I want to start with the definition I’ve come to attribute to this term and then I can talk about how I’ve come to it.
Data Schlepper: Someone who drags or hauls data, especially along a tedious journey, to create a valuable end product that is useful, insightful, and actionable to the world.
–Jonathan
If you are starting to worry that I am speaking poorly about those who work with data do not fear. I think of the term as an endearing one. For anyone who has worked in the data space ranging from a data analyst, data engineer, data scientist, or even CDO you know that your customers want their data and they are not afraid to ask for it. To be clear this is not (necessarily) a bad thing. You know that you are valued when the fruits of your labor are sought after and relied on to run the business. However, at the same time this means that you probably find yourself with a healthy backlog of requests from excited customers who might not understand the potentially high costs of their seemingly simple questions of you.
Ok let’s get back to how this definition came to be. First let us take a look at the root of the word schlep which originally was a Yiddish word:
Schlep: To drag or haul (an object); to walk, esp. to make a tedious journey… [a]lso a noun, a lackie, hanger-on, or loser.
–Wikipedia
For the purposes of this blog let’s go ahead and use the first half of that definition. So a Schlepper would be someone who schleps. So building on that we get a partial definition:
Data Schlepper: Someone who drags or hauls data, especially along a tedious journey.
–Jonathan
So taking the above thoughts and mixing in a healthy dose of self deprecating humor I’ve come to think of those of us deep in the data world as Data Schleppers! An important addition not in the definition though is that we do valuable work to take data as it exists out in the ether and bring it together to make it useful, insightful, and actionable things. Those things can be slick dashboards, robust data warehouses, or complex AI algorithms.
So stitching that all together our final definition then comes out to be more like the one at the top of this page:
Data Schlepper: Someone who drags or hauls data, especially along a tedious journey, to create a valuable end product that is useful, insightful, and actionable to the world.
–Jonathan
So chances are if you are someone interested enough to find this blog you too are a Data Schlepper!