10 Things Analysts Hate the Most

Just as in any other profession, coworkers play a huge role in destabilizing the well-balanced mind of an analyst. They ask weird questions, give Excel tables strange names (i.e. “Common” instead of “A/B tests results”), don’t give access to the data when you desperately need it, ask to do something impossible, or, vice versa, ask to do something that they are perfectly capable of doing. This is a never-ending topic.

Analysts really dislike product managers that believe the number of corridor researches can be considered as quantitative evidence. And they often try to use it to confirm their hypothesis.

Clients sometimes don’t understand the role of an analyst at all. They may simply say: “Surprise me”. Come on, am I a clown?

Clients may think that the analyst can improve any project and make it successful. In fact, the analyst can only find bottlenecks and problems and the one who will do the necessary improvements is the client, not the analyst.

Analysts don’t like people misusing professional terms. For example, product managers often say about the results of their experiments: “Oh, they almost reached statistical significance!” But you know, “almost” doesn't count.

Analysts also hate the "yesterday" deadline. And even more, they hate “You had to do it yesterday and for free.”

They hate the lack of feedback. If the analyst built a report, gave it to the client, then they expect a reaction. They want someone to at least read the report. If during the work on the report the client understands that they no longer need it, the analyst wants to know about it too.

Using Excel on a Macbook is a separate kind of hell for the analyst.

It terrifies the analyst when they create a CSV file, then open it in Excel, and there is only one column there.

Good analysts also hate their own perfectionism. They suffer when they see the project and understand how to improve it as a whole, but they can’t because they were hired for a specific little project only.