 Hello, hello, test, test, test. I'm checking everything. So if you can see me now, I'm starting a little bit early. I'm just making sure everything's working. Over here, I have a cough drop in. I'm looking at the quality because believe it or not, let me see if this is working. Okay, it's good enough quality. All right, here's the thing, everybody. I'm gonna be straightforward with you. I, my laptop crashed, if you didn't know, my laptop completely crashed. I'm looking over here at my screen real quick. I do actually, when I started everything or my computer broke, I restarted everything. So I had to download all my software again. I lost all my settings on OBS. So everything that you're looking at right now is like me starting from scratch. So it's not as good quality it looks like. I'm just looking at it. Doesn't look as good a quality. I'm gonna work on this, I promise you. But I'm like restarting everything. But hey everybody, great to have you guys here. Let's see, I see a ton of people in the chat I already recognize. Hey Matthew, what's going on? I see a ton of people. Now listen, I got, I started a little bit early today. Is the audio good? I always need feedback. Again, this is like the first stream since my computer completely crashed. So I'm like restarting everything. I have like audio. I don't think my, the visuals is good. Bitrate is a little low. Let me see if I can change that. I changed my bit rate low on purpose. Let me try to increase it and see what happens. All right, I just increased my bit rate. We'll see if it's any good. If it messes things up, that's Matthew's fault. So let's see, let's see. All right, we'll see if it gets better. If it doesn't, I apologize. Listen, I will make things better in the future. Hopefully at least my audio is good. If you haven't been to a live stream before, this isn't how I normally am. I have a sore throat today, but I had already scheduled a live stream. I'm not quitting on you guys because of some ailment. So this is literally just a time for you guys to ask questions, get feedback. I have, I got lots of stuff going on over here, but I'll focus more in just a second. So this is really just for anybody to ask questions. Normally people, yeah, I have good wifi. I have good wifi, who's asking that? Zachary, geez, this guy. Yeah, actually it's not great wifi. I live on like the suburbs and the wifi's okay. I have the highest plan that they could sell me. So what we're gonna do is this is for you guys. This is just for you guys to ask questions. I started this because unfortunately like my channel's gotten too big where I can't answer every question on YouTube or like in the YouTube comments anymore, it's just I get hundreds a day. And I get LinkedIn messages, Instagram, Twitter messages. I just, I can't keep up unfortunately because of my job and my family and having to take care of them. But I do, I always want to answer your questions and give back and this is what this is for. So audio's fine, perfect. So that's what this is for. Hopefully I can answer most of your questions. Usually I can answer most, although sometimes I accidentally skip it and the chats always, the way that YouTube chat works is on my side at least, it's always really weird. Okay, I'm just changing, I'm changing where that is. Perfect. So Arian, don't spam in the chat, you'll get blocked. I got Matthew up in here. He will block you in a heartbeat. That's my guy. I don't know where CJ is today. You probably didn't know I was doing a live stream. That's okay. All right, we're gonna get started and real quick, this is gonna be also my like pseudo 400K live stream. I just have like, ever since I quit my job, I've been like full on working 24 seven, trying to like get my business up and running. And so I don't know if I have another time to do the 400K live stream in like a couple of days. So there's gonna be like a celebration of the channel, a celebration of you. And hopefully we will go through this together. I had to block Arian. I'm sorry, look, I don't like spamming in the chat. That's not cool. All right, let's see. So I'm gonna start answering questions. We're just gonna go from there. My wife telling me. My wife is sending me text messages. Let me see this. I don't recognize this guy. She wants me to know if I know this person. I have no idea who that was. All right. So let's take, hey, Matthew, don't worry about it, man. I know you're, this is like secondary and I get it. I can take care of one person. That's all right. All right guys, but for real. We started early. That's why I'm just like chatting. I usually jump straight in because I want to answer a ton of questions. Now these live streams are pretty chill. I got my water, I got a cough drop. I'm just trying to survive over here, but I'm gonna try to answer questions as best I can. So let me start reading through, see what we get. Can we become a data analyst? You say or ask, can we become a data analyst without Python? 100%. I didn't learn Python until about a year and a half after I became a data analyst. I just use SQL and Tableau and Excel. Those are like the main things I used. No, Python's not a requirement. I just recommend it. I think it's awesome. Let's see. Is it mandatory to learn? So MR, blah, blah, blah. That's his name. Is it mandatory to learn Python with MySQL connectivity? No, no it's not. Although it's great when you can connect everything and get access to databases and stuff. It's really great. Let's see. Here's my, I'm looking over here because this is where the chat is. LadyVenom241 asks, or says, it stresses me out how many things there is to learn to become a data analyst. Yeah, let me tell you something about that because I want to speak to a little bit. I think I skipped it quite a bit. Hey, Melody. How's it going? Thanks for joining. Give me a second. I was in the middle answering a question. Melody's always been there. I got to give her a shout in a second. LadyVenom, take my data analyst bootcamp on YouTube, write that playlist. There's a lot in there. And that's usually like, I would say the beginner to intermediate stuff. Like if you learn everything in that bootcamp, that's a lot, a lot of stuff. I don't even think you need to know everything in there. What I would really focus on and start with is really SQL. That's what got me through my first year and a half-ish or two years of being a data analyst. In fact, I don't even think I needed to learn Python to even get a good job. It did end up helping me, but it wasn't like a requirement. So don't get caught up so much on having to learn everything because there's a lot. Everything in that bootcamp is like what I've learned over the past five years or at least like the beginner and intermediate stuff over the past five years. And that's a lot to learn in several months and like retain and understand. I'd say start with SQL, start with Excel, start with Tableau or Power BI. Just learn those three. You can learn those three skills, you can get a job. Like I fully am 100% confident that you can get a job with those three skills if you're good at them. You can market yourself well, good resume, all that stuff. I'll keep going with the questions in a second. Hey, Melody, how's it going? Thanks for joining. You didn't have to do that, but I appreciate you being here. She comes like all the live streams, comments a lot, very many a question. I always appreciate that. I usually am pretty good at recognizing people who come to all the stuff. Melody's been one of them for quite a while. Let's go down, let's see. This seems too composed for a live video. I think that's a good thing. My current bit rate is lower than recommended. We recommend higher. Let me increase my, well, how's the video, guys? Again, I had to redo this. It looks fine, I'm not messing with it. I'm gonna increase the bit rate for next, I'll increase the bit rate for next stream, but if it's working right now, I'm not gonna change it. Again, if you guys are just joining, my computer crashed. Like it just straight up like blue screened me, couldn't do anything, I couldn't work for like a week, it was horrible. I just got at my laptop and then I bought a backup laptop. And all my settings are gone. So like I'm starting from scratch, I'm just gonna apologize right now, it's not good. All right, let's keep going with questions. Well, or just comments. I like to read those too. But it says, hi, I'm Leo Infant, said, hi, I'm from Mexico, I'm taking your data in those bootcams, awesome. Make it happen, take it, it's free. I don't see why not, it's good stuff. Honestly, I wish there was something like that when I first started out. I like paid for everything, paid for most of my stuff, like on Udemy and stuff, which I still recommend. I don't wanna go down that rabbit hole. But yes, my bootcamp is great, I'm glad you're taking it, hope it helps. I don't wanna learn Python, Lisa, I get it. You don't have to learn Python. Most data analyst jobs don't require Python. Most are just working with databases. So if you know something like MySQL or SQL Server or even some need like Microsoft Access, which I've used in the past, database knowledge is more important than Python knowledge, for sure. Greetings to your wife, oh, I'm behind on chat, aren't I? Yeah, greetings to my wife. Yeah, my wife is texting me, she doesn't know I'm doing a live stream right now. Let's see. This is interesting, okay. So this is something that a lot of people have been asking me, a lot, and this is not the only first one. This is some Osa, Kanai, Nana, Ya, Esando. I butchered that name, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to sign it up phonetically to, you know, give you a shout out for asking a cool question. This please, how do you earn your first remote job or remote role after learning to become a data analyst? I'm from Ghana. So I have actually, I have a large crowd in Africa, I have a large crowd in South America and Asia and Europe and other places, but some of these places, they don't have a huge community in their country for need for data analysts. And so they look outside of their country. Typically, they're looking in Europe and they're looking in sometimes Germany as well and then in the United States and sometimes Canada as well. Like those are the bigger markets for data analysts. So how do you get a role? If you're in these countries that don't have as many jobs available, you're trying to find a remote job. So I get asked this a lot. I've done a bit of research, talked to some people. It's not super straightforward, but here's what I know and this is from not experience, unfortunately, because I'm in the United States, but here's what I can at least recommend. There are a lot of large consulting companies that take people from other countries or have locations in other countries. For example, I was working with somebody who are kind of like, not fully mentoring, but just kind of like helping them guide them. And they were from, let's say Uganda, I can't remember off the top of my head. And I said, well, do you have any consulting companies over there that will consult into other countries? And he's like, yes. And so I said, you know, those are the companies that I would start targeting. Things like Tata Consulting Services or company, TCS. Things like, oh, what's that other one? Not in my head, it's Alteryx, but that's not correct at all. I may have to Google it. But these other consulting companies, now they can be a little bit competitive, but that's how you get your foot out of the door. Typically there's somewhat less competition in not as populated areas. So if you're not living in the United States, you're not living in these other places, it's not as competitive. That's one way to do it. The other way is freelancing. This is something I actually did at the beginning. I don't talk about it a lot. Freelancing in terms of, I would actually, well, I call it freelancing. What I did was is I went to like local nonprofits and I said, hey, I'd be willing to do this for free. I saw your website. I noticed you have some graphs and charts and stuff. And I think I could really help you guys out. And so I volunteered and did some freelance work that I then put on my resume, which I think was really, really helpful. And so even doing free work at the beginning can be helpful to get some experience on your resume. Now remote work is super popular right now. A lot of people want to work remote. I think the biggest competitive edge is just a great resume. I just recorded a resume video yesterday. I will be editing that, hopefully putting that in the next few weeks with a template to a resume that, or the template of my current resume, as well as like tips and how to formulate everything and just, you know, I recommend that resume. So I'll have that in a couple of weeks. But a really great resume, super important. So those are like some high level things that I would be looking into. Again, that's not my like expertise. I don't have any experience in that. It's just kind of like what I've been finding. Off-drop's almost gone, guys. We'll be good in just a second. I'll start talking normal again. I'm gonna chew it. Don't judge me. Don't judge me. Yeah, it's saying my bit rates low. I'm just going with it. Let me see. It seems fine. It's just a little blurry. YouTube doesn't, YouTube, hate it when they do that. Okay. Roy Moore, great, great-er-all. By the way, Rosie's underneath me. She got spayed two days ago. So she's feeling a little slumpy. So she's just been laying under me the entire day kind of sleeping. So if she gets up and starts attacking me, which she does every so often, because she wants attention and love, just it's okay, it's normal. But his question was, hi, Alex, it's hard to find a job. They require a lot of things like cloud, other skills, and sometimes it's frustrating. That is completely normal. I just wanna reassure you, most jobs overload the things that they need on their job descriptions for several reasons. Let's say they only use SQL and Azure. If they just put SQL and Azure on a job description, do you know how many people will apply who only know SQL and Azure? Even though they'd be a great fit. You know how many people will apply? Hundreds, especially at the beginner level, because that's not a lot of requirements. What they are trying to do is they're trying to weed out some people who don't as confident in their skills who don't think they'll get the job and they wanna apply. So then only mid-level or higher-level people with experience will apply to these jobs because they have a lot more requirements. Even though they don't really need that. That's the mentality and I know that because I had to do it. Or at least HR made me do it at my last company. I was like, I only need these three skills. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You have to buy our guidelines of how we make these job descriptions. HR made me add more skills just to give you some context. So I don't agree with it, but that happens all the time. My usual rule of thumb is if you have 30% to 40% of the skills that they list, you should feel confident applying. So if there are 10 skills, if you have three or four of them, especially if they're like the main ones, if you have like, if they want SQL, they want Excel and you have the main skills and you don't have things like maybe Alteryx or a Cloud Platform, maybe some other of these smaller skills like SPSS and something like that still apply. That's kind of my general rule of thumb. So it's definitely frustrating, but keep applying, have a really good resume, a really good portfolio and that'll do you a lot of justice. Let's see. What are your thoughts about R? All right, I joke about R all the time. I just, I've used both in the workplace. I learned R in my job. I never like study. I've never taken a course on R. I just learned it from the data scientists I was working with. I like R, there's nothing against it. I just, for what I use it for, for the things that I like Python for R just can't do all those things. So that's why I like, I prefer Python more, but for more statistical heavy jobs R actually makes more sense. So like financial analysts, they can use Python, but I've seen they use R quite a bit. And then for like even data science stuff, R can be quite useful as well. So there really is no perfect solution for everything. Python has locks and things and excels in things, R locks and things and excels in things. Just, you know, what are you gonna use it for? What's your use case? And then go from there and kind of go from there. I would learn both if you can. I know up to like a medium level in R where I think I'm more advanced in Python, but I just don't use R as much. So let's see. I'm reading questions real quick. Is it mandatory to learn SQL? I've heard of people not learning SQL and getting data analyst jobs. I've heard of it. I have never myself worked with somebody who hasn't, who has, actually that's not true. I have, I worked with somebody who got in a job that was 95% Excel and then like a little of something else and had no SQL. That happens. But it's just not, in my opinion, it's just not smart to ignore SQL. Like I just, I would never recommend that. I would never be like, hey, I'll get this 5% of jobs or 10% of jobs that don't care about SQL. Like it's just the numbers would never support that. Like if you look at the data, it would never support it. And to give a small little shout out to Luke Barus, he just, he just released a video on like where he scraped data from LinkedIn and made like a web application using Streamlit, which is really cool. And the stuff that he scraped, it even said like 75 or 85% of jobs want SQL. It's like the top skill. So, you know, you're cutting, if you don't know SQL, you're cutting yourself out of like 85% of the available jobs. You know, just my, just my two cents. Oh, it did that thing where it skips down. I hate it when it does that. YouTube always does this to me. Always does that to me. I have to scroll way back up because there was a ton of questions up here. Thank you, Matthew for linking the bootcamp. I appreciate it. It's free. It's free. Okay, so laptop's under $500. If you're just starting out, you don't have a ton of money. Totally normal. That's where I was. I got a Google Chromebook and it worked great. It's not a lot of RAM, not a lot of memory. Your stuff is gonna be in the cloud, but you know, you can learn. The whole point is like to get a laptop to learn and be able to do stuff. The Google Chromebook is like, you can get the ones that I bought was like 200 bucks when I bought it like five years ago. So just super, you know, so super cheap laptop is you don't need a lot to get started. Now what I have, I need more memory. I need more stuff. I do more advanced things. So I actually need a faster processor and more memory and more storage and stuff like that. But when you're first starting out just to learn, you do not need a crazy expensive computer. Chromebook is great. Do a playlist on exploratory data analysis and data wrangling. Well, I have videos on that. So if you wanna do like projects and stuff, I have projects on that. Your data analytics playlist is enough to get an internship. Take that as a statement. Yes, if you learn everything in the bootcamp or that playlist, you know more than most people starting out. That is a fact. All right, let's see. Holy mackerel, do we have 300 people in here right now? So many people. No, okay, well, that may make sense. Normally on my live streams, I do them late at night. Like it's 10 o'clock. It's 10, 15 my time right now. They usually have like 200, 300 is a lot. I don't usually get this many people. Hey everybody, that's cool. I'm glad everybody could come. Yeah, just apply anyway. That's what Zachary Clark said, just apply anyway. I agree. Let's see. I got a lot of questions. I'm trying to kind of skim through them, which ones I haven't already seen. So if I didn't see yours or I skipped yours, may or may not be because I've already answered it. I'm just reading questions. Hey Daniel, are you Daniel from Twitter? Cause I see you on Twitter all the time tweeting stuff at me and I always like it and stuff. And it looks like to you. Hey Daniel, what's going on? I'm telling you, I got like a mind, after doing YouTube for like over three years, I like can spot people's profile pictures and names like pretty quick. So if that's not you Daniel, I will be shocked. I'm looking for more questions. Okay, now it's more of a, I think it's actually a question. Your data analytics bootcamp is enough for getting an internship. Look, internships are for learning. You don't need to know everything going into an internship. In fact, I never did an internship. I wish I had, but I wasn't, I didn't know I wanted to get into this field until after college. If you can do an internship, even free or paid, go for it, especially like in between years in college. Like that's ideal. You get some experience on your resume. You can like point to certain skills that you've worked on. Definitely recommend it. And yes, like the stuff in the bootcamp, that's way more than anyone needs for an internship. Internship is for learning. Uzair said, my teacher told me to do SQL, DWS, SSIS and Power BI slash tab below. It's DWS, a warehouse. I don't know, let me know what DWS is in the chat. But yeah, though that sounds great. SQL, Tableau, SSIS is like, I don't know if you needed to learn that. I've used it like two years and I wouldn't recommend it for people starting out, but sure you can. Doesn't hurt. Let's see. Interesting. Okay, I'll read the song. I'll kind of figure it out as I'm going because I didn't read up through all of it. Jimmy de la Terga said, I'm graduating from Information Science Masters in December, congrats of 2023 to the end of this year. When do you recommend me to start applying for the IT field? I currently have zero years experience. Now, if you're right out of college or you're getting your masters, I typically recommend like three months before you graduate, you should start making connections, start working with recruiters and say, hey, I'm graduating then. Let's try to get something set up because it's not like a straightforward process. If you start right after you graduate, it's going to take three, four, five, six months to land a job and then you're out of work for six months, right? So, I highly recommend trying to set something up like three months before, four months before you actually graduate. That would be my recommendation. Let's see. Okay, this one's interesting. Rydia Ali said, hello, I have an interview tomorrow for a fraud insight analyst. That sounds super cool. Way cooler than just like my data analyst job title, Fraud Insight Analyst. I love that. During the interview, I need to do math test. Any idea what could come up? I think math and data analytics in general is super varied, but it could be distributions for math. Yeah, it could be distributions. It could be like some type of regression analysis for like fraud insight analyst. I'm trying to think of what they might do. It's really tough to say. I would just Google it honestly because that's not my specialty. I don't know everything a fraud insight analyst would do. I would be Googling it and try to find something but a math test. I've never taken a math test in an interview before. Usually like a technical skill. I don't know. I don't know. Well, good luck. I hope you nail it. Do you think a master's in information science degree will be a good fit for data analyst job? Yes. In fact, I just spoke at my old college in their master's of information science degrees and they recommend people going to like data science, data engineering, data analytics. And so I went back and spoke with them. And a lot of people were like, data analytics is a good for like when you're first starting out. I think it's a fantastic place. You can start out in data analytics and move to data science or data engineering or you can just stay in data analytics and make a career out of it. I mean, a lot of options. But it's a really good career option to start out in. How important is Python? Yeah, I already talked about that. You know, it's not as important at the beginning. You could probably never learn Python to be fine. But I think some of the more advanced stuff can come out of Python and you open up your job opportunities with Python. Let's see. Okay, this is a good one. An interesting one, kind of a more technical question. Chid-na-ma-na-wak-wo. I butchered that name and I'm sorry. I just try to sound it out phonetically. Does MySQL take in a large dataset? When I used a large dataset, it took hours to import to SQL even after converting to a CSV. So MySQL is great. Depends on how you use it. If you use free, a paid variation, if you're just using the free MySQL, is going to take a long time, a lot of data that's pulling in. Super normal, unless you just have a fantastic process so that it's going to process it super fast, and you have a big memory. Typically, it's going to take quite a while. So yes, it's going to happen. And if you do something like that, you may want to automate it and run it overnight if that's the kind of work you do. But that's usually what we would do. Like if we were using MySQL and my job and we have a large data set, we scheduled it to run overnight and pull in that data set and do it when nobody's using it because it takes a large load on the server and it's just not ideal for doing during the day. Matthew's over here. He's whipping people into shape. Like, stop spamming that. Bam. That's why I need Matthew because I can't moderate this whole thing. That's you, Matthew. OK, I already answered that. How do you stay motivated while learning these coding languages? It can be tough and frustrating. AJ, great question. You know, I like to think I'm kind of like a forward thinker. I like to envision myself using it in the future or getting a job with it in the future. When I first started learning SQL, SQL took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit. It probably took me a good four months, three months, and I just learned the basics. I was up till joins. Like coding, and if I kind of lump SQL into there, but like Python was a whole nother beast. But coding for me was not natural. It took me a long, long, long, long, long time to learn. But when I first was learning SQL, my main motivation was like, in six months, I want to get a job as a data analyst and change the trajectory of my career and my family. So I had this like forethought, if I can learn this, if I can just do it, it could change my future career and I can make a lot more money for my family and really like make a difference. So that's how I have always remained motivated. But you have to find your motivation. Maybe for you it's a bigger salary or it's changing locations or it's starting a family. Whatever it is, like find that motivation and stick to it because that's really done well for me. Now for like Python, that was a whole nother beast. That took me a lot longer than I think I ever think it would now. Like if I knew now what I knew now, I could learn Python in, or at least the basics of Python in like a month. It took me like six months to even just like understand the concept. Like it was so confusing. So just understand it's super normal, very tough stuff. Like if you don't come from that background, it's very confusing. So have some motivation, find that motivation that you have and keep going back to that when you get frustrated. Let's see. I'm catching up, I'm catching up guys. You can start asking questions again. I'm sorry, I was like super behind for a while. Okay, so this is another one from Chidnamah, Nowakwa. Wow, thank you for the response. We'll probably do so overnight then. Can you recommend shorter data sets currently trying to build my portfolio? Now, just yesterday I recorded like a bunch of videos. I just made a video yesterday, it'll come out hopefully in the next like month or two on the best place to find data sets. I'll give you a little hint, one of them is Kaggle. It's just a great place to find data sets. If you're looking for small, just really simple, something to practice with and create a little project, highly recommend Kaggle because it's all curated for you. People upvote it, it's there to download, you don't have to like dig in and search for it with which other websites often do. So Kaggle is a really great place just looking for sample data sets and you can like filter by CSV files and all these different things and search for sales data or healthcare data or finance data and it'll be there. So that's where I recommend. How much is a Google data analytics certificate? I think it's like, if you pay for the yearly subscription, that's like 300 bucks and then you get to take the course or if you pay it monthly, it's like 50 bucks. I can't remember. Let me see, how much worth is a Google? Oh, so how much? Okay, maybe it's not, you're not knocking monetarily. What is it actually worth? Here's my thoughts on the Google data analytics certificate and I've said this from the beginning, don't hate me, okay? The certificate itself is not worth much. But I still recommend a lot of people take it and here's why. It goes through step by step, things that I didn't learn for the first like, the first like year, sorry, something was happening in my computer. The bit rate thing is like, necessarily. I didn't learn a lot of those basic concepts for like the first year as a data analyst. I just didn't even, I'd never encountered them. So those concepts that they talk about, the basics of data analytics, like what are these things? What are these concepts? What is the basics of SQL on Tableau and Excel? The things that they teach in the course are really solid. So if you're just starting out, like you are like, hey, I wanna learn data analytics and I know absolutely nothing. That is a really good place to actually start. It kinda can be, I know I have so many videos on my channel, it can be a bit confusing to like know where to start. That's why I created the data analyst bootcamp on my channel, so that it was all in order. But I need, I will buff that up with more like concepts that I think you need to learn, which is like what the Google data analyst certificate. So that's who it's good for. It's good for people who are just starting out. But the certificate itself, I don't even think it's worth putting on your resume. It's mostly for the learning. I've always said that Udemy and Coursera is for the learning. It's not for the certificate. They're learning platforms. Let's see. Kamara and Wang or Nwang said, can we run and install SQL on a cloud without having to download applications on your laptop? Could you do a tutorial on that? Yes, you can. You can do that in a few different ways, but you could use something like a virtual machine and download it on the virtual machine. So that is, you definitely can. Then you can spin it up every time you wanna use it. But usually that costs money, although for like students and some things they usually have discounts or it could be free. So look into that. Excuse me. I'll get some water real quick. I have a lot more people here than normal. I think it's because I'm doing during the day. Now, since I've quit my job, I have a little bit more free time during the day or a little bit more flexibility, I wanna say. But I might start doing them during the day now. People, if more people are able to join in like that. But I like doing it at night sometimes too, because then I get a like, I don't know, it's quiet. No one in my house. Rosie's still sleeping. Anyways, I'm going on a tangent. Oh, I skipped down. Oh, where was I? Where was I? Give me a second. Oh boy. Oh boy. Skipped down so far. I hate the YouTube chat. Like it does not do well on my side of things. I skipped a bunch of stuff. I'm just gonna keep going. Caggles out the correct spelling. Yes, lady venom that is the correct spelling. How do you pivot into machine learning after completing your bootcamp? Well, my bootcamp isn't really focused on machine learning at all. It's not really what data analysts do. I would go look at like Ken G's channel. He has a bunch of like machine learning stuff on his channel. But that's not my expertise. I'm not really the person to ask about that, honestly. Is it required? So Raj Patel, this is a very common question. Super, super, super common. Is it required to have a bachelor's degree to get a data analyst job? Again, I get asked this like all the time because not everybody has a bachelor's degree. Just totally fine. My instinct, and not just my instinct actually, let me rephrase that. I'm gonna start over. My experience and my people I've worked in the past have told me, no, you do not need a bachelor's degree, but here's what you do need. If you don't have a bachelor's degree, you're gonna have to really make up for it in a fantastic resume, portfolio, good people skills. Just a degree in general, a random degree like mine helped me get a job. That is the honest truth. Even though it's in recreational therapy, it helped me get a job. And that's because it's kind of a minimum requirement. I just want someone who has that basic college education. So it does help you. If you don't have it, you're just gonna have to hustle harder. I've worked with people, and I always point to this one example, but one of my mentees that I had started like two years ago, but his name was Sergio. He's on LinkedIn, Sergio Ramos, Ramos. He does not have a college degree and he now works at PayPal as a data analyst. And so that one example is an example of probably five or six of the people I've personally worked with who have done it. And it's 100% possible you just need a lot of motivation. You have to really work at it and follow it. And he'll say this too. So like I'm not speaking, he'll say the same thing and maybe he's in the chat. But he'll tell you, if you follow the exact things that I tell you, how to build your resume, building the portfolios, how to reach out to recruiters, how to talk to people and network, if you do those things, you can get a job. It's 100% true. It's just, you know, having the confidence, having the drive to do it is a different, it's a totally different thing. But yes, definitely possible for sure. I think if I didn't have a degree, I could have done it. I could have done it. Knowing what I know now, I could have done it. Or not knowing like all the skills, just knowing the process and how everything works. I know I could have done it. Let's see. So Joseph Campbell asks, as I progress in data analytics, the topic is so broad. Do you suggest targeting one area of specialization and just improving that area? When you're first starting out, I don't highly recommend specializing in anything because you don't have any experience. You don't have anything to say, hey, I specialize in this. There's really no weight behind it. I think once you get into your job, specialization to me means more like domain experience or a very specific highly used skill. Like for me, I would say I specialize in things like SQL, Python and Cloud applications. Like I'm really good at those. So I have that even on my resume, like those like my top skills. So you can specialize in certain skills for sure. But even domain I would recommend is even more lucrative because if you're really good at healthcare, really good at finance and you target those, later on, like after the first year or two, that can lead to the most financial gain or positional gain long term. That's kind of, you know, that's just in general what I think, but I don't know if, I don't know right away if it's smart. It's hard to say. Could be, could work out really well for you. I don't know. Grim bell, sorry, just during the live stream, don't worry about it. Come and go as you please. There's no, you don't have to stay. We're just chilling. We're just chilling. What time is it? It's only 10 30. I think like 30 minutes, so we're just chilling. I was just wondering if doing the Google certification or data analytics would be a good place to start. Yeah, it is a good place to start. You learn, and I just said this a little while ago and I'll just paraphrase, which is, it's good for very beginners. You don't really know anything. Each has good concepts, basics of skills. Now, if I'm being completely honest, like the only thing my data analyst bootcamp on YouTube is lacking is those conceptual stuff. Other than that, all the skills, everything else is better. Like that's just my, that's just the truth. Everything else, all the skills, like all the hard technical skills, all of my tutorials and stuff are better than what the Google data analyst stuff has. Eventually I'm gonna add those conceptual stuff and then I believe that the Google certification is gonna be worse. Like my free one will be better. But it's good for the conceptual stuff. So it's still worth taking if you can take it fast, but the certification itself isn't super worth it. Like there's no value behind it. Rosie, stay here. Rosie, here are the cats. She's about to chase some cats. Let's see. What are some certifications that you write? Rosie. Swear if that dog attacks some cats, I'm gonna have to go get her. She doesn't attack them. She just likes to like get really close and sniff them and then they attack her and then she gets all jittery and it's just a mess. Stinking. Noise me. Anyways, I'm going on another tangent. Jimmy Della Terga said, what are some certifications that you recommend? Now, if you go on my website, believe it or not, I have a website, it's alexianalyst.com. I have a certifications page. Those are all the ones that I recommend. The main ones that I recommend that I think are actually worth getting their like real certifications, not like you to me and Coursera ones, but real certifications are ones like the Tablo desktop certification and some, I don't think, good girl. I don't think they've changed the name unless they have, maybe they used to call it the Tablo data analyst certification. I'm confusing which certification, but there's a Tablo one that's good. There's also a good Microsoft one that you can get, there's an AWS and an Azure one, or maybe the Azure and the Microsoft one are actually one of the same, but there are some good certifications. So go check that out. I just, I'd have to like, actually, you know what, forget this. alex.com. I'm going to go look at myself. Go to more certifications. Okay. So we have the Tablo data analyst certification. They changed that. Then there's a Microsoft Power BI data analyst certification. That's a good one. And the AWS data analyst certification. So those are the, those are the three that I recommend. I have a runner-ups category for the Google certification and the IBM data analyst certification, mostly for learning, not the actual certification doesn't hold as much weight as those first three. Go check that out. All right, let me get back to chat. I use Google Sheets more than Excel. Any disadvantage is not using Excel. I mean, I don't use Google Sheets a lot. From what I've heard, it's, I mean, actually, not what I've heard. What I've used it for, it's pretty similar. I really don't know all the advantages and disadvantages. I'd have to research that. Might be a video I make in the future. Actually, good idea. I'll write that down later. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know Google Sheets well enough. I know Excel like the back of my hand, but I don't know Google Sheets well enough. See, Taha, they said, Taha Nafal said $38 per month for Coursera. I thought it was more expensive than that. I thought it was $49 or something. Then, hey, I'm 25 years old. I'm suffering financial crisis. Is it too late for me to get started? I'm a computer science grad too. Absolutely not. If you're having financial trouble, take my daydales bootcamp, build a free portfolio, build a solid resume, and start applying. I mean, it's free. You don't have to spend a dime. And you're only 25 years old, man. Like, 25 is young. You got a lot, a lot of time left. I promise you. Now, if you're in financial crisis, there is a lot of complexity to that with family and bills and all those things. But in terms of actually studying and getting a job, you do not have to spend a dime anymore. All right, I got you. Just go on my channel, look at the data analytics bootcamp, follow the portfolio projects, build the resume, show you how to reach out to recruiters as well. I teach you everything. Don't spend a dime. Just don't worry about that part. Take care of your finances for essentials, housing, food, water, et cetera. Are you going to do end-to-end deployed data science projects down the line? No, no. But actually, I'm gonna rephrase that. Are you gonna do end-to-end data in those projects down the line? Yes. I actually wanna eventually create full-length projects, like from start to finish, starting with an Excel. Usually how data like, sometimes not usually, but sometimes how data will come in. We create an automated process to pull it into SQL. I'll show you how to do that. Then we're gonna do the exploratory data analysis, the data cleaning, the transformation, all in SQL, and then we'll export it or connect, tableau to it, and then build out our visualization to have the dashboard a final product. Then end-to-end, complete end-to-end project. I plan on making lots of full like, three or four end-to-end projects just like that, but not data science now. Natojana, yeah. She said, I'm guessing it could be a guy or girl. It doesn't matter. Thank you for all the learning resources. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks for joining. Oh, this is a good one. The name is, I believe, either it looks like Korean or Chinese or Mandarin. So I can't read it, because as a beginner, a person that aims to be a data analyst, which one should I learn? MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and also is learning one of them, it's sufficient. So I started out using, I started learning MySQL first for like the first couple of months. Then my actual job, they used SQL Server. So then I had to like, backped a little and learned how to use SQL Server. What do I recommend? I actually, I think I recommend MySQL for most people. The reason being anybody can use it, Mac, Linux, Microsoft, any OS can use MySQL. I would consider myself like, more of an expert in Microsoft SQL Server because I used it for way longer. But MySQL I'm still very good at, and it's just different. The UI is just a little bit different, the way that things connect to it a little bit different, the way that data is imported is a little bit different. So there's small nuances, but if you learn one, you can learn them all. Now the syntax difference is also different because in Microsoft SQL Server, you have something called TSQL, which is transact SQL, which is proprietary to Microsoft SQL Server. I highly prefer that. I think you actually learn more in Microsoft SQL Server, but that isn't transferable all those things into MySQL and PostgreSQL, as well as some other versions of SQL, if my mic sticks. No, there's a discord message. So my recommendation is MySQL. That's what I'm gonna recommend. I'm actually building out a full MySQL Server course right now and a few other things. And eventually I'll also do Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, because I would consider myself very good in those as well. But I'm doing MySQL first because I think it's the most popular, the one that most people should learn. So that's my recommendation. Let me see. How do you improve your communication skills? The only way to improve communication skills is to communicate. That's the honest truth. I would not consider myself so like, you're looking at somebody who has been doing this, this, like talking to people and making videos for three years. But if you go back to my earliest videos, or if you saw me when I first started out as a data analyst, I was not good at communicating. Like it's just, you know, it's a skill that's taught. It's a skill that can be learned. You have to learn by doing. So, you know, when I first gave my first presentations in work, I was not good at them. Like it was not, it was not great. But I got better at it just by doing it, listening to feedback. You know, there would be times where I was gonna give her presentation. I'd kind of give her presentation to my wife and just have her like kind of critique me a little bit, give me feedback in like a very constructive way. And it was super helpful. So, you know, it just takes practice. Vivian said, I wanna buy a laptop and practice and create portfolios. What do you need? Now minimum requirements, I would hope you can get eight gigabytes of RAM, at least 256 gigabytes of storage at the very minimum. I use like a terabyte just for other purposes, but like, yeah, on the very low end, I would hope you can get 256 by Google Chromebook. Chromebook can get you most of those things, although they may have 100 and, what is it? Eight, I think it's 128 gigabytes. But they have cloud storage available. So Google Chromebook could be plenty for everything I'm in the data analyst bootcamp to do all the projects and the practice. I don't have, okay, so this is a common one, very common question, Alice. So Alice Abe says, I do not have experience in data analytics, can I get a job? I'm guessing you meant without experience. It's the majority of people trying to break into data analytics have no experience, even in like a career, mostly like right out of college, or they're in a job that's like teaching. I see a lot of teachers trying to get into data analytics, a lot of even lawyers, believe it or not, a lot of nurses or like people from the healthcare. I have people from those three, those are the majority. I would say like that's 50%, those three are the 50% of the people that I see. A lot of teachers, they don't have any experience, but how do you get experience? How do you formulate experience to have a better chance of getting a job? Again, I just recorded a video yesterday on how to create a data analyst resume. I actually talk a lot about these things, like how to format your job description if you were a teacher or something like that. So that'll be coming out in like a couple of weeks. All that being said, is when you're putting it on your resume, if you have past experience, you need to put it as a data analyst, not as a teacher, because applying for a teacher job is different than a teacher applying for a data analyst job with the skills. But how do you get a job without experience that's really building up your resume, building up the right skills, which are the skills I usually, probably heard me talk about, building up a fantastic resume, working with recruiters. If you do those three things well, and you target and really excel in those areas, you can get a job without any experience. That's what I did. I had no experience, but I got a job doing those things and I, on my channel, show you how to do that. It's definitely possible. Definitely possible. Get some water real quick. We got about, looking for another 20, 30 minutes. Now I gotta do some work. Believe it or not, this is, I do have work to do. I do this for you guys because I genuinely love doing this. And, like I said at the very beginning when not many people were here, but my channel and LinkedIn and all these other places have grown, it's a fantastic thing. This is also like a pseudo 400K livestream because I don't know if I'll have time this week to do the 400K livestream which I'll probably hit in the next couple of days. It's just because everything's been growing so fast. I get hundreds of comments on YouTube every day. Unfortunately, I cannot get to them anymore. Like I used to try to answer every single one, but now like I'm running my own business and I'm doing YouTube stuff and I have other things that I'm doing in the background just don't have the time anymore. So I try to, I still go on there and answer questions. I just can't answer all of them. So that's what this is for. It's for people to come on, answer questions or ask questions that I can answer for them. I'm just super appreciative of you guys. And so I try to make time for you. I really do. Let's see. I'm reading through questions. Still reading, I apologize. Just lots of questions, but a lot of I've already answered several times. So I'm not gonna answer them again. Lahari said, start a course, Alex, for becoming data analysts. Yeah, I'm building courses like full length courses right now. I think they're gonna be fantastic. Some of the best courses out there. Like they're gonna be fantastic. Make a, oh, this is something I wanna do. So anime lovers, great name. Can you make a video on how to use Kaggle to make projects? This is actually already on my list to make. Yes, I've used Kaggle for a long time, like three plus years. I love Kaggle, has a lot of fantastic resources and not only that, datasets and project ideas. And so I'll make a whole video on how to use Kaggle for data analytics. I will do that. Let's see. This is a good question. Hi, Kashi Music. Hi, Alex, how will AI affect data analytics in the future? So, the AI is a very broad term and I'm gonna kind of like, you know, I think most people are thinking of nowadays when they think of AI as something like chat GBT or just automated systems for automating work. Some type of integration that can write SQL queries or something better than chat GBT. Okay, so again, I've been recording a lot of videos. So like, I just made a video on this yesterday on my thoughts on chat GBT, how it's gonna affect the job market. I've done a bunch of research, talked to a lot of people who are a lot smarter on this than I am. Here's my just general thoughts in like a minute or two. Chat GBT right now is at a really great spot or it blossomed into this 100 million plus. You see that everywhere user, you know, product. Because as so many users are also identifying a lot of issues, like a ton. If you've seen the funny stuff on like that Bing's producing, it makes a lot of mistakes. Now this is chat GBT 3.5. And so when they make improvements, hopefully a lot of those things will be improved. But I also see a lot of other issues coming forth. Now I've used it enough to know how it works, kind of understanding the background of it, how it's actually doing the work and what it's spitting out. Now, how's this going to affect data analysts as a whole? I don't see within the next 10 years it taking away any jobs at all, not even remotely, not even a chance. Even at big tech companies who are going to use these things first because it's just not there. It's not even close. It's helpful as a tool, but it is wrong a lot. And, you know, in my, I did a video on chat GBT for data analytics. You know, it was not perfect. It made mistakes and it is not going to replace jobs. It's just not. What I do believe it's going to do is actually speed up work. So it's going to speed up work, which will then allow companies to expand what they thought they would be able to do in the next 10 years. So once these companies start integrating something like chat GBT or something like GitHub Co-Pilot, which is something I need to make a video on, where they can help you code faster, it's not going to reduce jobs. It's not going to be doing any decision-making. It'll make some basic general recommendations. These things will make you work faster, in my opinion, in the next 10 years, once these things start getting integrated. They'll make you work faster, but that will allow companies to expand what they thought they would be able to do in the next five years. It's only going to create more work. I promise you, big tech companies have no shortage of ideas to do. They just don't have enough engineers or manpower or hours to do it. So when things start taking less time, 100 hours down to 50 hours, they're just going to have bigger goals and bigger projects. That's how 90% of companies are going to be. Artificial intelligence is also really going to be, I think, let me take a step back, because I'm about to go into tangent. I did in the video and you'll see that later. But the ethical and legal concerns for actually integrating something like this into most companies is not going to happen. Most companies won't legally or ethically be able to integrate something like this for so many reasons. That's a big issue. The second issue is, you know how long it's going to take to integrate artificial intelligence throughout an entire company? Years. Years. Even if a company today, like Amazon, was like, let's fully integrate something like ChatGbt, it would take years. And then it would be a lot of issues. There's going to be a lot. No. To answer that question, I don't think it's going to affect it in a negative way anytime soon. Genuinely, it's going to take much more than 10 years, in my opinion, to be integrated into even some companies or to really make a difference in some companies. The vast majority of companies, their data infrastructure is not there. They're so far behind in technology as it is. It's just, I mean, knowing the industry well enough, I can just tell, because I've been doing consulting for the past two years at large tech companies and startups and all these other companies. And working as a data analyst before that, there's so many issues. There's so many issues with integrating something like this and actually having it replace our effect jobs in any way I just don't see happening. But we'll see. I could come back to eat those words in the future. I just don't see it happening. Let's keep going, because I could talk about that for literally hours. Let's see. Alex's course, oh, so maybe this is just a testament to I'm going to give myself a shout out. Thoth, sounds weird to say, Thoth. Alex's course is great. Google certificate kind of lacks its meat and in meat and potatoes. That's kind of what I was saying is it's really good for the conceptual stuff. Like if you're just starting out, you know nothing about data analytics, that's a great course. But it doesn't go super in depth into the skills, which I think is super important. That's the only area that it kind of lacks. And so, yeah, I think my certificate, my boot camp, which is free on my channel is great to take. Any more? Thanks, Matthew. He said we got him. He's like warning him, all right. Anyways, let's see. I'm just laughing at Matthew, guys. Don't worry about it. Can you guys still hear me? When I talk over here, can you guys even hear me? I have my mic above me. Got a boom arm over here. What dataset would you recommend you start with? Start small, super small, like really small. Like if you're doing an Excel or SQL, work with like 10 rows, 50 rows, and like five columns, that's super small. But there's no simps, super small data. Just check out any of my tutorials. I have three small sample data sets in all of those. Hundreds of them, no, not hundreds. I probably have like 50, is my best guess. Hundreds was a vast over exaggeration. What about layoffs is going on right now? Okay, so layoffs, that's a great question because a lot of people have been concerned about it. I haven't been in the slightest, just for different reasons. But if you look at the numbers, if you actually look at the data, we have this massive upswing and hiring at all these large tech companies. And that's what everyone's looking at when they're talking about layoffs because you only see it at the large tech companies. Don't see it at any mid-tier company or most mid-tier companies, almost at all. They had this huge influx of hiring because of all this competition. There was all this fear because of COVID and all these things they just massively hired. Some companies hiring as much as like 75 or 100,000 individuals at places like Meta and other companies. Can't really sustain that if the money's not there, right? Then they lay off 10,000 people, but they hired 75,000 people. If you look at the numbers, there's still a vastly larger net increase. Then things slowed down. Didn't need as many people, the project slowed down. They had a slight lack of revenue for something. Um, wife keeps texting me. I'll text her back. I mean, let me take one second just to take it. I'm back. Um, the layoffs are, they're very logical. They make a lot of sense. From a business perspective, they make a lot of sense. Now, of course the media and everything hypes it up and people are like, oh, you know, tech is ruined. It's just not, I, if you actually like, if you just buy into all the hype, of course you're gonna be worried and you're gonna be concerned, but I promise you, it's like not there. There's no, there's no worry about tech. Like, it really isn't. Every other company is still hiring. The hiring freezes are mostly gone. The, and again, it had nothing to do with them doing so poorly. They have to lay off extra. They had to lay off a portion of the people they originally hired. Or like, you know, they hired 50,000 people. They had to let go of 10,000. 40,000 people stop a job. So, I don't know, I'm not mad at you. All right, who asked this? I'm not mad at you. I get frustrated about that topic because I think people, most people read into like the headlines of articles, which I don't like. I want people to really dig into the data, actually look at it, which I've done quite a bit. Feel like it just doesn't add up to the hype that people are adding around it. How do you reach out to recruiters? Should I pay for LinkedIn Plus? Great question, Grant. Grant Weaver. Ask in the hard-hitting questions. How do you reach out to recruiters? Now, I have a video on almost all these things, so I always try to plug them if you want to go learn more than what I'm just telling you now. But I have a video. It's how to get a job on LinkedIn, or three ways to get a little job on LinkedIn. That shows you how to reach out to a recruiter, but that's a big piece of it, is just reaching out. You can do it in three ways. There's three main ways I've done all of them, and I'll just tell you my favorite and the least favorite. My most favorite is using LinkedIn. I would go onto a website. I have a background in healthcare. I'd find a job that I liked. I would find the company. I'd find a recruiter at the company. I'd reach out to them, and then I'd get a connection. That's how I would like to do it, and I'll show you how to do that in that video. It's at the very end of the Data Analyst Bootcamp, I believe, actually. I'd love that because, you know, I would reach out to 20 people and I get four or five responses back. That's a pretty high percentage in the recruiting world. Sound like a lot. That's a pretty high percentage. If you compare that to cold calling and cold emailing, which are the other two ways, recruiting companies. So you can reach out to recruiters of internal companies. So there's internal recruiters and external recruiters. Internal recruiters work at the company. If you work for Amazon, they have Amazon recruiters. At my company, we have internal recruiters. We also use external recruiters who find us candidates through their candidate pool. And the internal recruiters were usually more responsive because that is like, that is well they did. The external recruiters usually had too many people, too many people to work with. And so I typically recommend using LinkedIn trying to find internal recruiters. Then secondarily, at the same time, you should still be cold calling and cold emailing external recruiters and just like recruiting companies in these places. Now, recruiters most often work at large, most often work in large metropolitan areas. Dallas, Chicago, New York, Charlotte, like all the big cities in the United States, like that's what I'm referencing in the United States. It's mostly where they're based out of because that's where a lot of the tech jobs are. So just Google, if you're in the middle of nowhere, it's gonna be harder. It's gonna be a lot harder unless there are specific remote jobs and you find the recruiting company, a lot harder. So should I play for LinkedIn Plus? I've never bought LinkedIn Plus. I use their free month that they provide like every year, way back when. I didn't find it useful, but you can. There's no downside except losing money. That's it. Is it possible to become a data analyst with portfolio projects? No, not by itself. It's a complete package. There's a lot of like aspects to getting a data analyst job. It's not just learn the skills, build a portfolio, you're done. It's learn the skills well, form out a really good resume, reach out to recruiters, build a portfolio and portfolio project. You don't have to do all these things, but how I like to put it is I put it in percentages. If you just learn the skills and build a kind of a decent resume, you have a 10% chance of getting a job. Or like when you apply, 10% chance. Then you build a portfolio and a portfolio website and I have a 13% chance. Then you work with recruiters. You have a 20% chance. Then you do all these things. Everything just adds to your percentage of getting a job. So if you do everything and you work really hard at those final steps of resume and working with a recruiter, you have a better chance. You increase your odds of getting a job. So no, they're not required, but they're helpful. Mahesh said, Alex, I'm very confused with data. I don't know what tools to start with. Start with SQL. Start there, my friend. Who else say? Going, some questions I've asked. When am I gonna release my videos on MySQL? Probably cause I'm right now we're going through a Panda series in Python. And I have a few, so probably about three months. I hate saying three months away. In the YouTube world, in my world of how I do YouTube, three months away is like no time at all. Like I do one video a week. It's four videos a month. I already have like in my backlog, like 15 videos of Panda series. I've already completed that whole series of all the videos that I did yesterday. So like three months isn't a long time away from me, but that's probably about when I'll start it. It just sounds like so far away when I say it out loud. I feel bad. So that's when I'll start it and it's gonna be really good. It's gonna be really good. I'm also gonna be releasing a full MySQL course for data analysts, which will teach you all the data cleaning, all the advanced exploratory data analysis stuff with projects and all these things. So that'll probably coincide my full course with the free stuff that I'll put on YouTube, which is gonna be free. And it's gonna be really good too. There's gonna be no like pressure to buy it or anything, I promise. It's just gonna be more in-depth. Let's see. Answer those questions. Yeah, so people keep asking about Mac. Like what do I think about Mac computers and data likes? It's a great computer. Luke Baruzzi, that's all he uses. And he vouches for it and he talks a lot about it on his channel. I just don't, I've never used him. I've used a Mac. I don't prefer the Macs. I don't like having to do workarounds for things like Microsoft SQL Server and Power BI and a few other things. Those are the main ones that people would think of. I don't like doing workarounds for those or it not being native. So I usually prefer Microsoft or Linux if you wanna use Linux. But Mac's fine. For most people, it's gonna be fine. For me, it would not be. I just, I use too many Microsoft. I'm a Microsoft shop kind of guy. Do I recommend Master School? Master School. I think that company reached out to me to create a course with them. Let me, give me a second. Give me one gosh darn second because I am pretty sure Master School, that's just like rang a bell in Master School. Master School. Yeah. That reached out to me, wanted me to build a data analytics thing. I don't know, I've never seen it. They're gonna chat with me. Look at my calendar when I have a meeting with them. It's probably soon. Next week. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, on March 6th, I have a meeting with them. I have no idea. I can't vouch for them in the slightest. They want me to make something for them, which I usually say no to most people. They probably won't. But if I made something for them, it'd be really good. Yeah, that's all I can say. Okay, where did my thing go? There it goes. All right, let me go back down. Let's see. Ooh, skip down again. Rafael, thanks, man. I appreciate the donation. That was super kind. You'd have to do that. CJ, CJ made it. I just finally saw you. Hey, CJ, thanks for joining us. It's almost 11. I'll probably give her another 15 minutes. I got 15 more minutes, and then I gotta head out and actually do some work, instead of just hanging out. This is like hanging out with my friends instead of working, which I really should be working. Let's see. Let's see, I'm trying to find different questions because I've answered a lot of questions. Do you know how to install MySQL on Mac? Yeah, you can just download MySQL on Mac. MySQL is great. Matthew's on it. Getting rid of people left and right. And I appreciate it. Look, these chats, there's a lot of people in here. So, gonna be some rowdy individuals with some wild ideas. Talking about R, asking questions about R. Matthew, CJ, get rid of those people. I don't want them in my chat. I'm just kidding, don't do that. Okay, the man asks, in your experience, is there a lot of young people under the age of 25 working as data analysts? Or what is the average age? My experience, so I've worked with a lot of different teams. I've been sold in a lot of different teams within larger companies. I would say it's actually closer. Probably the average is like 30 to 35. Of course, there are younger people and there are older people. I've worked with people who are like 45, 50. That's not even like that unheard of. That's not old. I hope people always ask that too old. That's not even that unheard of. They just have experience, they're good at it and they like data analytics. And I've worked with people as young as like 21 who are right out of college and just like getting started in their career. But I would say like the average is like 30, 35. That's pretty normal, like the most common. I would say like the median age that you'd be seeing. Do I accept interns at my company? So right now, I'm a sole person. It's just me. So when somebody asked for me to consult with them, they know they're getting Alex. My in the future, as I grow the business, because I'm consulting with a lot of companies, mostly tech companies, startups, stuff like that. As I consult with these companies, I'm like, I could teach somebody to do this. But I think in the future, my goal would be to expand the business and bring on data analysts. Like I'm an analytics-focused company. So I would bring on data analysts. Now, when would I do that? I thought about it a lot, maybe like next year, things are going well. It just all, there's so many factors, there's so many things I'm working on. It'd be hard for me to like, again, internship is like a mentorship, be like a full-time mentorship. So I'd need things to line up for me to have the available time to do that, train them. Of course, I'd want to pay them. And so, I don't know, maybe next year, the year after, it's hard to say. It's hard to say, but I put a lot of thought into it. I think I will do it eventually. Are virtual internships really worth it? I don't, maybe. I don't know virtual internships that much. Rosie's moving around. I don't know virtual internships that much, if I'm being honest. Kel, thanks for the donation. It popped up on here. That's cool how it does that on YouTube. He said, yo, don't really have a question just saying hi. Okay, cool, thanks. Trying to build my portfolio and watching and practicing. Stay safe, Alex. Thanks, man. I think I've seen you on Twitter, posting your stuff as you go along. Awesome work. Keep it going. You're doing good. Thanks for the donation. That was super, super nice of you. Oh, oh, it skipped down. All right, let's keep going. Let me see what other questions we have. Linda Lowe, I have a portfolio, but I'm afraid to start a job with no experience. Well, you gotta start somewhere. Inevitably, when you get that first job, you are probably gonna be the least experienced person. It's just, it happens. Everybody starts there. Everybody starts at the bottom. You cannot possibly start at a senior level or a mid level and know everything. It's just not possible, right? So go into it knowing that your first job, you're gonna learn a lot. When you were first starting out and you get that first job, their expectations for that first couple of weeks is for you to learn. You're gonna learn their databases. They're gonna show you their documentation procedure. They're gonna walk you through their clients. You have a lot of time to learn when you get that first job, actually. They might hit you. You might hit the ground running doing some really small stuff, but they understand that data is complex. Data teams know how complex these things are. So they're not gonna be like, hey, go figure this out. They're going to teach you. Even if I'm experienced, I've been experienced and have multiple years of experience and then go into a new job. They still are like, okay, here's our databases. Here's what kind of data we work with. They still do that, even at mid-level senior level jobs when you switch jobs. It's just normal. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Matthew, quick, wait. You said this is the monthly Wendy's five or five? I will, I'll tell my wife to pick me up one on the way home. I just had a Wendy's yesterday, except there was a four for four. I think I got chicken sandwiches. I try not to, Matthew, if I'm being honest, I'm trying to eat less fast food. I'm trying to work out more. I'm trying to be healthier, but I will get a five for five for you and I'll blame it on you. Let me see. So jellyfish, so this is kind of an interesting take on it. An interesting, I don't want to say perspective, just hear me out. Jellyfish, as I graduated last year, I have a Google data analytics certificate. Also, I built a portfolio and I have 500 connections on LinkedIn, but I can't get my first role yet. So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna try to be as constructive as I can with just what you've given me, jellyfish, okay? My genuine feedback is, just because you have the certificate and you have a portfolio and you have connections on LinkedIn, it's not gonna guarantee you a job in the slightest. Like it just is not. Typically, most of my jobs, most of my consulting stuff does come from like LinkedIn and YouTube now, but that's because I have a very large following, right? It's different. So LinkedIn can be really good as you scale up. Thousands and thousands of people, you know, you get connections that way. But when you're first starting out and you're trying to get that first job, it is 99% on you. It's just most the time, most people, sometimes you have connections that can help you and don't, I'm not trying to say that's not helpful. Most of the time, you need to just create a really strong resume, have that portfolio which you already have and then work with recruiters to find a job and just hustle. I'm talking working with five, six, seven recruiters, always be applying, reaching out to those recruiters every single week, asking if they have anything. Like you have to be pretty shameless and you have to reach out and you can't like slow down. If you apply for a week straight and did a lot of work and then that's all you do and you stop, like I'm sorry, this is not gonna, 99% of the time it's not gonna work. It's a months long thing. Has to be consistent. You have to really push yourself, especially if you don't have experience. Like it's a grind, it can be a grind. But then when you get that first job, once you push through that hurdle of getting your first job and you have experience, it is 100 times easier to get your next job. It's just, it's hard to break in at that entry level and you know, again, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, I'm trying to be helpful. Like when you say you have the Google data analyst certificate, that doesn't have a lot of pull for getting a job. It's helpful to learn. It's a learning certificate. But it's not like gonna guarantee a job or having connections or building portfolio. You have to put those things into action. You have to like really utilize them and use them. So again, I'm not trying to pick on you. That's very common. That's a common thing to think. I just, I wanna kind of, I hope I've given you some direction, which is, those things may not really help that much without you putting a ton of effort on your end to push those forward and advance those like processes of applying and working with recruiters and reaching out to connections and all these things. It definitely, it definitely takes a while. All right guys, I got like eight minutes left. I'm gonna try to get a few more questions. Labrfax, do you think AI like ChatGBT will replace data analysts? I just talked about this like maybe 15, 20 minutes ago. I made a whole video on it and I think it's really pretty compelling. I'll give you a super fast highlight. No, I don't think it's gonna replace data analysts. Data infrastructure for most companies is garbage. I've worked with plenty to know that it's not that great. You need good data to use something like ChatGBT as an integration. Large tech companies will be the first ones to integrate it. I think it's gonna take years to work out all the bugs and to even have it a working version. There's things like legal issues and ethical issues that are gonna be coming to concern that I think are really gonna sway a lot of companies and not even use it at all. And there's just ChatGBT as a whole. ChatGBT 3.5, where we're currently at, so many issues with it. Doesn't look like it, but I've messed with it enough and seen enough things and enough research. A lot of issues. Maybe in future variations they'll like, let's say they perfected it today. They made a perfect ChatGBT that could replace the data analysts today. Well, even if they did that, most companies are 10 years behind, five years behind the curve. So even if it today, it would still take five years plus to see any data analyst jobs being replaced. Then after that, 90% of companies are just not there. And it's gonna, you have to train it on that data and there's data quality issues and so many, it's so complex. Like, I think that's what a lot of people, when they see these headlines, they get really worried. I think the people who are less worried are the people who really like have been in it and have seen it and know like, it's gonna be a little far, far, far, far, far more complex than anyone I think is thinking about right now. So like, no, even within the next probably 15 years, I don't, I actually see it, I just see it as a tool that's gonna speed up work, like other tools. I see it as a tool that's gonna speed up work and companies are gonna be like, wow, we need bigger ideas, bigger projects, bigger initiatives. We need to hire more data analysts and that will be able to do that. Not just data analysts, data engineers, data scientists, all these things. I think there's gonna be more demand in the future because of things like chat GPT. That's my take on it. I could eat my words in five years, who knows. Is a good idea to run SQL on VS Code? Are there any other options for a MacBook user? You can do that. You can use something like SQLite. You could use MySQL, PostgreSQL. There's lots of options. Yeah, any of those, lots of options. Local data, do you use any statistics? Will you create videos discussing statistics that you use? My answer is yes, you use statistics and different jobs vary. I primarily focused on healthcare and then IT. So like those are my two that I have direct experience with. We definitely use statistics, especially as I got later on into like more of a senior level position. But it was still not like anything crazy difficult. Like I took calculus and algebra and stuff in high school and I don't even think I was like reaching that advanced level. It was just calculations and certain equations. And it wasn't like anything that I think should be really concerning or scary for most people starting out. Especially when you're first starting out, statistics is not as heavy. When you get some more senior roles, manager level roles, and you need to advise on these things, you need to know a bit of statistics. But also certain analytics jobs require more. Something like a quant or a quant analyst or something like a financial analyst. Sometimes they'll use more statistics in other industries like the ones I've worked in. So yeah, it's good to know for sure. Is data analysts tough to crack? In terms of getting a job, can be. For some people it definitely can be. What are your thoughts on learning ETL? That's a great question. Farzan Malik said, what is your thoughts on learning ETL? I think that when you're first getting started, it may not be the most important, but as you become, as you want to advance in data analytics, I think learning the ETL process, how the data actually comes in, how you transform it, and being part of that transformation process, that data cleaning process, is actually really, really, really important. And that's something that I think most people just get into naturally, like they don't have to like force their way in. Most times you're in your job, you're like, this data is garbage, like I need to be part of this process. And then you go and you help them clean it and understand the business, the domain experience that you have, and you're like, no, we need to transform it to this because of this. And then you start becoming part of that process and learning ETL. So yeah, ETL is pretty important in analytics. And Torian said, and think about how expensive on the AI, and think about how expensive it will be to license and or implement, not all companies will have the resources. I actually think something like this, as of right now, is not gonna be crazy, crazy expensive. I mean, okay, so like, I don't work anymore, so I can give you an idea. I worked in IT, our IT department. We had a very large budget. My department had like a three, like my team, for me, I was managing about a $3 million budget. And that was for all of our resources, all of our employees. So I had five people underneath me that was like a little over, a little under a million. And then the other stuff was all software and licensing and recruitment and all these other factors that I had to deal with. And the budget was there. I guarantee you with that extra like million dollars that we had over, which we were using for other products and other initiatives, that extra million dollars, that probably would be enough for my team for sure. Again, I don't know if it's a budget issue for most, maybe it is. There is a point to that, 100%. There are gonna be companies that just can't afford it or can't afford to hire someone to implement it like a contractor. But I actually think that the bigger issue is not the money. I think the bigger issue is gonna be the difficulty in actually implementing it. How's BigQuery? BigQuery is good. There's nothing against BigQuery. I don't think that's the only thing you should learn though, to learn the other stuff. How much salary can we expect? All right, I got one more question after this. How much salary can you expect from an entry level data analyst? How long will it take to learn? If you're in the United States, the average that you're looking at for an entry level is around like 50 to 60,000. A little below, a little higher in some areas, depending on where you're located or your background, et cetera. But you can look at like 50 to 60. Then in like, even after one year, and I'm 100% serious about this, because this is what I did. After a year, you can bounce to another company and get 20% more. You can be making 60, 70, 75 after one year. 100% doable. I actually encourage a lot of people to do that. Now, once you hit like mid-level, senior level, you're looking at anywhere from like 75 up. I usually cap out most data analyst positions at a senior level, upwards of like 130,000-ish. But it goes up pretty quick. Like even after a year of experience, like companies are like, yes. Like this person has experience, thank goodness. Let's hire them, pay them more money. Let me see, I'm gonna answer one more question. Actually, I'm gonna answer two, because this one is a, you know. But Dave said, is it enough to learn and practice from your boot camp that you post on your YouTube in order to find an initial job as a data analyst? My answer is, yes. So my last question, I'm looking, I always try to end on like a good question. There are good questions in here. I'm not saying your question's bad. Someone's telling you not to take the simply learn data analyst course. I can't vouch for that, but you know. I'll answer this one. He posted it a bunch of times. I usually don't reward spammers, but I like the question. What's the best ETL tool? I actually, I've used several ETL tools and the one that I've liked the most. Now I've used AWS and Azure. AWS Glue, like, Azure Data Factory is really good. I used that for several years. That's what I have the most experience with too. So I'm a slightly biased, but I liked Azure Data Factory a lot. And we had a lot of data stored in Azure. I really liked it. It was just really great. If you could learn that, do that. Yeah, that's the one I'd recommend. That's the one I'm gonna end with. I hate to end on that. When's the, okay, this is my last question. This is my last question. When is my next meeting? We're gonna call these meetings. I try to do them. I try to do them once a month. I didn't for January and I didn't for February because of family stuff and I started my own business and all these other factors. I was just insanely busy. You have no idea. I was working day and night. I'm still am. But I try to take a break and do these things at least once a month. That's my goal. So I will for sure do one next month. For sure, probably at the beginning of next month. And I may, if I have time, I'll try to slip another one at the end of March. But there's no guarantee to that. It just, it really depends on my schedule. Like if I have a lull, then I can definitely do that. But if things keep up how they're going, it'll be in March or at the beginning of March. But yeah, I mean, thank you guys so much for coming. We had over 3,000 people drop by. That's probably not my biggest one ever, but that's pretty big for just a random Thursday. Usually I do them at night. And I like that cause all the kids are sleeping and house is quiet. But now I'm doing in the middle of the day and all my, everyone's gone. So this actually works out quite well. So if you guys like this, let me know in the chat real quick and I'll, I can continue to do them like in the mornings. I'm on Eastern time. I live in Charleston, South Carolina. So I can continue to do them around this time. Or if you like the nighttime, I might switch it back or I might just change it depending on. But hey, I really appreciate you guys joining. This is super fun. I love answering questions. I love talking. I love answering questions. This is all impromptu. So thanks for joining me. And yeah, thanks for joining. I really appreciate it. I'm just looking at the chat now. And you guys are most welcome. Like I, this to me is like just a hangout chill time to answer questions, hang out with some friends. I don't see this as like any, there's no downside for me to do this. I really enjoy it. But thank you guys so much. Again, I'll probably do another one of these at the end of next, at the beginning of April. And then we'll go from there. But I got a lot of good videos coming guys, a lot of good videos on creating data analyst resumes, best places to find data sets, my thoughts on things like chat GBT, replacing tech workers. Like I got a lot of good videos as well as my Panda series that I'm doing right now. So with all that being said, super excited that you guys are here. Really wish I had another hour or two to just hang out and chill with you guys. But unfortunately I do have work and I'm like getting messages and stuff which they can wait. But you know, I unfortunately can't do this all day. But thank you guys. I will see you next time. I gotta figure out how to stop this. I guess this button right here. All right, I'm gonna click this button. It's gonna stop and then I'll see in the next one. That's unfair. All right.