SQL on Friday. Game or role model? Ilse takes you through her experience her development within IT

Ilse her path to Business Intelligence Consultant and her further ambitions

Moving into a field where my personal interest lies, that challenges me and is future-proof. That was determinedly my goal! And that goal has been achieved. From the Techionista course in Data Analtyics, I started at TeamValue as a BI Consultant. To this day I do not regret that for a single moment. You keep developing yourself and have a very ambitious team around you. I found the search quite exciting and tough, but with good preparation, a few introductions and a cultural match I went for it! The TeamValue website stood out positively, I felt the humor and they also employ very smart professionals.  

My ambitions? I want to be able to say within now and a few months that I am an expert on Azure resource setup, security, automation and one button deploy. What applies to cloud, can so nicely apply to BI as well. Furthermore, I am convinced of the added value of more women in IT. Role model or learner!  

Clients are often impressed by our technical knowledge. That's a great endorsement for TeamValue. And for me a sign that I am in the right place!

The urge to understand 'the game' and execute it yourself

Everything was new. SQL, .NET, Power BI, Phyton, Azure. And this probably won't stop. And that's awesome! I have an urge to figure everything out when something is not clear. The great thing about our field is that everything changes so quickly that you always have to look at the game from different angles. New working methods, new techniques, other stakeholders, etc.  

It's cool to see and feel how you are already improving by leaps and bounds so quickly. I feel like a different person than I did six months ago! With the support of colleagues and different courses, I knew I made the right choice.

'The game' has two meanings in this one. Our quarterly game for Q3 was about dreams and goals. Mine and three other colleagues' was about developing our SQL skills. Anyone who thinks the book SQL Fundamentals is only for beginners is wrong. For 1 problem there are sometimes 10 different solutions. Every week on Friday, we solve those puzzles. Alone or together.  

In a flat organization, the emphasis is on you as a person. There is attention. Sometimes you also feel you just have to try something out and/or say something. Only by experimenting will you get to a higher level.

Playing with error codes is just fun to do  

Starting your certification AZ-900? Lots of reading, practicing, figuring it out, parsing error codes, asking colleagues for tips, and turning to my great friend Google from time to time. I guess that's the best explanation for "playing" with technology and data.  

Not only while practicing and learning, but also regularly during my assignment, I encounter errors and new challenges. For example, within our internal Data Hub project and within my assignment at Telindus. What else do I 'play' with? Data Vaults, patterns, smart ways of getting/ storing/ structuring/ versioning data. It's all about the business logic we add to the Datamart that our clients will soon be able to get their own reports from.  

We always ask ourselves the questions: what data do you have? What do you want to do with it? And how are we going to realize that? Want to know more about the zones: raw, structured, curated, output? Then read colleague Xander's blog. Why a Data Lake makes your life easier

The best thing about my work day? That at the end of that day something technically works well. For example, this week I looked at a setting in SparkPool and how I could automatically upload that file to Azure via Bicep. And when that solution is in place, it is super cool to then give a demo about it to users.

Want to read more about our colleagues' experiences or take an immediate deep dive into cloud, BI or agile? TeamValue - Blog

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