Profession - Data Science and Database Marketing for a Non-Profit Foundation (<25 Employees, Endowment ~1 Billion USD)

Workday

[6:00-7:30] Wake up ~60 minutes before work if I'm driving, ~90 min if I'm taking the train, ~100 min if I'm riding my bike. Commute is about 8 miles regardless.

[7:00 - 9:30] Arrive at Work (I prefer to put in extra time in the morning rather than after work)

[8:00] Start running a few processes that will take a few hours. Make myself coffee and check what I have coming up.

[9:00] Recurring meetings generally happen in the morning. I meet with our printer rep on Tuesdays and Fridays, the Director of the Foundation on Thursdays, and individual departments schedule other meetings around those.

[10:30] Wrap up daily data tasks. This includes tracking down issues that our constituents have found in their reports, or developing new reports.

[12:00] Lunch. I typically spend ~45 minutes walking around during this time. It helps me clear my mind, and I'll often solve problems I'm stuck on during this time.

[13:00] Working on in-depth projects, such as analysis or creating new processes. An example of a new process might be building a new marketing track for a particular group of donors I have identified as needing specialized attention.

[13:30] Longer meetings tend to happen during this block of time. These meetings tend to be much less common or one-offs, and tend to focus on organizational planning. Meetings for upcoming appeals and marketing efforts happen during this time, as do our semi-annual performance meetings.

[15:30] Wrap up my day. I'll occasionally stay till 17:00 or so, but I've found that I make more mistakes the later it gets, especially as I get hungry.

[16:30] Commute home

[17:00] Eat, do dishes, do any chores that need to be done.

[18:00] Free time. Work on one of my projects, spend time with friends, work out, play basketball, Etc. Whatever I need to do to stay sane and happy.

[22:00] Shower, brush teeth, go to sleep.

:Repeat:

Notes:

Once I leave work, I can no longer work as we are not given the ability to work from home.

It takes me about 25 minutes to drive to work, and 35 min to drive home.

Riding my bike takes about 45 minutes each way. Despite the added time, I find I am generally happier if I can ride my bike.

Riding the train takes about 35 minutes going to work and 50 on the way home, on account of how transfers work in the loop.

I have a lot of flexibility at work because I'm a team of one, and I am extremely productive in ways that nobody really understands.

On one hand, I enjoy the freedom, and I've been able to make the role my own.

On the other hand, I've started to really hit the limit of what can be done in this role and I'm starting to get really bored. On top of that, while I really enjoy the analytical and scientific part of my role, the part that other people understand best is my ability to build data processes, and over time I've been roped in to creating and supporting several CRUD applications.

While these applications do benefit the organization, I find maintaining and designing these applications fairly stressful, since I have next to no background in application design, UX, or anything that would really qualify me to design and build systems that are robust enough for other people to use. I create a lot of things that work, but I recognize are clunky and somewhat fragile.