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AI is advancing fast, and most data analysts aren't ready for what's coming. But here's the thing: AI won't replace you, it'll just change how you work. I break down what the future of data analytics actually looks like and how you can prepare yourself to thrive in it.

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⌚ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 AI is changing data analytics faster than we can keep up

01:00 Claude Code and the AI revolution in software development

03:00 Why AI won't take your data analyst job (it's just a tool)

06:20 From individual contributor to AI manager - the mindset shift

08:08 Focus on the "what" and "when", not just the "how"

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https://datacareerjumpstart.com/daa

Avery Smith-1: You're not ready for the

next phase of data analytics because

2

there is a lot going on with AI right

now and it is impossible to keep up.

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And I'm guessing that most of you

guys who are listening are not ready

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for what's coming and I don't even

know if I'm ready for what's coming.

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But in this episode, I will try to

explain what I see coming in the

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near future with data analytics and

becoming a data analyst as well as.

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Tell you how you can prepare yourself

for that future to best succeed, give

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yourself the best chance of landing a

data job, getting promoted, and ultimately

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succeeding in the data analytics field.

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But if you're new here,

my name is Avery Smith.

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I help people land their first data job.

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I've worked with companies like

ExxonMobil, Harley-Davidson, hp, and a

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lot of other companies help analyze data,

and now I make contents teaching people

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about how to land their first data job.

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Now, lemme tell you what's going

on with AI and why I think the

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future, we're not prepared for it.

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So AI is getting better every single

day at a lot of different tasks.

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And I think the most recent groundbreaking

moments where I've been reading

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a lot online, specifically in the

software development space on Twitter,

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some people are calling it like a.

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Gutenberg Grass Moment, it's Claude Code.

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If you've never heard of Claude Code,

it's from a company called Anthropic.

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They make a very similar product

to Chatt called Claude, but they

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also have a programming version

that's called Claude Code.

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And Claude Code is just like really good.

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It's basically like an AI

programmers way you can think of it.

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And they just recently released

what's called Claude Cowork, which is

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supposed to be code for non-coding.

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Task.

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I've played around with it.

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I haven't been super

blown away or shocked yet.

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In fact, a lot of times it hasn't worked.

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But a lot of developers are

pretty impressed with clot code.

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It's probably the number one AI product

that's being talked about right now, and

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people are using it to build all sorts of

different software, uh, a lot faster, a

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lot quicker, a lot cheaper than you know.

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Development has happened in the past,

and I think that data is a little

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bit behind software in terms of the

adoption of ai, but I think that's

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where we're going to in the future.

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So down the road, maybe it's

Claude Cowork, I don't know.

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I don't think it is, but there's

gonna be some sort of a tool that

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can basically replace a data analyst.

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Now when I say replace a data analyst, I

don't actually mean take a data analyst.

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Job.

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I see AI only as a tool that people

are going to use to do their jobs

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better, and I'll explain why.

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I think that's the case.

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I'll make my argument and how really

AI just shifts how we work instead

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of, I guess, how much we work.

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Going back to this cloud code

thing, the biggest thing that I

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think has happened is this is the

number one AI product on the marker.

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Right now.

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Everyone loves cloud code and recently

at the developer, the main guy for

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Claude Code has revealed that all the

updates to Claude Code were actually.

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Built by Claude Coate.

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Now that's really meta, but basically

this AI tool is building itself.

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Now, that's not to say that, that

there's not like a whole team behind it.

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There definitely is, and humans are still

needed, but the idea that this number

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one AI tool is actually built by the

number one AI tool is pretty impressive.

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So I think this is a moment where we all

need to sit back as data analysts and

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be like, what does the future look like?

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And first off, I wanna say, I don't think

much is gonna change in the near future.

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Companies are really slow to adopt ai,

like terribly slow to adopt anything

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new, and it's gonna take a long

time to get inside of corporations

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and actually get things to work.

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So that's the first thing.

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In the near future, I don't see a

whole lot changing necessarily, but

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let's say five years down the road,

what does it actually look like?

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And I don't think AI

is gonna take your job.

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I don't think if you're trying to break

in the data analytics that you should,

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you know, go somewhere else, try something

else, because AI is gonna take over.

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I don't think that's the case.

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I see it more of a, as like a

hammer, like a tool, and I think

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it's going to change how we work.

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Now, this has actually happened many

times before and unfortunately I'm not old

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enough to remember a lot of them, right?

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But like, obviously I'm shooting

this right now on my iPhone.

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This episode, I'm recording

it on these wireless mics.

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These didn't exist.

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20 years ago, and now it completely

changes the way that we do video, that

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we do content, those types of things.

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Technology ends up just changing how

our job looks, not necessarily the

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problems that we're actually solved.

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Another example, I don't know if you

guys have seen the movie Hidden Figures.

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I know there's a book, but basically it's

about these three African American women.

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In the United side of the United

States that work for nasa, and

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they're basically math computers.

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They're hand doing math

calculations for space shuttle

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landings and stuff like that.

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Now, I haven't admittedly worked

for nasa, although one of my

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students, uh, who graduated from

my bootcamp, landed a job at nasa.

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So maybe we can ask him.

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Evan, if you're listening, um.

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I don't think they're doing like a lot of

hand calculations like at NASA right now.

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Maybe they are.

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Maybe they are.

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Maybe.

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I don't know how it is, but my guess

is they're using a lot of computers

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and it's like these mathematicians,

let's just say that when computers

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came out, did they lose their job?

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No.

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Their job just transferred from doing

the math calculations by hand to doing

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the math calculations on a computer.

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And that's honestly how I see the

future of data analytics going is that

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data analysts might not be doing their

analysis in Excel or SQL or Python in

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the future, but they'll be doing their

analysis in some sort of AI tool, some

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sort of cloud code tool, some sort of

whatever AI tool you wanna, you know,

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chat GBT interface to analyze their data.

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And I don't think that those

tools are going to be able to

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do things without the humans.

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Now is cloud code programming itself?

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Yes.

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But there's supervision and that's

the big thing I wanna talk to you

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is about the future of maybe every

job is less about doing the job.

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And more about becoming

a little supervisor.

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And I've heard the CEO of multiple

companies talk about this.

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I'm forgetting the one where I

specifically heard this in some interview,

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but basically like he sees individual

contributors now becoming like managers

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to many AI services down the road.

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And so instead of being individual

contributor, we're all becoming managers,

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managing like little AI employees.

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Is that going to happen?

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I don't know.

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But I definitely think that we are all

going to be doing less hands-on tasks.

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We're going to be getting

AI a lot more of the tasks.

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So our job becomes less of an instrument

player, more of a conductor, less

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of a writer, more of an editor,

you know, more of a manager role

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where we're actually like, we're

setting things up at the beginning.

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Um, and it's really interesting because,

you know, five years ago when I quit

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my, my data scientist job at ExxonMobil.

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I was just an individual

contributor at ExxonMobil.

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I was working on different AI

projects and it was a lot of fun.

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I had a lot of fun.

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I wasn't a manager at all.

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I quit my job.

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I started my own business, and over the

last five years we've grown quite a bit

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to the point now where I have like a small

team of, let's just say five to 10 people.

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All of a sudden, I'm a manager now and

I don't know what the heck I'm doing,

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but it's really interesting because the

way I manage employees is also the way

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I've realized that you need to manage

AI as well, and that's number one.

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You need to set the right expectations.

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You need to give them all the

resources upfront so that way they can

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actually know what they need to do.

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It's just really been an interesting

process where it's like at the beginning

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you have to do a lot of work to set up

everything correctly, and at the end

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you have to do a lot of work to make

sure that your employees did everything

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correctly to your liking that they,

you know, didn't mess anything up.

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And so it's like a lot of work at the

beginning to set things up, a lot of work

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at the end to make sure everything went

well and some back and forth in between

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to make sure that it stays on task right.

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And I'm, I'm not trying

to liken employees, ai.

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My point here is we're all

gonna have the mindset of being

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conductors have the bigger vision.

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And what that means for you specifically,

especially for those of you who are trying

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to land your first data job, is the what

or rather, the how of doing data analytics

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that we've been so focused on as like

a culture and a society for the last 10

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years is gonna matter a lot less like the

tutorials of how to do things in Excel.

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The tutorials in Power BI or

sql, they're gonna matter less.

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I still think they're gonna be important.

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I still think there's gonna

be a lot of data analysts.

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In fact, basically my job at Exxon, this

is before AI even really existed, right?

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My job at Exxon was to basically use

mathematics and machine learning to do

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someone else's job, to do a trader's job.

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So I worked on buying oil from

all around the world, right?

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And in the past, historically, there

was just kind of a buyer, well, their

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gut feeling and maybe some like stock,

like, oh, this stock's up so we're

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gonna buy this oil, or whatever, right?

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My job was to create math to make the

right decision on what oil to buy.

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And then also another project

I worked on was where should we

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send gasoline to around the world?

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Like wherever you're living at

right now, your local ExxonMobil gas

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station, how much gasoline is there

right now in like their storage?

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That was my job.

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And before, once again, it was like

a trader who would do that basically.

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And my job was to use math

to replace those people.

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It wasn't actually to replace those

people, it was to supplement those people.

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Those people, their job

wasn't in jeopardy at all.

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I was helping them create tools to

do their job faster and more accurate

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and with more confidence, and that's

how I kind of see it being with AI as

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well, is it's really just something

that's not gonna replace us, it's

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just going to supplement our work.

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What that means for you specifically is

like, it might not be as important to

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know the difference between Index match

and Excel and a an X lookup like that

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might not be as important down the road.

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I think is really important and the

thing that I'm not prepared for, the

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thing that you're probably not prepared

for and something that I really hope

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to be doing more on this channel,

on this podcast and in my newsletter

188

is talk more about the why are we

doing this or the, what are we doing?

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So not necessarily how to do

something, but the why and the what.

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That is what I think is going to

be the most important thing down

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the road, is knowing what to do

when not necessarily how to do it.

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'cause I think AI is gonna know how to

do it, and I think we're gonna use AI

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most of the time to know how to do it.

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I still think it's really important

to learn the how to make sure

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that AI is doing it correctly.

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But I think the what and the

when is what really matters.

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And so what I'm actually doing

is I run a bootcamp, it's called

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Data Analytics Accelerator.

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We'll have a link to the show notes

down below if you wanna, if you're

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curious, you wanna check it out.

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I think I need to go through the

entire thing again and really

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focus on the what and the when.

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'cause the how I've been, I've

nailed the, how we have had so many

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students go through this program.

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They've really enjoyed it.

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They become great data

analysts at the end of it.

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But I think the most important

thing is going through and going

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through, okay, why are we doing this?

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When would you do this again?

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You know, how did I know to do this?

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How did, how should you know to do this?

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When you get a data set in the future,

what are some different things that you

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can do with it and when would you do it?

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When is it appropriate?

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That is what's going to be.

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That's what's gonna make you a Golden

data analyst in this new era of ai, and

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I really hope that I will be part of

your journey in learning how to do that.

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So that's why it's really important

that no matter what you're listening,

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you hit subscribe and you stay tuned

because over the next six to 12 months,

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I'm gonna be hitting this really hard

and I don't want you guys to miss out.

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So thanks for listening, and

I'll catch you in the next one.