The Wenis Report...

As you get older you meet more people from friends, work functions, spouses co-workers, etc. Inevitatbly you make idle chit-chat which leads to that question, "So what do you do?"

What do I do? I have a feeling not a lot of people know what I do, nor do I tend to explain it to most people either.

The simple answer is I.T. The problem with saying I.T. is that people automatically assume this means I fix computers and I am available at their disposal to fix their computers. Sadly, this is not what I do. Honestly, I am not that good at fixing computers. You are better off asking some geeky 14 year old kid. Granted, I may know a little more about computers than most...but really not a lot. I don't mind looking at people's PC's when they have a problem but really PC support is not my thing.

I did start my 'real world' career in desktop support but that was on Windows 95 and 98. Yeah, windows isn't even on numbers anymore it is XP or VISTA.

In any case, I am sure my parents think I fix computer or program computers. I even asked Aya if she knows. She attempted to throw out some key words that she learned while covering tech stocks but she wasn't even close.

Thus, I have the job that the TV show Friends character Chandler Bing has. I create the Wenis report!

The real answer is that many companies don't even know how to classify my position. Sometimes my title is a Business Analyst or Sr. Systems Engineer or BI Developer. Right now, my title is Sr. MicroStrategy Engineer.

What I do is simply called data warehouse. The key phrase in the industry is Buisness Intelligence. In a nut shell, we take existing legacy systems that contain various data. For example, the company has one system that contains marketing data and another system contains financial data. In order to get reports you have to run one report from each system. What I do is gather the relevant data from both systems, bring them into one system and then allow the user the ability via icon or drag and drop features to create ONE report that has data from both systems.

Hopefully that one report contains the key information to help that analyst make the correct business decision to drive the business. More often than not the analysts aren't as bright my fellow BI Engineers so we often have to create the reports for the user as well.

Of course there is more too it like maintaining the system, improving query time, supporting user questions, etc. but our goal is to retrieve the relevant data to allow the business to make informed decisions.

Nothing glamorous. Nothing exciting. Nothing like desktop support. This is what I do. I am sure Sunil will have some sort of technical comment about what we really do, but this explanation is for the non I.T. folks.

Oh yeah, data warehouse people also have the god-like complex. We rock. People yell at desktop support people about their PC's not working. People worship us because we help them save time...sometimes so much time that our automation can eliminate their job! It is no wonder I am the Greatest!!!