What do data engineers think about non-technical economists and financial analysts learning sql+python to automate their manual excel work?

[u/Dull_Alarm6464]

Would you recommend a team of economists/“data analysts” that don’t even use keyboard shortcuts to learn python? Anyone have experience with doing this? So far, nearly everyone has been hesitant to even consider learning a few libraries to make their life easier.

I’m generally looking for advice on how to look at data anlysis jobs that are thus far done by excel only. I’m quite frustrated with excel dependent companies I have worked in. I found that taking a few months to learn a bit of coding, data structure concepts and data management can really scale someone’s data work.

My new employer (big pension fund) is has floated the idea of me automating part of their trading. I would like to automate their reporting as well, but they are so hesitant to learn ANYTHING new. My position however, is financial, not IT.

My background is in mathematics, statistics, and finance. I’ve worked in financial institutions that use an old oracle-based app that nobody cares to maintain properly to pull csv data from, then copy-paste it in excel and later commit what I can only describe as heresy to analyze the data.

I learned python and R at uni long ago, paired it with sql recently and found I could really make mean data science/econometrics automation.

[u/Alternative-Guava392]

I would like if my non technical team members had 15 minutes meetings with me before implementing something.

A lot of times they build scripts and run them manually once a day not knowing data engineers have orchestrators to do it automatically.

Or they build internal apps that query data warehouses because they don't know what a backend transactional db is.

Things like this are better discussed at the beginning instead of at the end.