Friday will mark the end of my 9-year journey with FNBO. I came in as a graduate with no experience in banking in general, or credit card in particular, and little exposure to data analytics. It has been an incredible journey and I have grown as a person and professional. Here are a few things that will go with me to the next chapter as an analyst, in no particular order:

• It’s important to be technically good. It’s even more to be liked. A lot of smart people, for a variety of reasons, do not generate a lot of goodwill.
• How to be liked? Treat people, regardless of their title, with respect. Go above and beyond what they ask. Respect people’s time and attention. As in any relationship, you get back what you put in.
• Be yourself. Noone likes a phony.
• Nobody cares about your code. Nobody. Stop talking about your code, your fancy stats jargon and what you do behind the scenes. Just tell them how your work benefits theirs. In English.
• Speed matters. Always wrap things up as quickly as possible. You never know when a request from an Executive or an unexpected crisis will fall on your lap.
• People tend to take the time to help if they see you put in the efforts. But you really need to put in the efforts. Trust me, they’ll let you know, one way or another.
• Always look at your output. If I had a dollar for every time the output showed my code did not do what I wanted it to do, I’d have quite a bit to spend on groceries.
• Learn the business. Use data to understand more about the business. And use business to understand the data.
• Read as much as you can. Form the dots so you can make connections one day.
• Write down your proposals and thoughts. I wrote quite a few memos. Few got read. Even fewer got appreciated. Doesn’t matter. Write for yourself first. Writing sharpens your thinking and that matters in the long run.
• Perservere. Be resilient. It does not matter how many rejections you get. Often, it only takes one successful attempt. I had a lot of ideas and proposals flatly ignored. But one led to an actual product out there on the market.
• It’s good to streamline processes and “take shortcuts”. However, in some cases, you’d benefit more from doing things the hard way. For instance, I spent time looking at tables in my free time. I just looked at them, wrote test queries and tried to figure out how some fields worked. Or I read the transcripts of financial institutions’ earnings calls. I did not rely on media articles. It’s time-consuming and in some cases, it feels that you are doing it for naught and going down a rabbit hole hopelessly. But what happens is that you internalize what you read and see. And at some point, the rewards will come. In waves.
• The job of an analyst includes three parts: extract data effectively & efficiently, communicate effectively and form relationships. A three-legged stool.
• Be in the office. If possible, try to organize your life in a way that enables you to be in the office as much as possible. Remote only takes you so far. People will remember you much better and longer if they can put a face to a name.
• Credibility takes a long time to build, but only a couple of incidents to be ruined. You do not want to be the presenter in a presentation where the audience loses trust in your data from slide #2.
• The merit cycle is when you work hard to establish some creditbility, people come to you for harder and harder requests. You learn how to complete those, become an even better analyst with more tribal knowledge and skills, and then receive more unique challenges. Rinse and repeat. If you have such a merit cycle, it’ll be incredibly hard for someone else to break in.
• Credit card is an incredibly complex business. There is always a delicate balance between risk and profitability or balance between competitiveness and profitability. There are also plenty of regulatory and compliance requirements to be met, even from the targeting phase. I think people outside of the industry don’t appreciate such complexity enough.
• The more someone talks about AI and uses AI repeatedly in interactions, the more likely they don’t have anything of substance to offer.
• Years of experience matters. It shows up in how one works and delivers value. Just because someone says “I have 35 years of experience in this space” doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about.
• Always try to do the right things. Even if they don’t pay off immediately, have faith that they will.
• When someone does some things for those that don’t have anything to offer in return, it reveals a lot about them. As Spider Man’s Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility.
• Steve Jobs once said that once you realize life is made up by people who are no smarter than you, that you can change and mold it. It’s not a dig against anybody. More of an encouragement that if you have an idea, just say it. I think a lot of people will agree that Steve Jobs is worth listening to.

The overarching theme is what Charlie Munger used to say: deserve what you want. If you want a seat at the table, you have to earn it with your work and performance. If you want respect and love from others, you have to earn it too. The rest are just trial & error, and learn from your mistakes along the way.