system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
Don't the majority of data analysts perform presentations on at least a weekly basis?

Edit: it seems I may have mixed up business analyst and data analyst. Seems there is also a large discrepancy between companies and teams about what each do, so some data analysts are doing a lot of presentations, and others are making the presentation/key-points for someone else.
gpt
Data Analyst, Business Analyst, and other similar terms sit in a somewhat nebulous space as to their job responsibilities. I have worked as a Data Analyst, Project Manager, and Business Analyst in Big Tech as well as Survey Analytics with Big Tech as primary clientele.

Warning long post -- I started writing about a position I recently left and well I suppose I had a lot to share hope this is interesting.

The role of an analyst will vary incredibly on a near daily basis due to the nature of the reporting structure of many firms. Analysts supply information to Org Leaders at some point in the foodchain, so you'll be doing whatever they want you to do in some form or another. One quarter I was a Weekly Business Review guy who gathered a lot of data, compiled, and made sure the visuals spoke to the proper audiences. In another quarter, I didn't touch the product as much as Project Managed (unpopular opinion -- easy to hide and be bad, but if you want to actually accomplish a lot I think this is harder than just being an individual contributor on a task).

The real challenge of this field is that data is messy, missing, and nobody understands the metrics they are talking about. When the higher ups come out of a meeting agreeing to deliver some kind of metric by next week on a daily basis it's your job to make that happen and make sure it's actually possible. It can be an incredibly stressful job dependent on leadership. It is why I am currently taking a break from it.

If you are curious to the pathway:

As for the career pathway -&gt; 4 year education &gt; Internship &gt; Graduate &gt; Contract position @ Big Tech &gt; Leave Contract Position for Survey Company as Data Analyst &gt; Return to Big Tech as Data Analyst (Boomerang hire) &gt; Promo to Project Manager &gt; transfer to another business category at same company as Business Analyst title.

My last two titles retained the same pay level which allowed me to live in a city solo with some savings. The Data Analyst positions sat at around $60k which is considered entry in this field. Contract I was making about what I made at the pizza place I worked at prior. 

The most important thing to note here is that my education in all ways did not matter beyond the foot in the door, although I'm not sure how one would get around that. I firmly believe that your educational background does not matter to become an Analyst unless you are in a specific field (Finance). This is because the work load that I have required technical knowledge of Excel and SQL, but relied far heavier on the political end of keeping stakeholders happy and exceeding set expectations while reasonably accommodating feature creep that is always inevitable. 

These can all be learned in your own time and then people skills are best learned on the job IMO. The domain knowledge (or industry specific information) will also be learned on the job. Also if you are say, a recruiter in a company, those recruiters have teams of analysts working with the C-Suite and Directors of the firm to make sense of hiring goals. That's a good pathway to becoming an analyst since you already have your foot in the door there. Your job at the "entry" job is to make contacts who like your work so they take you wherever they go.