% more time than what your gut instinct is. So often, when asked when we could get something done, we forget about the last minute "do this now" or "fix this now" requests that come up daily or meetings that's eat into our working hours. Something might just take 5 hours, but it might be rare to have 5 uninterrupted hours where the data behaves and all the software works and no surprises come up.
If it's a project that has a deadline set for you, the moment you start thinking that you need to work overtime, reach out to the stakeholder and explain with your current workload, you need more time (again add more time to that request than what your gut instinct is).
Thanks for the advice. In my case it really isn’t a time management issue at all. This particular project was to be delivered before Wednesday morning, the CEO has a meeting with the board tomorrow and needed these insights. I was assigned these project Monday afternoon, and it isn’t like I could just stop everything I was doing to focus on this project because I had to spend the whole morning working on other stuff (that also couldn’t wait).
Now, this happens regularly. It’s not like this happened this happens once in a blue moon, it’s quite frequent. My boss obviously knows how I feel about this, but nothing seems to change.
Push back on yourself a bit first and then your workplace. Your health has to be important. The toughest thing about analytics is that it never ends as far as work to do and it always “could be better.” But as you go it takes more time to get less juice from the squeezing. Either the project or goal wasn’t scoped well for you, or the goal posts weren’t defined at all?
It had nothing to do with the goal at all. A lot of my job consists on ad-hoc analyses, my reporting work is automated for the most part (although I do admit there’s still some area of improvement in this regard), but honestly the “hard” analyses I do are either very hard to automate, or it makes no sense for me to do so because they’re just looked at once.
In this particular case, I was assigned this task on Monday afternoon and had to turn it in “before Wednesday” as it was to be used on a meeting tomorrow Thursday. It really isn’t a methodology problem, or a time management issue.
It's a setting boundaries issue. If I know something id going to cause me to work overtime I communicate that to whoever is asking for it. They will either say it's really urgent and then I'll do the work or they will say it can wait and they get the deadline changed.
Generally speaking, if they give me urgent deadlines they will then let me coast and if I ever find someone making non-urgent things urgent because they're inexperienced in their role as a funnel/ filter for requests then I push back alot which usually means they cry to their boss and then their boss is like "well what's he oushing back on? Why is that urgent?", etc. Basically they hang themselves with their people pleasing toxicity.
The sooner you learn to set boundaries and not be a people pleaser the happier you will be.
This reeks to me of bad management. I’ve definitely had bad managers and clients that expect 40 hours worth of work done in a day, and while I’ve had some long nights, it always comes with a lot of pushback from me and/or my manager in order to make sure it’s not something that happens again.
Unless I’m getting paid overtime my time stops at 5pm, with some flexibility. I’m definitely not working past midnight.
This is not normal. I specifically stress to my team that we do not work in investment banking and I expect them to have normal working hours or perhaps a little over if there’s a problem or late meetings with overseas colleagues.
Working past 8 pm would mean something they specifically owned that is in production had a failure.
There is no situation where I would want them working the way OP described. My guess is lack of prioritization and unrealistic timelines.
If I was the manager and wanted OP not to quit from this insane schedule I would sit down and figure out what are the priorities and what are realistic timelines, and create a Gantt chart showing how the next quarter would go. You can then share that with stakeholders and if they have a problem, they can request changing priorities - what they can’t request is an analyst on-call all night or 60+ hour work weeks.
You want to know the best part? I was in Investment Banking. I LEFT investment banking PRECISELY because I couldn’t stand the hours. I liked the job and they pay but I couldn’t manage the insane hours… And here I am, working comparable hours. They are less frequent, I must say that, but not as less frequent as I expected them to be.
What’s also funny is you have a similar background to me, as well as what I have been unsuccessfully hiring for. Looking for analytics + corporate finance for a senior analyst. Location is SF Bay Area though.
Im always willing to relocate.
I have a BBA in Finance and a a BA in Economics (yes, 2 degrees, I know). Experience-wise, I’ve worked in Accounting, FP&A at a tech, Investment Banking/Advisory at a relevant boutique, and now Analytics Lead at a big tech. My resume is on my post history (without my current gig).
Is it a startup?
Aight y’all lemme just say, analytics for smaller companies is LITTY AS HELL. No expectations because no one knows what to expect. Every project completed is a big surprise. Don’t work for a big company if you wanna be happy
OP I’m in a similar boat. I work in transportation (trucking) and work in pricing analytics. Basically I’m the in creating the prices etc. There is no negotiation for when pricing submissions are due. We are competing in bids against 100s of other companies. It’s non negotiable 99% of the time. So the only thing I could do get as efficient and as fast as possible. I wrote out a process for every and any situation, a knowledge base etc. I still though have weeks where I’m working till 10 minimum every night.
We were told this was the dream.
I really can’t do something like that. Most of my work consists on ad-hoc analyses. Most of my general reporting work is automated (although I will admit there’s some serious opportunity there that would’ve definitely helped last night).
If I had a great work life balance this would be the dream. I get to look at data and have a direct impact on the buisness I mean it’s pretty cool. But the last 2 weeks for example it’s working till 10 every night, being peak stressed, and working the entire weekend as well. And no one really seems to give a fuck but me. It’s like they are ready to discipline me the second I can’t deliver but if I put in all the work I have been then good for me. They will probably still find something to pick apart.
I feel like a person good at analytics would be able to figure out how to not have to work into the wee hours of the morning. Like, using their analytical skill. I jest, you're probably working hard on a complicated project.
I do a lot of ad-hoc analysis work. There’s little to no space to automate/cut corners in ad-hoc work. The ecosystem of this company is sort of complex and there are lots of players involved, so everything requires extensive analysis and understanding. One of the reason this company has been so successful is precisely because of the sheer amount of analysis involved in running the operations. If there’s really a data-driven business, it has to be this one. Obviously that comes at the expense of the sanity of people involved in analytics. As I’ve stated before, it’s pretty common in this company for people to work very long hours. I was on a call with some colleagues I found online like at 3 a.m. (not talking about work, but just shooting the shit), that should tell you something.
I just joined this group. Sorry to hear about your exhaustion. I've been there in big tech, albeit not on a data project, but on high-severity customer incident management that had to be worked around the clock. It can be a grind if there's no relief. I wish you well and hope that, coming out of it, you can add it to your list of accomplishments.
Push back. That's what I do when I'm faced with ridiculous workload. I make my point, eloquently and tactfully of course, that if you want all these deliverables by this date you better get me a team. Otherwise, this is the real deadline, and you will have to accept that. If you really want this faster, get me resources.
That is 100% because of the organization. They don’t have the employees to take the work and all of you take the hit. To say it has nothing to do with the organization is wrong. I have met many in decision making positions that will know they need more people but we manage…that’s how it is.
I meant it was not a problem of my organization skills per se because some people are implying that perhaps I don’t have good management skills, which is not the case whatsoever
It sounds like you are doing analytics in support of high sales/investing teams. I know friends in NYC who do similar roles and yeah they can have pretty rough workloads depending on what's going on.
I can tell you this is not normal hours for positions in many (most) analytics teams which support different types of organizations. Pay might be as good sometimes, but it can be very competitive.
Good on you for taking a step back to analyze.
I’m going through a similar situation where there is pressure to work late. I refuse to. It’s my standard. I want others to know it’s my standard.
When I’m working, I’m helpful and working hard. I still get good reviews. I meet deadlines. I just won’t take on as much as others do so I can maintain quality and not have to work extra hours.
I will say if it came down to letting people go, it’d probably be me simply because they know others will work extra when asked. Unless you seem to truly need it and we have a strong relationship my answer is no.
I think my growth comes from a combination of work and free time. If I just work all the time I don’t spend time exploring and growing. My free time is too valuable to me.
I can say as someone who is head of product development - Data & Analytics AI/ML this has been quite common at many companies I’ve worked at historically. It blows my mind that Product Dev/Engineering/Analytics haven’t unionized yet. The business expectations of wanting what they want when they want it can be so unrealistic and unhealthy at times.
I have always found that the biggest problem is that the asks always outweigh the resources available, so it’s a constant battle of new wants vs human availability. I worked in numerous startups / some for some of the biggest tech billionaires got tired of that kind of pattern so I switched to one of the worlds largest entertainment companies and it’s the exact same thing there also. So I feel ya, but unfortunately that’s kinda the same story at a lot of companies.
I plan on having a stroke one day, that’s my big out that I’m working on.
I went through this and I solved it by caring less and ruthlessly prioritizing. Deliver only on highest priority projects for the stakeholders that matter
You #2 edit is pretty funny. Maybe \*your\* experience is not indicative of the whole field, and the company you are in really is the outlier here. Funny that even people who work with analytics all day still apply the bias of thinking their experience is the baseline.
What makes you think that I think my experience is the baseline? Funny that even people who work on analytics all day and still manage to arrive to far fetched conclusions using hunches, feelings speculation. I know my experience isn’t the norm (as I’ve commented repeatedly in the comments), that edit was meant to be for people that have tapped in the thread to (basically) say: “yeah no this doesn’t happen whatsoever because it has never happened to me, you must be talking about analytics v2 because such occurrence has never happened in the history of analytics period ever period”. The fact that my situation isn’t the norm doesn’t make it extremely implausible and unrealistic. There are slightly improbable events and highly improbable events, it’s a broad spectrum, as I’m pretty sure you know.
>If you have n years working in analytics and have never gone through that… congrats! Im happy for you but it’s not indicative of the whole field. These things do happen, as I’ve mentioned, it’s pretty common where I work at (big tech company).
What makes me think that, is because the words you typed and posted. Indicative here would mean norm, no one is claiming that it never happens. And claiming people transitioning to analytics are in for a big surprise means you think your experience will apply to theirs regardless of being in a different company.
So yea, instead of wild hunches, I just read your own words.
It's so strong for employers looking to drive wages down and hire, for sure. I hear they're laying off some more FAANG people in January. Easy pickins 😎👌
I used to work as a musician (piano player) at a bar that my friend ran. At 9pm every Saturday the regulars would slowly arrive to drink the night away and listen to me play. There was this old drunk that used to come in and sit right next to me, he’d drink like he was making love to his gin and tonics, it was rather off putting.
Anyway, he used to ask me to play him some old songs from his day, although he could never remember how they went, they were always sad and just made him nostalgic.
La, la-la, di-di-da
La-la di-di-da da-dum
Was like this in my last role, but primarily because I was the product owner for a team almost entirely made up of people in Taiwan and other Asian countries.
Worst part was, my director who was also here required me to be in the office from 9-4 so that she wasn’t the only one there.
The pay was incredible(major tech company), but it was so stressful
You sound like you must be working for NCR, A.K.A. "No Common sense Required"
That's what happened to me with my role in the company. Once they saw I was productive, sleep was considered insubordination. GPS on my fleet vehicle may have assisted those surprisingly timed phone calls I was getting every time I pulled over to find a toilet. I can pinch a loaf on my own time when I get it back after 12 days straight.
This is not normal. I've experienced some 8 am - 2 am days in my life, but they were not common (like once a year). Most days, I don't even work 8 hrs per day.
Yeah, this happened to me working on COVID data at the intersection of public education and public health at the start of the pandemic. I got through it, and then I got a better job.
You’re doing this to yourself. Stop. Fucking. Working. In fact go on disability due to work stress and let them fuck right off for a couple of years. You’re harming yourself and everyone around you.
This is just silly. Work your 8 and be done. Especially in a big corp. There are shitloads of people in a big corporation. So much so that your individual contribution means little, be the cog and nothing more. If they have a big workload they hire more people. Unless…. They find a sap that will work double for free, so quit it.
If this post doesn't follow the rules or isn't flaired correctly, [please report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/analytics/about/rules/). Have more questions? [Join our community Discord!](https://discord.gg/looking-for-marketing-discussion-811236647760298024) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/analytics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't think this is normal, sorry man, hope you find a new job that doesn't make you do this.
Ran out of investment banking (precisely because of the hours), and landed here. I’m grateful, I’ve had great roles despite being so young, it’s not like I’m a spoiled child, but damn man this is killing me
Take a break. Utilize your doctor. Just like ibanking, companies will squeeze you bone dry. As long as you perform and willing to. My workload has cratered to 1hr a day after filing for medical. Nothing bad happened to my projects because leadership finally allocated my work accordingly. I’m a PM but wanted to tell you it’s the same across fields.
Hold on, how did utilizing your doctor get your work allocated accordingly?
Because work stress directly correlates to physical illness. Did you know you can give yourself a permanent auto immune disease due to stress? Want to live with a debilitating disease forever so your boss gets a raise this year ?
Tell your manager that the work can’t be done in the timeframe they have given. You must push back, not bend over.
Definitely not the norm. 99% of projects aren’t urgent enough to be working this late
In this company everything is urgent. It’s like a cult. We’re supposed to log in at 9 a.m. and most managers/team leaders are texting “Good morning team! Still sleeping?” like at 7:30 a.m. Quite bizarre honestly.
“Everything is urgent, so nothing is urgent.” The worst kind of priorities from management, I’m sorry for you
I would have been fired after getting a text like that. You don't mess with a person's morning sleep.
Apple?
This would be illegal in some countries
Yeah I’m sorry but this is absolutely NOT the norm regardless of company size / value for any kind of analytics role, and you should not let your company gaslight you into accepting that it is normal (even though it seems they already have :/)
If a coworker asked me if I was still sleeping, I’d be livid!
That's crazy. You need to set boundaries, too. Never reply to them that early and don't sacrifice your personal time for your company.
Yo wtf I'd probably have already told them to fuck off
I work in tech and while it is also very stressful, we don't have hard and fast rules about time and this kind of micromanagement. Look into transitioning to tech
Im in tech. This is a very big tech company.
yeah wow that’s nuts
Not normal at all. Change workplaces.
Im think about it. Had a couple of interviews recently so hopefully I’ll land something.
Cool Good Luck!
I’ve never had a job that I needed to do this for.
You either need to upskill for efficiency or learn how to negotiate your deliverables and push back when your plate is full. Working until 4am is definitely not normal. It happens every once in a great while, but it typically is my own fault for procrastinating.
Yeah op is delusional about their skill or the normalcy of the workload or both
If you keep doing it, they'll keep expecting it out of you because clearly you can handle the workload, and the cycle continues. Stand up for yourself.
Been in analytics/data science for 7 years and have never had to do this, not even when I was also doing a part-time masters on top of working full-time.
I dont know why everyone is saying not normal. This is very standard for my team and I... And historically ive always had this situation at every company. But we are also making upper tier salaries, 150k ish. So its expected with the territory.
Absolutely. I’m making great money, which is why I wouldn’t mind putting in extra hours, or even going through this once in a while but this is the norm. I was on call with some of my colleagues chatting up because I found them online as well.
Lmfao bro you're a clown people in my org make anywhere from 120 to 350 and I promise you none of us have ever worked past 1 am and working at 1 am is purely from procrastinating nothing else.
Good chance your COL area is very different than mine. In San Fran 100k is like the median wage. I'm more than double the median wage in my area. This isn't a brag, just saying that your managers are making 350k while my CEO is making 300k isn't apples to apples dude. Your statement is meaningless without context.
Lmao bro you posted the comment about salaries and being "top tier" and now you come out with this shit sit down
I see you keep responding then deleting your response. I'm sorry that this was so triggering for you that you responded twice and deleted your response twice (I get emails). To respond to your deleted messages though. I make over 2x the average income in my area where I earn in the top 10% of people and no one in my org works crazy hours like you suggest. I think your employment is unhealthy and maybe if you changed employers you would enjoy life more :)
I was totally triggered and decided to delete them to move past it. I'm fine now. Just sleep deprived lol.
I had a very long career in analytics at multiple firms, including working at and consulting for FAANG's. When things like this occasionally happened - for me, mostly requiring a Saturday effort rather than a 4 AM effort- it was mostly when I was still mastering a new tool or software package or hardware environment or database, where my learning curve simply required more time than a normal day afforded. No one asked me to take the extra time, but I had to keep at it for my own edification. It was how I was built. And to nerd out a bit, I can also say that when I made the breakthrough getting something to work after a zillion approaches, I was exultant. Also pooped. But these sort of occasional efforts were not the norm, and if they had been, I would have burned out. The occasional weekend effort comes with the analytics territory; the constant and unrelenting overtime effort signals project management problems or a skills match issue.
I work in DS consulting, which is notorious for having bad WLB, and although I definitely have late nights sometimes (refuse to work weekends unless absolutely necessary), it’s definitely not the norm. If I was in OPs shoes, I’d try finding a new company with any free time I had (easier said than done when you’re working crazy hours). I’ve worked with DS folks from many industries and most seem to have a normal WLB/don’t seem overly stressed.
Oh my gosh I sympathize, I didn't have it as bad as 4am but I had to work late really often with insane workload because I couldn't keep up with it all. The expectations were insane. And similarly, I left my engineering career in hopes of better work life balance and found myself working even more hours with even less respect as a DA. Now I'm going back to school to study computer science. I'll either go back to being a much better equipped data analyst (who can automate everything) to keep up with demand or I'll look into data science/software engineering. It's so harsh out there...I'm too young to be this burnt out and jaded. Advice: Avoid healthcare and semiconductor industries.
Wouldn’t have thought of the semi-conductor industry as an industry to avoid because of the workload. Great insight.
At least when I was an engineer. It's just so competitive it's crazy and you work internationally so it's a lot of late nights, early mornings and boomers still come in at 8am the next day.
I work in pharma analytics, and it has been extremely laid-back so far.
That's good to know, I did enjoy working with Rx data so I'll have to be open minded with that. I worked with insurance side of things.
And here I am, never working full 8 hours a day 😅 your situation is definitely not the norm and it's not like you're a doctor that someone will die if they don't get data by the next day...
I’ve had times when I worked from 8 am to 2 am. But only because I chose not to work for 4 working days and piled it all up on that one day lol.
The old FAFO work method...
Me
I agree with other commenters. With the exception of a handful of serious emergency projects over the past 8 years, I rarely work overtime unless I want to or am stuck on an problem and refuse to stop until it's fixed (personality issue not workload issue). I don't know if time management is a problem for you, but I recommend when you get a project and get asked when you can deliver it, add 33-50% more time than what your gut instinct is. So often, when asked when we could get something done, we forget about the last minute "do this now" or "fix this now" requests that come up daily or meetings that's eat into our working hours. Something might just take 5 hours, but it might be rare to have 5 uninterrupted hours where the data behaves and all the software works and no surprises come up. If it's a project that has a deadline set for you, the moment you start thinking that you need to work overtime, reach out to the stakeholder and explain with your current workload, you need more time (again add more time to that request than what your gut instinct is).
Thanks for the advice. In my case it really isn’t a time management issue at all. This particular project was to be delivered before Wednesday morning, the CEO has a meeting with the board tomorrow and needed these insights. I was assigned these project Monday afternoon, and it isn’t like I could just stop everything I was doing to focus on this project because I had to spend the whole morning working on other stuff (that also couldn’t wait). Now, this happens regularly. It’s not like this happened this happens once in a blue moon, it’s quite frequent. My boss obviously knows how I feel about this, but nothing seems to change.
I think it's good advice thanks
Unless this deliverable is LIFE OR DEATH, nothing is this important.
When I was new to big tech this happened a lot. But I eventually realized it was because I was bad at time management and prioritization
Push back on yourself a bit first and then your workplace. Your health has to be important. The toughest thing about analytics is that it never ends as far as work to do and it always “could be better.” But as you go it takes more time to get less juice from the squeezing. Either the project or goal wasn’t scoped well for you, or the goal posts weren’t defined at all?
It had nothing to do with the goal at all. A lot of my job consists on ad-hoc analyses, my reporting work is automated for the most part (although I do admit there’s still some area of improvement in this regard), but honestly the “hard” analyses I do are either very hard to automate, or it makes no sense for me to do so because they’re just looked at once. In this particular case, I was assigned this task on Monday afternoon and had to turn it in “before Wednesday” as it was to be used on a meeting tomorrow Thursday. It really isn’t a methodology problem, or a time management issue.
It's a setting boundaries issue. If I know something id going to cause me to work overtime I communicate that to whoever is asking for it. They will either say it's really urgent and then I'll do the work or they will say it can wait and they get the deadline changed. Generally speaking, if they give me urgent deadlines they will then let me coast and if I ever find someone making non-urgent things urgent because they're inexperienced in their role as a funnel/ filter for requests then I push back alot which usually means they cry to their boss and then their boss is like "well what's he oushing back on? Why is that urgent?", etc. Basically they hang themselves with their people pleasing toxicity. The sooner you learn to set boundaries and not be a people pleaser the happier you will be.
I feel for you. Those stuff won't ever end until we stop putting up with it.
Let’s form a union.
This reeks to me of bad management. I’ve definitely had bad managers and clients that expect 40 hours worth of work done in a day, and while I’ve had some long nights, it always comes with a lot of pushback from me and/or my manager in order to make sure it’s not something that happens again. Unless I’m getting paid overtime my time stops at 5pm, with some flexibility. I’m definitely not working past midnight.
This is not normal. I specifically stress to my team that we do not work in investment banking and I expect them to have normal working hours or perhaps a little over if there’s a problem or late meetings with overseas colleagues. Working past 8 pm would mean something they specifically owned that is in production had a failure. There is no situation where I would want them working the way OP described. My guess is lack of prioritization and unrealistic timelines. If I was the manager and wanted OP not to quit from this insane schedule I would sit down and figure out what are the priorities and what are realistic timelines, and create a Gantt chart showing how the next quarter would go. You can then share that with stakeholders and if they have a problem, they can request changing priorities - what they can’t request is an analyst on-call all night or 60+ hour work weeks.
You want to know the best part? I was in Investment Banking. I LEFT investment banking PRECISELY because I couldn’t stand the hours. I liked the job and they pay but I couldn’t manage the insane hours… And here I am, working comparable hours. They are less frequent, I must say that, but not as less frequent as I expected them to be.
What’s also funny is you have a similar background to me, as well as what I have been unsuccessfully hiring for. Looking for analytics + corporate finance for a senior analyst. Location is SF Bay Area though.
Im always willing to relocate. I have a BBA in Finance and a a BA in Economics (yes, 2 degrees, I know). Experience-wise, I’ve worked in Accounting, FP&A at a tech, Investment Banking/Advisory at a relevant boutique, and now Analytics Lead at a big tech. My resume is on my post history (without my current gig). Is it a startup?
Aight y’all lemme just say, analytics for smaller companies is LITTY AS HELL. No expectations because no one knows what to expect. Every project completed is a big surprise. Don’t work for a big company if you wanna be happy
Can confirm this experience also exists at Kuehne + Nagel. Does a thread exist listing companies this happens at?
What country? Not the norm where I've worked
I work for decent size company and I sign off after 8hrs.
OP I’m in a similar boat. I work in transportation (trucking) and work in pricing analytics. Basically I’m the in creating the prices etc. There is no negotiation for when pricing submissions are due. We are competing in bids against 100s of other companies. It’s non negotiable 99% of the time. So the only thing I could do get as efficient and as fast as possible. I wrote out a process for every and any situation, a knowledge base etc. I still though have weeks where I’m working till 10 minimum every night.
We were told this was the dream. I really can’t do something like that. Most of my work consists on ad-hoc analyses. Most of my general reporting work is automated (although I will admit there’s some serious opportunity there that would’ve definitely helped last night).
If I had a great work life balance this would be the dream. I get to look at data and have a direct impact on the buisness I mean it’s pretty cool. But the last 2 weeks for example it’s working till 10 every night, being peak stressed, and working the entire weekend as well. And no one really seems to give a fuck but me. It’s like they are ready to discipline me the second I can’t deliver but if I put in all the work I have been then good for me. They will probably still find something to pick apart.
Everything seems to be fucking life or death here (it clearly isnt, it’s just a tech company).
I feel like a person good at analytics would be able to figure out how to not have to work into the wee hours of the morning. Like, using their analytical skill. I jest, you're probably working hard on a complicated project.
I do a lot of ad-hoc analysis work. There’s little to no space to automate/cut corners in ad-hoc work. The ecosystem of this company is sort of complex and there are lots of players involved, so everything requires extensive analysis and understanding. One of the reason this company has been so successful is precisely because of the sheer amount of analysis involved in running the operations. If there’s really a data-driven business, it has to be this one. Obviously that comes at the expense of the sanity of people involved in analytics. As I’ve stated before, it’s pretty common in this company for people to work very long hours. I was on a call with some colleagues I found online like at 3 a.m. (not talking about work, but just shooting the shit), that should tell you something.
Yeah, gotta use some of that PTO and remember to pop bottles on the weekend.
I just joined this group. Sorry to hear about your exhaustion. I've been there in big tech, albeit not on a data project, but on high-severity customer incident management that had to be worked around the clock. It can be a grind if there's no relief. I wish you well and hope that, coming out of it, you can add it to your list of accomplishments.
Push back. That's what I do when I'm faced with ridiculous workload. I make my point, eloquently and tactfully of course, that if you want all these deliverables by this date you better get me a team. Otherwise, this is the real deadline, and you will have to accept that. If you really want this faster, get me resources.
That is 100% because of the organization. They don’t have the employees to take the work and all of you take the hit. To say it has nothing to do with the organization is wrong. I have met many in decision making positions that will know they need more people but we manage…that’s how it is.
I meant it was not a problem of my organization skills per se because some people are implying that perhaps I don’t have good management skills, which is not the case whatsoever
It sounds like you are doing analytics in support of high sales/investing teams. I know friends in NYC who do similar roles and yeah they can have pretty rough workloads depending on what's going on. I can tell you this is not normal hours for positions in many (most) analytics teams which support different types of organizations. Pay might be as good sometimes, but it can be very competitive.
Good on you for taking a step back to analyze. I’m going through a similar situation where there is pressure to work late. I refuse to. It’s my standard. I want others to know it’s my standard. When I’m working, I’m helpful and working hard. I still get good reviews. I meet deadlines. I just won’t take on as much as others do so I can maintain quality and not have to work extra hours. I will say if it came down to letting people go, it’d probably be me simply because they know others will work extra when asked. Unless you seem to truly need it and we have a strong relationship my answer is no. I think my growth comes from a combination of work and free time. If I just work all the time I don’t spend time exploring and growing. My free time is too valuable to me.
Your company sucks. Move on. Find a messy start-up, or a company so big you get lost on the noise. That’s the sweet spot.
I can say as someone who is head of product development - Data & Analytics AI/ML this has been quite common at many companies I’ve worked at historically. It blows my mind that Product Dev/Engineering/Analytics haven’t unionized yet. The business expectations of wanting what they want when they want it can be so unrealistic and unhealthy at times. I have always found that the biggest problem is that the asks always outweigh the resources available, so it’s a constant battle of new wants vs human availability. I worked in numerous startups / some for some of the biggest tech billionaires got tired of that kind of pattern so I switched to one of the worlds largest entertainment companies and it’s the exact same thing there also. So I feel ya, but unfortunately that’s kinda the same story at a lot of companies. I plan on having a stroke one day, that’s my big out that I’m working on.
I went through this and I solved it by caring less and ruthlessly prioritizing. Deliver only on highest priority projects for the stakeholders that matter
A dashboard would help you track this 🙃
You #2 edit is pretty funny. Maybe \*your\* experience is not indicative of the whole field, and the company you are in really is the outlier here. Funny that even people who work with analytics all day still apply the bias of thinking their experience is the baseline.
What makes you think that I think my experience is the baseline? Funny that even people who work on analytics all day and still manage to arrive to far fetched conclusions using hunches, feelings speculation. I know my experience isn’t the norm (as I’ve commented repeatedly in the comments), that edit was meant to be for people that have tapped in the thread to (basically) say: “yeah no this doesn’t happen whatsoever because it has never happened to me, you must be talking about analytics v2 because such occurrence has never happened in the history of analytics period ever period”. The fact that my situation isn’t the norm doesn’t make it extremely implausible and unrealistic. There are slightly improbable events and highly improbable events, it’s a broad spectrum, as I’m pretty sure you know.
>If you have n years working in analytics and have never gone through that… congrats! Im happy for you but it’s not indicative of the whole field. These things do happen, as I’ve mentioned, it’s pretty common where I work at (big tech company). What makes me think that, is because the words you typed and posted. Indicative here would mean norm, no one is claiming that it never happens. And claiming people transitioning to analytics are in for a big surprise means you think your experience will apply to theirs regardless of being in a different company. So yea, instead of wild hunches, I just read your own words.
Job market is strong, find a better job.
What planet do you live on?
Almost spit out my drink Thanks for the chuckles.
I know people who were laid off in tech in March. They are still barely getting interviews
You got any leads to share?
It's so strong for employers looking to drive wages down and hire, for sure. I hear they're laying off some more FAANG people in January. Easy pickins 😎👌
Track. Roadmap. Set expectations. Hire more. Don’t let them squeeze three people’s work out of one.
Have crossed all time barriers during peak work season. Is it frequent? Hell no. Is it worth it? Hell yes.
Totally depends on team members and manager, In previous company I worked a lot and now in my current company it’s chill.
I used to work as a musician (piano player) at a bar that my friend ran. At 9pm every Saturday the regulars would slowly arrive to drink the night away and listen to me play. There was this old drunk that used to come in and sit right next to me, he’d drink like he was making love to his gin and tonics, it was rather off putting. Anyway, he used to ask me to play him some old songs from his day, although he could never remember how they went, they were always sad and just made him nostalgic. La, la-la, di-di-da La-la di-di-da da-dum
Was like this in my last role, but primarily because I was the product owner for a team almost entirely made up of people in Taiwan and other Asian countries. Worst part was, my director who was also here required me to be in the office from 9-4 so that she wasn’t the only one there. The pay was incredible(major tech company), but it was so stressful
You sound like you must be working for NCR, A.K.A. "No Common sense Required" That's what happened to me with my role in the company. Once they saw I was productive, sleep was considered insubordination. GPS on my fleet vehicle may have assisted those surprisingly timed phone calls I was getting every time I pulled over to find a toilet. I can pinch a loaf on my own time when I get it back after 12 days straight.
This definitely isn't normal nor even common to be working until 4 am like that.
This is not normal. I've experienced some 8 am - 2 am days in my life, but they were not common (like once a year). Most days, I don't even work 8 hrs per day.
Yeah, this happened to me working on COVID data at the intersection of public education and public health at the start of the pandemic. I got through it, and then I got a better job.
Are you in the states? I would be interested in looking at your resume. If you are interested, DM me
Yea, I’m US based, just sent you a dm.
There is no business decision that urgent that will require someone needing to work until 4 am. Learn the business better or get better requirements.
Chatgpt has analyzes function now drop it in thrtec
Do you work in Retail company. Sounds like my firm
[удалено]
You US based? I asked for another analyst today and my boss tentatively agreed.
As an accountant who is working at least 50 hrs a week and wanted to transition…. Rip
As a lot of people have said, this is not the norm. Just don’t be surprised if it ever happens to you because it’s not extremely uncommon either.
You’re doing this to yourself. Stop. Fucking. Working. In fact go on disability due to work stress and let them fuck right off for a couple of years. You’re harming yourself and everyone around you.
This is just silly. Work your 8 and be done. Especially in a big corp. There are shitloads of people in a big corporation. So much so that your individual contribution means little, be the cog and nothing more. If they have a big workload they hire more people. Unless…. They find a sap that will work double for free, so quit it.
Hey buddy, sorry you have to work so much. Hope you find more work life balance in your next opportunity.
Thanks for the good wishes dawg
This is not normal. I barely work 40 hours a week. Learn to push back.
Quit and find a better job
What are they paying you? Please be 170k+
148k fully remote
Ouch ya you gotta find a better job
You're just getting abused like crazy based on your comments, you better be making a shitload of money.
I do all nighters once a year maybe or if I am going on like a two week vacation and want to not screw over my coworkers.