 Hello, I'm your host Alex Freeberg and this is the Alexa Analyst Show. Thank you so much for watching. Today we are talking about COVID, that pesky virus that is basically giving us a small glimpse into how people will handle the apocalypse, which is terrible. And so we're gonna kind of dive in to a few different areas and I'll talk about that in just a little bit. I want to say that I tried to record this video. If you haven't seen my post already on YouTube, I tried to record it right after I eaten my wife's famous blackberry cobbler and it turned my teeth completely black. And so I decided to redo the video instead of horrifying you and just completely ruining everything to be honest. It was terrifying. And so I decided to remake this video. I think it's gonna be even better because now I'm I've polished. I'm polished. I know what I'm talking about. I'm not just babbling on which I always do in these things. And so hopefully this is make for even better show. So, you know, thank you Christine, my wife for that. Some of the things that we're gonna be talking about today are things like how COVID is affecting the job market, how it is changing, how people are working from home, and changing the industry really. How more company, you know, we're gonna talking about our more companies hiring remote data analysts. And then I'm gonna talk a little bit about my experience from working from home as a data analyst, working at a very large company and how that's affected me with the kids, with the wife, with work, all those things. Just a little bit of anecdotal evidence to kind of what I'm talking about and how I'm handling it. And it'll be, we'll see, might be a good show. I think it will be. We'll see. To start us off, you know, how has, sorry, I'm reading some stuff on my computer, but how has COVID just affected everybody in general, right? Basically, there have been millions of job layoffs. Millions, like as many as 30 million are unemployed, the numbers went even higher than that and have come back down recently within the past couple months. So, you know, even currently sitting at around 30 million people unemployed, which is just massive. It's just unprecedented. It's insane, right? If you've been following the stuff, it's absolutely insane. Something that really plays a big part in the job market, right, is people who actually have job openings. And so something that, something that as a whole is a pretty good indicator of how the market is doing is job postings, right? If people are posting jobs, then that means there's lots of openings. If people have completely reduced jobs, that means that there's no openings. And so one fact that I found out there, which to me was just nuts, is from Indeed.com and they said that they're in the tech industry, there was a 36% decrease in job openings or job listings in July. And it went even a little higher, but then dropped even lower. Now it's in like the 30s or the high 20s, low 30s. Which is a lot. That's a third of the market. Over a third of the market, just completely gone for tech jobs. That doesn't mean that they didn't, that all these companies are going under, it just means they weren't hiring, right? They had openings, they were like, you know, let's just wait, see how this plays out and let's see if anything changes. So a third of the market. So, you know, to summarize real quick, millions of people out of their jobs in the tech industry, that means there's a lot more people looking for jobs. The job listings have decreased. So, you know, if, you know, there were 100 jobs before and now there's only, let's say 65 jobs and you have more people applying for those 65 jobs, that's going to make it tougher and much more competitive to get a job. And so the people that are going to be struggling the most are people right out of college who are trying to get data analyst jobs, right out of college who have no experience, you know, who are just trying to get their foot in the door, you know, that's going to be the toughest place to be right now because a lot of these professionals who had jobs, who have experience, are out of work and are now doing anything that they can to get a job. The other people who are, who it's going to be the toughest for are for people who are trying to switch careers, right? Again, you just need experience and if you don't have that experience, it's going to be more competitive. It's tougher because a lot of people who have experience are going to be applying for those same jobs. So that's kind of where we're at. I'm going to show this on your screen. I have lots of stuff to show you on screen today. So things will be popping up periodically, but this, this basically says, this graph says, how has the COVID-19 crisis impacted your analytic staffing and hiring model so far? So has it gone, has it gotten better? Has it gotten worse? Has it not changed? 56% said, has no impact. Didn't change anything. They're still hiring as normal. You know, that's, didn't really change anything. 22% said, we have been asked to prepare for actions such as salary cuts, hiring freezes, layoffs, but no actions taken yet. So people are at least preparing. They're getting ready. One second. And extremely loud noises coming from upstairs. I have no idea what that is. Not important. My wife will handle it, I'm sure. The next thing says, we have already had salary cuts, hiring freezes, or layoffs. So they're having some cut, some salary cuts, some of those things, but not a crazy amount. 15%, that's a lot though. Then 5% said, we have had substantial salary cuts, hiring freezes, or layoffs, which means they're, their company went out of business or they get rid of like half the staff or something like that. So basically 21% are saying that they're having a lot of, they're having a lot of layoffs, a lot of salary cuts, a lot of budget cuts. And to put this in perspective, this is a survey that this company sent out to over 300 companies, just basically asking people, what's going on at your company? So this isn't indicative of the entire country, probably, but it's a small sample set. And so it's just really interesting. But that is very concerning, right? If only 56% of companies are doing things as normal, they're not even, the other 44%, I mean, that's huge. 44% are either getting rid of people or thinking about or preparing for it. So jobs are not going to be as readily available as they once were. So to talk a little bit about how it's changing the industry, how it's affecting the industry, if you don't, if you're, if you maybe work at a small company or you don't follow tech, I highly recommend following like big tech, just, just keeping up with what's going on. Because they are kind of the innovators of how a lot of things work in the industry. And they can really drive, they can really make big, big changing changes in the industry. And one that made a huge change was really early on in the coronavirus, like early on, maybe like even June, I think it was Microsoft, or I know it was Microsoft who allowed their employees to work remotely permanently, which means they no longer have to come back to the office if they don't want to. Even when they do open, they don't have to come back, which was the first company that I had heard of who did that. It was, it was just crazy, right? Because now these people, they don't have to come back now. I will say that that is not only like out of the kindness of Microsoft's heart, right? It's also a financial thing because on average, the average cost it takes to put someone in a building for these large tech companies is around $4,000 per person per year. So now all of a sudden, they don't have to host or give space for them 10,000 plus, 20,000, 30,000 people to work, saving millions of dollars, right? So it's not, it's not just out of the kindness of their hearts, although there's a huge benefit to employees. Then now they can work from home, they don't have to worry about having to go in, that their jobs are secure. That's a wonderful thing. So lots of companies since then have done the exact same thing. And it's one of those things where that may be the new normal, that may be how things are going to be from now on, which kind of goes into our more companies hiring data analysts as remote data analysts. The answer is yes. And I see more and more job postings for remote data analysts. One thing to note on that though is it's really interesting is some are saying it's a remote position. You won't ever have to come in. Some are saying it's a remote position, but eventually it'll transition to an in-person job. In a little caveat to that first one is they're saying you never have to come in, but you still have to live in the area that the position is in, which was just, I don't understand that. I'm sure there's a reason for it. Somebody in HR who was watching this, who works in HR knows more than I do. But I saw a job posting, I shared it on my YouTube channel. I said it was Irving, Texas, which is near Dallas. And it said remote position, not going to, never going to go full-time in-person. It's a full-time job, not going to be in person. And it was just like everybody was posting, you know, is this, you have to live there, do you have to be in the area? I was like, I don't think so. I don't see why you would. It's a completely remote position. But when people would actually call the lady who was posting the job, the lady said you have to live in near Dallas, Texas. And I was like, that makes no sense to me. But just be aware of that. You know, that may be a thing for all these jobs, for some of these jobs, I don't know. So just be aware of that. I want to show some graphs real quick to talk a little bit more about these tech companies. And, you know, something that's very important to think about is the industry that you want to go into, right? There are certain industries that are getting hit very hard. Take Airbnb, for example. Airbnb, you know, if you don't know, they have rentals where you can rent out somebody's room or a house for a certain amount of money. Well, if nobody's traveling, if you're not allowed to travel and you don't want to get coronavirus, well then that whole industry just tanks completely. So let me show this thing on screen real quick. It says that in April, Groupon let go around 2800 employees, which Groupon sells experience. They sell experiences at a discount, right? You can go to a restaurant as an experience for, instead of paying for $100, you pay $60. Airbnb, they let go of 1900 employees and in May, Uber, which got hit huge because obviously it's transportation. Again, transportation got hit huge. They let off 3700 and then lots of other companies are letting go of other people as well. But it's just, I mean, certain industries are getting hit so huge. So if you're trying to go into certain industries, if you want to work for Uber, the competition one is going to be massive, right? Because let's say now they only have one or two data analysts, you know, of course they have more, but let's say they only have two data analyst positions and it's Uber, it's this mega billion dollar company. I mean, it's going to be a lot of competition, like just insane amount of competition. Next, let's look at, maybe I should have showed this one first, but you know, this graph right here is the biggest industries that are getting hit the hardest, right? And as you can see, this is the amount of layoffs in this industry, I think this was back in June. So this is an old graph that they never updated it, but it's still a really good, again, not a great visualization, but it gets the point across. So in, I want to say June is what I remember seeing was that 14,000 travel and transportation jobs were gone in the industry. So Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, TripAdvisor, Bird, all those big tech companies just laying people off because they're bringing in no money. They're bringing in like a tenth of the money that they used to. Retail and food and fitness, of course, are getting hit massively. Nobody's going out to eat. Nobody's going to the gym. Nobody's going out to buy things or all buying it off Amazon and giving Amazon billions and billions and billions of dollars. Then consumer services like Yelp, Jewel, even BreakGoPro, those, you know, those consumer things like Yelp, you're not going to get any traction on those because nobody's posting, because nobody's going out. Again, I have one more to show. Again, just to show that the industry that you're going into really matters, right? This next graph that I'm showing is ones that have gotten hit the least, some more than others, but have gotten hit the least. One that I think is really interesting, well, corporate services like Glastore, you know, less job postings, they make less money. The next one is real estate. So it's something like WeWork, OpenDoor. I don't think anyone is surprised by WeWork. I followed the WeWork story really, just a ton, like a few years ago when it was really relevant. But of course, WeWork is going to like absolutely get destroyed because nobody's paying, you know, nobody's going in to their place. No one's buying new places to work. Everyone's just working from home. So places like that are just going to get hammered. So they're letting go of a ton of people. So these are the ones that got hit the least, right? Data and information, finance, other health care and media. Now, I work in health care and seeing this makes me extremely happy because, you know, I'm just glad that my industry was not heavily impacted. But I work with hospitals and doctors and all these things, and they have a ton of work right now, right? They're seeing, they're seeing across the country millions of patients every day, doing tons of tests. There's lots of innovation around, around pharmaceuticals and all these, and all these drugs to get a vaccine and all these things. And so health care got hit the least. So if you are going into the industry of health care, then you're in luck, right? Because now all of a sudden you, the industry is still good. So, you know, you have to really think about what industry you're going into. If you're trying to go into big tech, if you're trying to go into, let's say Airbnb, for example, that's your dream job, now might not be the best time to go try to get a job there. In all honesty, it's just probably not the best time. So, you know, really think about that. That's, that's extremely important. How is it affecting me personally, working from home with kids and a wife? How has that happened? So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go too much into how my companies handle things because I don't like talking about my company. I like to talk about me because I get, there's, there's much less chance that anybody cares about what I, what I say. And I'm not a spokesperson person for my company by any means. So none of this reflects on my company. But I'm allowed to work from home. I've been working from home since March, which has been six months. And we don't plan on coming back for another six months. And so I will probably at least be working at home for a year, which just sounds insane. In the course of that time, we got a new, a different house. We had a baby five months ago. So right when COVID started, when all the, it was, you know, super scary to go into hospitals. That's when we had our baby, right? The, the peak of fear. And so we were super concerned. And, you know, now we have three kids at home. So how has that affected me? My work schedule has completely changed. Right now my hours are in the morning, I work nine to 11. And then the afternoon I work one to three. And then that's four hours total. And then for four other hours, I have to finish it throughout the day, which I do it at night. So I work typically from like nine o'clock until one a.m. is typically my schedule. But I'm also, you know, I do consulting for data analytics stuff. I also do YouTube stuff. And so, which I love, but I have to fit that in somewhere. And so I usually stay up super late. And so my work schedule, my sleeping habit, my sleeping schedule has been completely destroyed. Because all the other hours during the day, I have to take care of the kids, help my wife with everything around the house. It's just, it's, it's a complete 180 from how it was before where I would work my, my cushy nine to five job. I'd come home, we'd have dinner, put the kids to bed. At night, I'd do YouTube, nothing else, because I didn't have any work, because I did all my work at work. But now work is constant. It's fluid. I just have to do it when I have the chance. And it makes it extremely tough. My wife is taking a small height. It's on work to take care of the little ones. And so, you know, money is a little bit more tight. And, you know, it's just, it's a lot more stressful because you're around your family 24-7. And I love my kids. I love them so much. You ask anybody, I love my kids. They're amazing. I love my family. I love my wife. I love everybody. But good night. It's like, how long can you spend alone time or time spent together before you just start like getting annoyed at each other about the littlest things and start getting frustrated with each other? It makes it tough. And that does impact your work because I just get frustrated at things that I didn't get frustrated before because I'm in this little like vacuum of just pressure. It's like a pressure cooker. And you can't escape. Sometimes I go on drives with my kids. It's great. But I mean, three kids, you can't really get away from them. I don't want to get away from them. That sounds terrible. What I'm trying to say is it's tough. It's tough. And my work has completely changed. My quality of work has not gone down. I still do a great job. If anyone at my company is watching this, I still do a wonderful job. Probably the best work I've ever done. Honestly, it might be means for a promotion even. That's just my opinion though. But in general, it's more stressful. It's tougher to accomplish everything I want to accomplish in the day. It's tough. With all the kids and everything, it's definitely very different than when I was working because I had eight hours of dedicated time every single day to work. I didn't have to juggle anything else. I could go talk to my coworkers, get work done so efficiently. Now it's all done over email and chat and all these things. So it's just different. Let me see. One thing I do want to say is that if you have not seen already, this guy right here, this is my Barack Obama bobblehead. And this was voted on by the amazing people over at Patreon who support the channel. Now, this will specifically, we'll see he might be back, but there will be more opportunities to interact with the actual show, to be part of the show. I might, who knows, maybe I'll sing a song next time. But it will be voted on by the people at Patreon. If you want a say in that, go over to Patreon and support my channel. I believe this was a vote between my Dwight Schrute bobblehead from the office. So if you're a fan and you really wanted that on there, all you have to do is to go over and be a Patreon on Patreon, support me. And you can vote on stuff like this guy right over here. So that's just my plug for the day. You guys are amazing. You know, I love my people over at Patreon. I talk to you guys all the time. So back to the show, that is kind of everything that how COVID has impacted the market, how it's impacted jobs, that's impacted me. I have, as you know, as part of the show, we do a weekly YouTube comment that I talk about. I got to find it. I had recorded this previously and had the comments and I told the guy, I said, Hey, I asked your question on, I asked your question on the show and he was super excited. I think he was excited. He seemed like he was excited. Then I had the black teeth situation. I don't want to go and do it. I don't want to talk about it. But then I lost the comment. And so now I'm actively, as we were talking about it, I am looking for that comment again. And I feel really bad that that happened. And if I can't find it, then I'm going to have to go back to that guy and apologize, because then I'd feel really bad. So give me a second while I search for this. While we're here, actually, no, I'm not doing that while we're here because I want to talk about that at the very end. You don't even know what I'm talking about, but I will talk about at the end. If you were sticking with me through all of this nonsense that's going on right this very second, you guys are the real MVPs. I'm going to find it later. It's in here. The question was basically what tools, while I'm still searching, what tools do you need to become a data analyst in healthcare? And basically how I would say is the things that you need to know about healthcare, the tools are very important, but the domain knowledge for healthcare specifically is even more important. And I talk about domain knowledge a lot. You need to know the industry that you're going to go into. For healthcare, what I use, and here's what I use. I use SQL, Microsoft SQL. I use MySQL. We use Azure, so Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Storage, Databricks, things like that to name a few. Python I use regularly. I use a ton of Python. Some of my co-workers who are programmers and developers use other programming languages. I don't use R. Some do. And the domain knowledge is super important. So as a super broad in healthcare, you need to know certain things. You need to know claims information, like adjudicated claims. You need to know what that is. What an ICD code is, a CPT code. If you go to a doctor right now and you go for a visit, you'll get a CPT code that says it's a general visit, like a 99203. It's a general visit or something. I think that's what a 99203 is, off the top of my head. So you need to know stuff like that. You need to know CPT codes, Loink codes, HickPix codes. You need to know how that all interacts in the actual EMR system on the doctor's side. If you are not in healthcare analytics, completely just skip all this. Go to the, skip all this to the end. But those are really important things. The domain knowledge is super important. And that is for any industry. If you're in finance, I don't know the finance side of things. So you would be much more suited to the finance side of things, because that's your domain. Enough, I feel like today's show went okay. I think it went all right. It wasn't as, I don't think it was as bad as the first one. Every show is a toss-up. And for the people who are sticking around, I tell you this every time, but from the bottom of my heart, I don't know how you do it, because man, I just ramble and I talk a lot. That's how it goes. That's how it goes around here. But for the people who stuck around to the very end, all right, this is probably my favorite thing of the show, to be honest. And I don't know how this started. But for the past two episodes, at the very end, I said, if you made it to the very end, post this in the comments. And the very first one was jalapeno, jalapeno, jalapeno, however you pronounce that. The second one was avocado. And I showed my wife this and she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. And I'm telling you, I just, every time I look at it, I just crack up, because in the comments, there's jalapeno, jalapeno, jalapeno, jalapeno. And just like, one person in there, like, who is commenting, like, who the heck, why the heck is everyone commenting jalapeno? And it just cracks me up. And I showed my wife and it just, is absolutely hilarious to me. Like, I find so much joy in it for no other reason than it's just super fun to do. Today is, is what I would consider to be, to this is today's keyword. And I don't say this lightly. I consider this to be one of the most underrated vegetables of all time. And since some of my favorite foods, nobody gives it the credit it deserves. And so it's going to get, it's time to shine in this podcast that 20 to 30 people made it all the way to the end. Today's keyword, if you made it all the way to the end, if you've gone through my babbling, if you're still here, even though I'm still talking and I'm still haven't given you it, today's word is cabbage. That's right. Cabbage, because I'm telling you any Asian food, which I love Asian food, cabbage is like the star. It's super underrated, but it is, it shines. And to me, I love the crunch, love the flavor. Today's vegetable, again, vegetable based. I'm not straying away. I'm keeping with it for no other reason that I think it's funny. So that's what we're doing today. Thank you for watching. Thank you for supporting the channel. I hope this was interesting. If you are in a position where you are looking for a job in this time, I wish you the best of luck. I feel for you. I think it is a very tough time to be getting, to be looking for a job. It's much more, it's not impossible by any means. There are certain things that you can do, but it just is more challenging and I feel for you. So thank you for sticking around. Thank you for watching. I will see you in the next video. I hope my teeth continue to be as pearly white as they are and not black in any way in any future video. Thank you guys for watching. I really appreciate it. I will see you in the next video. Goodbye.