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Hello! You may have seen my name around Community lately but let me take this chance to formally introduce myself: my name is Megan Dibble, and I am the Data Journalist on the Community team.
Data Journalist? That’s a title?
That was my first thought when I interviewed for this position. I would never have imagined being in a role with the word “journalist” attached, but now that I know it exists, it feels like the perfect fit for me!
My career journey has been non-linear. And when I shared my path a few months ago with a Cal Poly data analytics class, I got feedback that it was encouraging for students to know that there are a million career paths out there and that developing data skills can open up lots of new opportunities.
So, I thought I would also share my journey here so that you can get to know me and maybe find some similarities in our experiences navigating the wonderful world of data.
College
I went to California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) for college and majored in Industrial Engineering! Nope, not bridge building (that’s Civil Engineering).
Industrial Engineering is all about improving processes and driving efficiencies. This is often done in the manufacturing industry; some examples are improving throughput on a manufacturing line, making a task easier or faster for workers, or helping the company save money by re-designing a process or the materials used.
I had two process improvement internships in the manufacturing industry, and I did not feel like it was the best fit for my personality and skills. What I enjoyed about both internships were the projects where I got to play around with data—whether in Excel, a SQL database, or Tableau. After the second internship, I realized I wanted to do something more related to technology and data rather than manufacturing.
My second internship was at the Tesla Gigafactory in Reno, NV 🚘. Yes, I saw Elon. No, we did not talk.
Something ironic happened after I left Cal Poly: they implemented two new courses on data analytics that were required for my major—I left right as “analytics” was becoming a buzzword in the department.
First Year Post-Grad
After graduating, I took a position as a Technology Consultant at RSM. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as technical as I thought it would be—I know, my fault for not researching it better… but I wanted to be employed. Meeting clients and acting as an “expert” while still learning the systems myself gave me lots of anxiety. I loved my coworkers, but I only lasted six months before the stress of it was too much for me. (I really admire folks that can succeed in consulting right out of college—it just wasn’t me.)
I was back to square one at the beginning of 2020 and decided that I wanted to apply for data analyst and data scientist roles based on my interest in working with data. The only problem was that I felt like I did not meet enough of the job posting criteria, especially on the data science side.
After much back and forth, I decided to do an online data science boot camp. It was a six-month crash course on data science designed to prepare you to switch career paths. I enjoyed the program overall and learned a lot about working with data. Of course, six months wasn’t enough to make me into a data scientist, but it helped me get my foot in the door (in an unexpected way).
While working on the course, I was encouraged to blog about my experience and what I was learning. It was a few months in when COVID-19 hit, so I quickly went from trying out blogging to making it my covid project/obsession. I began to enjoy writing about data science concepts to cement my learning and creating content for beginners since I saw most blogs were targeted toward those further in their careers with data.
Little did I know that this blogging hobby would totally change my career path!
This was my first blog profile pic 👩💻
Data Analytics
As I was finishing up my data science boot camp, I got a message on LinkedIn from someone hiring for their analytics team at Stanley Black and Decker. He had read my article Data Science Concepts Explained to a Five-year-old and thought I would be a good fit for their team.
I was a data analyst and then a senior data analyst at Stanley Black and Decker, and I learned so much about working with data. That is also where I learned Alteryx! I was truly “learning by doing” in the software, and after a few months, I was in love with it and upskilling others.
“Learn by Doing” happens to be the Cal Poly motto 🤓
I started using Alteryx to automate manual tasks that people around the company were doing in Excel. I also made some macros that we distributed and used internally. A few months in, I learned about analytic apps, and I enjoyed making those as well. As the team grew, so did the size and complexity of the projects. Soon, I was spending more time developing data ETL workflows to feed into PowerBI dashboards and learning about the databases and data governance that the company had.
I continued to write on Medium throughout my time at Stanley as I learned more about what it meant to be a data analyst. One of my most popular articles during this time was The Life of a Data Analyst. It was mostly me complaining in a creative way about the different challenges that I faced when working with data, but it resonated with lots of people!
One of my sketches from the article 🖊
Towards the end of my time at Stanley, I was a part of a group that was working on developing a data literacy curriculum and content for the company. This helped me see that data literacy is a topic I am passionate about and that I enjoyed being a part of these “thought leadership” types of discussions.
Data Journalism
My job change came about the same way as before: @NeilR read one of my articles, 7 Alteryx Best Practices to Simplify Your Life, and then later reached out about a position on his team as a Data Journalist. I was pretty excited because this meant I could do the data analytics blogging I did in my free time for fun as my full-time gig.
Now I’ve been on the community team for about four months, and it has been so fun. I’ve gotten to know some of our ACEs for the spotlight blog series, learned a lot about Alteryx’s cloud offerings, and seen Alteryx from "the other side.”
When people ask me what my job is, sometimes I struggle to describe it because, at my core, I feel more like an analyst than a writer or content creator. But the last few years have taught me that I can be defined by more than one thing.
And, of course, I am more than the sum total of my professional experiences as well! I have lots of hobbies, including hiking, rock climbing, reading, snowboarding, and cooking. And eating… if that counts. I am located in Denver, Colorado, and I live with my cat Callie. I am also a big coffee person.
Callie the cat 🐱
I am excited to continue learning and using Alteryx in new ways to create helpful and engaging content. If you want to connect, please send me an invite on LinkedIn. I look forward to getting to know you better!
If you are thinking about changing career paths and getting into a data field, check out the resources that the SparkED program has for career changers!
