Self Taught vs Boot Camp vs Degree | Alex The Analyst Show | Episode 3

Key Takeaways

hello i'm your host alex freeburg and this is the alex the analyst show thank you so much for joining me today we have a really good topic or at least i think so we're gonna be looking at kind of some paths that you can take to become a data analyst and those are self learning boot camp and getting a degree now when i say self-learning i don't just mean that you don't have a degree at all maybe you are also transitioning from a different degree that is completely unrelated similar to mine bootcamp which is either an online bootcamp or you know an in-person boot camp or getting a degree and that's either a bachelor's or a master's and i'll kind of talk about that once we get there i want to say up front before i start this all of my kids are asleep and so i have my monitor right here and i may have to run they have been kind of restless tonight for whatever reason so just want to throw that out there before we get started let's take a look real quick at the really high level pros and cons of each one right so for the self-learning one it the the really good thing about it is that it's cheap it's super cheap you can do it basically for uh free if not very minimal cost like under 200 which is insane if you consider how much money you could be earning as a data analyst so if you spend 200 uh to learn all the skills to become a data analyst in new land like even a 50 000 job that is an insane uh uh return on your investment like absolutely insane the difficult thing about it is sometimes it can take a long time especially if you're not somebody who is very good at progressing and making sure that you're learning the correct things i think another thing that's difficult about it is you sometimes you just don't know what you're supposed to know like you don't know what to learn you're learning kind of random bits and pieces of different programs or softwares or you know coding uh uh program i said that already uh programming languages is what i was trying to say you know you're you're kind of scattered and you're you're not really focused on what you should be learning and that's a really difficult thing and a difficult um thing to overcome to really get a good grip on the skills that you need and get a job the other hard thing is it's hard to get noticed by jobs if you don't have any experience and you don't have a degree that's related to it right so in in essence the best thing about self-learning is just that it's cheap uh that is the best thing about it i i can attest to this it is cheap um it just takes it takes a while takes some dedication it takes you know a lot of investment in time okay so for the boot camp two things that are i guess one thing that's really good about it is that it's extremely fast or or at least the path can be a lot faster than self-learning and it can be a lot faster than getting a degree so it's probably the fastest path to becoming a data analyst another thing that could be a positive is some have job placement uh programs basically built into their uh you know their program and so if you're doing something like an in-person one where you know it costs like 10 or 15 000 but they offer a job placement or you get your money back that could be a really good deal so that could be a positive the downside to most of that is that typically they do not right and they're expensive so the cheaper ones are about three to five thousand those are the ones you're gonna get online like springboard or thinkful those are ones that a lot of people take but you know they don't offer job placement they offer a job like help where they help you search for a job but i don't believe they offer job guarantees basically the other thing is you know it doesn't necessarily open up a ton of jobs right if you have a boot camp on your resume and that's really only the only experience you have like i'm imagining each of these scenarios you're starting out with nothing you either go the self-learning route the boot camp route or the degree route you have no experience everybody's starting at the same level a boot camp uh it might open up some jobs but you know it depends on i guess the boot camp itself all the skills that you learned the exact industry so i don't know if it even opens up that many jobs right so then you have the degree uh the thing about this one is it takes a very long time four years for a bachelor's degree or about two years for a master's so you know if you're coming into it with a bachelor's degree and you know you really want to change careers like 100 180 uh your career you get a job in let's say like data analytics or computer science or something like that that takes two years so compared to the self-learning route or the boot camp route this one by far it takes the longest like ab just blows them out of water it's like three to four times as long it's extremely expensive some of these programs for master's degree run like in insane amounts like 30 000 a year and that's just you know that's a huge investment in time and money just huge and so if you do it online you know that could make it a little cheaper or if you have your company partially pay for it or pay for the whole thing that can make it a lot cheaper still a huge investment in time but it is going to open up by far the most jobs the other ones you know especially the self-learning is not going to probably open up any jobs in and of itself you'll be able to put the skills on your resume um the degree is going to open up by far the most jobs because you are getting an education it's accredited it shows employers that you took the time which could be you know years and you took years out of your out of your time to basically learn these skills excuse me for a second so you know you can get degrees in things like computer science i.t information systems those are just some of the ones that i wrote down um you can also get things in like finance and you get an mba with a concentration in data analytics there's lots and lots of options honestly for somebody who wants to be a data analyst which is fantastic so you know what do i think about these because i know a lot of people who have done all of these options and i'm actually starting to meet a lot more people who have done boot camps especially once i came out with that video about why you should not take a boot camp a lot of people have been messaging me even people that i know and like hey i took a boot camp i was like well sorry i feel i feel bad for saying that but you know thanks for letting me know i was very polite about i was like i was like i mean that's super cool you obviously are successful so it worked out for you but it's not going to be perfect for everybody so that was just my my opinion but uh look you know i kind of want to walk through my thoughts on each one real quick which is the self-learning route which is by far the cheapest um you know you can do it in your spare time at night after you get home from your regular job and i think that for me this was the perfect thing to do right i did not have a relevant degree i did not have the money i didn't i didn't even have anything remotely close to being able to afford to go back to college and get a master's in analytics but the reason why i liked self learning so much for myself was that i wasn't 100 sure if that's the route i wanted to go and so i didn't want to invest a lot of time and money and everything to really see uh if this was for me because if i made that huge investment and i didn't like it well then you know i'm kind of screwed right i'm out you know let's say ten thousand dollars just for either a boot camp or a degree or something like that i'm just have a ton of money um and to put it into perspective like i spent two hundred dollars i would say i'm at max spent two hundred dollars self learning for like four months um maybe maybe a little more than that i'd be shocked but that's about how much i spent to be where i am now um and i've taken more courses since then uh on things a little more advanced things but self-learning is you know a hundred times cheaper than anything any of these other options right so that's kind of the benefit of self-learning is that you can do it in your own time you can see if you like it you can you know you there's no huge obligation by any means unless you're signing up for you know like a nano degree from udacity which which some people do and they cost like three thousand dollars they're expensive um and and i have a whole another i can make a whole another video on what i think is worth it and not worth it i don't think those nano degrees are worth it personally but uh you know the difficult thing about self-learning is you are not going to get noticed for jobs it's not going to help you get noticed for jobs you have to take that upon yourself to do personal projects create a portfolio you know call recruiters make it known that you are a data analyst and you want to you want to get a job as a data analyst right it's very much on you to present yourself as a data analyst so i think for the self learning the the people who fit in this category the absolute most are people that are trying to transition careers but they aren't a hundred percent if it's for them and if you are really not sure self learning is going to basically give you the option of out at any time if at any time you find out that python or sql or or you know whatever skill right are i'm blanking on data analyst skills this is um slightly embarrassing but you get my point you can just bail right you can just stop and you don't have to take any more go on with your regular career and be happy right but if you take a if you take a boot camp and you invest like 10 000 into that boot camp and then you figure out that you don't want to be a data analyst you will not be very happy right so it's probably the least um the least investment both with money time and risk because you're not risking a ton so i think that is for for that kind of person the boot camp uh is going to be a very very very small group of people and i say that because i just don't like boot camps and that's just my personal opinion and i made this disclaimer that if it is for you that's fantastic and that's amazing and i'm i'm i'm jealous because i wish boot camps were for me honestly because i think boot camp sounds super cool like if i could go for six months and don't not work and just completely learn everything about data analysis that sounds like the best time to me i would i would love that like right now if i could do that and you know i quit i don't want to quit my job but i keep getting my salary but they send me to some boot camp to learn all these things i would have an absolute blast and be the best time of my life to be honest but you know i don't think that's for everyone and here's why i don't think that you are going to be as job ready as you think you are at the end of these boot camps and that's what i've heard from a lot of people who have taken boot camps that is not my own bias right i said that in the video and i made the disclaimer that you know i had not really talked to a lot of people i talked to like a couple people but i didn't have any personal experience with boot camps but now that i have a ton of people reaching out to me telling me their experience i have a lot better understanding of what people got out of it and to be honest the biggest feedback that i was getting was after they got out they did not feel job ready they didn't learn all the skills as in depth they didn't feel as prepared as they thought they should have been so like take sql for example which is a huge one that they teach at these courses um you know a lot of people were like well i know how to write queries i don't know how to use it in a business setting and so people who got jobs as data analysts after those boot camps are like oh man yeah they did not prepare me like they did not prepare me as well as they should have prepared me and so that's the that's the feedback that i kept getting um one sec let me check the time cool so that's the feedback that i kept getting which was you know i learned a ton it was awesome i felt you know going out of it i felt awesome once i got into my job i realized how little i actually knew and so i wish i had learned a ton more before actually getting into a job which is interesting um i think somebody a lot of these people's expectation was really high right they thought they were gonna learn basically everything they need to know to be job ready whereas they give you they give you the tools to be job ready um but you know a job setting is very different and every job is different right and so if your expectation is to come out of a boot camp knowing just about everything you need to know it's not going to happen i promise you it's not going to happen as for the cost you know i personally do not think that the cost is as you know let me let me rephrase this i don't think that you are getting your return on investment at a boot camp unless they are offering the job placement guarantee right so if you're spending five thousand dollars and you don't get a job that's a huge investment i just i don't recommend it um also i've you know i've seen boot camps on resumes and i i personally don't particularly care that much and i i feel bad saying that um for all the people who've taken boot camps out there it's just not something that i personally look on a resume and i'm like man this guy's job ready right i look at it as an accelerated self-learning slash mentorship where you learned a lot of the skills and that's fantastic and that's amazing but can you prove it right it's the same thing as self-learning just in a quicker pace with with a little mentorship you have a little bit more guided courses you have some projects that you're probably doing in the course and so you have a little bit more experience but honestly everything that you're doing in a boot camp you can do by yourself every single thing there's nothing special about a boot camp that you can't do on your own um i know i'm focusing on those two right now i'll get to the degree in just a little bit i just want to really i don't know not to swayed you but make you not want to do a boot camp and i do that's just that's 100 my personal opinion 100 um you know i and i i never thought about it like this and i'm thinking about it while i'm recording this and so i'm not cutting it out but i'm just going to talk you through it may be that i'm jealous and hear me out when i first started i was poor and i mean dirt poor like it was it was rough like when i was first in the self-learning time i was super super poor did i had no money is there any other way i can say that i was broke um and i maybe i'm just a little bit jealous of people who do the boot camps because i wish i could have done that i wish i had like six thousand dollars sitting around ready to be used to make me become a data analyst faster i maybe i just wish i had that and so i just kind of trash talk it because i want to make others people not take it um it's very possible and and i'm not going to get into my whole psychology but it's very possible but i just i personally don't like it enough about boot camps because good night i just talked about that for way too long let's get into degrees because i think that degrees are really interesting i think that the timing of it the degree that you get the reason you get the degree are all really important so for example if you are right out of high school you're going into college and you're like man well i could take computer science and become a data analyst do it 100 you know go for it i think that if i could have done that i would be if i could have realized what i wanted to do when i grew up at a younger age i would be so even further along in my career than i already am right it could have only done good things so i really wish i would have done that um and if you have the ability to do that and start early and start young that is that is gold if however you are somebody like me um or maybe not even someone like me someone who's older someone who's 25 30 years old already has a bachelor's um and you're wanting to transition you're in a very tough spot right you've already gotten career experience whatever job that is whether you're a nurse whether you're a mechanic whatever your job is you already have five to 10 years of experience in that field and so trying to restart your career as another career at that age it can be difficult i think that the younger you start the younger that you get into especially with a degree to transition the better it's not impossible to do i'm not saying don't do it i'm saying that you know that's just something to be aware of is that if you are 30 35 40 years old trying to restart your career and you're trying to get a degree to do that you're going to have to you have to really really really prove yourself and so you know think about that think about where you are your career your education all those things i will say if however you if however i'm sorry my computer is doing something weird if however you have a degree in something that's semi-related let me give you an example let's say you're a nurse and you have a nursing degree and then you go back and get a master's in data analytics analytics computer science those two things go hand in hand same thing with finance same thing with business if you can combine two related degrees uh not skills but degrees that can be a beautiful pairing and something that can really make you stand out in the marketplace uh in when i say marketplace i mean in in the competition for jobs right because somebody who has a degree in computer science and then a master's in computer science would get it you like computer science but if you can marry those two together like finance or nursing or health anything health care related i'm health care so i talk a lot about health care you know that is a beautiful thing you have the knowledge you have um you have not only knowledge in the domain but in firsthand experience like five or ten years of being a nurse and then moving over to the data side of things is invaluable like that is absolutely something that people want so you think about that for your own industry if you're in construction finance i i don't know other industries i can't think of off the top of my head obvious ones just think of your industry if you can marry that with a data analytics degree would that be helpful then it can be a huge opportunity to switch careers to become a data analyst etc but it's going to take a long time right you have to know that you want to do that and so hopefully you got a little experience in your current job with on the data side of things and you know for certain that that's what you want to do because if you aren't certain if uh if you get there you get the degree and you get out you get a job and you hate it oh man and you just go back to whatever you did you just wasted like fifty sixty thousand dollars um you know and as a nurse you're probably already making somewhat good salary i know some nurses that make a good salary and so um you know if you just want a more i guess i don't say easier job more relaxing job a more office heavy job then you know that could be a really good change even if you didn't get necessarily the pay bump um but there's lots of great degrees that you can get one that i personally have been looking at is getting a master's in computer science or a masters in information systems or a master's in just data analytics right i think that for me if i want to advance my career even further i am going to need to get a master's degree my experience is great i'm going to need to get a master's degree and so i think that a lot of people could also benefit from my master's degree in in a field like that um to kind of sum all of this up i think that there are specific people for each group there's almost none for the boot camp but there's a lot for the self-learning a lot for the degree and i think that you just really need to look at yourself and think about which one is going to work best for your lifestyle where you are do you have kids uh you know do are you 10 years into your career and you're gonna make a huge 180 like i did uh well i wasn't far into my career i was you know like a year into my career not even a year i was like six months and i was like i'm out of here i'm getting a different job you know you know who know where you're at know which one you want to do i highly recommend at least doing self learning at the beginning right doing self-learning for a couple months if you really like it try to get into a master's program even if you are in a master's program do self-learning data analysts as a whole just need to be doing self-learning anyways right it comes with a territory if you're in tech you need to be coming keeping up with technologies upping your skills make yourself more marketable um and then you know for the boot camp if you got some extra money to throw around and you want to fast track yourself learning uh you know have a mentor have a guide by all means do that that's that's your decision again i'm just jealous i'm just jealous i'm sorry i think i i you know i i'm just going to touch on this one more time i feel like i really am just jealous and for all the people who have taken boot camps out there i genuinely do want to apologize i'm not trying to make you feel bad i care about you i just um i know myself well i know myself well enough to know when i'm jealous and i'm willing to admit that uh you know and then there's the degree people who have not only money um but people have time not a huge commitment i will say for myself i have three kids i have a full-time job i do the youtubes you know i have a lot of i have a lot on my plate and i'm working from home it's a pandemic it's just a lot going on right so you know for me it's gonna be tough to go back and get my masters i will do it almost 100 my my company offers um it's called a tuition reimbursement so i pay up front and then after each semester they pay me back for whatever i for whatever i did up to a certain amount but i will never reach that amount so i could get a free education i could i just have to do it i have to spend the time um you know it's it's a it's a big investment in time and money so that is what i think that is my take on this whole thing i hope that that was helpful um just to hear my thoughts on it i don't think it was very helpful to be honest i think that this one was probably um my rambling about the boot camp really was a downer in this episode if i'm being honest so for all you people who took boot camps who left 10 minutes ago i apologize it's a huge downer man just a bummer uh we are entering a time in the episode where i take one comment off youtube i read it to you i answer it um it's semi-related to what we've been uh not really it's not really related uh but jazz i'm gonna say sing he asked hi alex what order do you recommend learning to learn these skills excel sql power bi tableau python for an accountant interested in data analyst career like i said people from all walks of life want to become data analysts it's the coolest job nobody wants to be an accountant anymore the job is data data analysis is there any other skill one should learn thanks um i think that these core skills which are absolutely the core skills right these are the things that you should start out and any data analysts should start out with and maybe toss r in there if you're just you really want to i don't want to get flack for that i prefer python or whatever the order that i would learn these in is sequel number one no doubt in my mind i would then learn power bi and tableau right and at the same time slash excel a little after because you know the marketability of knowing power power bi and tableau is much higher than learning excel because they just expect you to know excel so i would learn power bi or tableau next then i would learn excel and then after that i would learn python right python to me is probably the one skill that let me rephrase that sql and python are the two skills that i think have earned me the most money in my career but i also know that python is very difficult it's can be very challenging for a lot of people and so you know i think learning tableau first learning excel first learning sql very first is definitely the way to go um all right uh this is the end of the episode last last episode that i did uh we talked about how i went on this huge rant and then i asked you guys to type in jalapenos in the comments and for whatever reason i don't know why for whatever reason because you guys stuck around so long you guys really enjoyed that i think you took pride in being able to comment that below so i want to give that you that opportunity again today if you watched all the way to the end today's vegetable i'm keeping it uh vegetable based this week is gonna be avocado so if you stuck around all the way to the very end again type an avocado in the comments below i will look at it and know that you are dedicated you are you have what it takes even more than last episode jalapeno people very cool it's the avocado time so thank you for watching thank you for sticking around i hope that this was somewhat helpful right i hope the boot camp thing wasn't too much of a bummer i there's got to be at least one person who watched all the way through that's my goal for today's episode if i can get one person to watch all the way through i'll be happy uh one thing i completely forgot to mention i have my dog sitting here right now he reminded me max said to remind you that if you want to support the channel go on over to patreon uh you know i have even if you just want to give five bucks that would mean the world to me i i really do invest it back in into these episodes i'm gonna be doing a big giveaway uh at 10 000 subscribers and so you know your uh your help with the channel your support of the channel means everything to me uh thank you guys so much for watching have a good day shout out to all the avocado people goodbye