Is data really useful if I don’t work in tech?

Here is this article in Spanish

In my previous piece, I wrote about data, how are we surrounded by it and why should we pay attention to it in our day to day. Here I would like to add a quick note on why we all should put attention on the data that surrounds us in our jobs, whatever those may be.

In your average day you may benefit from having a strong grasp on the data that is around you in multiple manners.

Perhaps you want to buy a house or a car, or perhaps you want to go for some big-ticket acquisitions, and you have decided to tighten up your budget for this to happen in a clean manner. This would not be possible if you don’t know your financial data on how you are spending your money.

You could also want to get into a course or degree but if you don’t consider your existing grades and the requirements of the program it may be only luck when that happens. In the end knowing your data has the strongest influence is on our day-to-day job.

You may agree or not with thinking that data is a trend and it needs to be taken in consideration, or even that you should be taking advantage of it, either way data is useful from games of luck to solving questions like “do I need to wake up earlier than normal?”.

The belief that, to start working with data you need to be some kind of “genius software developer that can do dark magic with numbers” could not be farther from the truth, I even dare to say that knowing the business is better for the basics of using your data, there are some tools that are made so a non-technical business user from Marketing, Sales, Logistics, or other similar areas can download and start using with little to no help. Just follow the installer, open up the tool and configure how to open the data (like setting up the format, where to find it and sometimes user and password) and just start exploring.

I won’t deny that there are some activities with data that require a higher technical mindset and skill, regardless, anyone can get value from working with the basics and, by the time you get into the really complex stuff, the basics will have provided enough value to prove the usefulness of employing data on your day to day.