My Secret to Standing Out From the Crowd

15 Years, 5 Companies, and the One Skill That Changed Everything

Hey friends, Happy Tuesday!

The only thing that’s made me stand out from the crowd in every project…

In the past 15 years, I’ve worked in 5 different companies.
A car company (Mercedes-Benz), an energy company, and a TV broadcasting company
Completely different industries, completely different worlds.

And yet… every time I joined a new team, I did one thing that instantly made me valuable.
It’s the same thing that’s helped me stand out in every single project.

Let me be honest.
I’ve met plenty of Data Engineers and Analysts who were better than me at coding, building pipelines, optimizing performance, or creating dashboards.
But they were missing one key thing

Understanding the Data and Business Process (Domain Knowledge)

I noticed something, they would often say, “I don’t really understand the data”

Here is the truth: no one can really teach you that. The only way to learn it is to go and explore it yourself.

---

So let me tell you my secret

As soon as I join a project, I block out a small window of time every day for two things:

1. Learn the business process

2. Learn the data that process generates

---

Step 1: Study the business process

The very first thing to ask for is access to the source application that generates the data.

Once inside, the goal is to explore, read through the user guides, check the process documentation, and start piecing together how the business actually runs.

To make it real, I pick one example case and follow it from start to finish.
In an e-commerce setting, that might mean tracing a single customer’s journey: signing up, logging in, placing an order, cancelling it, and everything in between.
It is like stepping into their shoes and experiencing the process myself.

Along the way, questions always start to build up.
By the end of that process, I reach out to the business process experts to clear those questions and, if possible, to guide me like a mentor.
These people are often the key players I will need later in the project, so building a good relationship with them is essential.
Having their support now is valuable, but having their trust for the future is what truly makes the difference.

By this point, the business process is clear and the key people are in my corner.
The next step is to connect that knowledge to the actual data.

---

Step 2: Study the data

I start by looking for any documentation on the database or application, especially the data model.
The goal is to understand how the tables are structured, where the important fields live, and how the relationships work.

Then comes the fun part. I take that same customer journey I studied earlier and trace it inside the system.
I look for the exact tables where their actions are stored, see how those tables connect, and translate the business process into actual data points.

This is what I consider EDA (Exploratory Data Analysis) from a Data Engineer’s perspective.

As before, questions always come up. I bring them to the database experts or the people who built the data model to make sure nothing is left unclear.
Just like with the business experts, these technical experts are people I will need later in the project.
Building a good relationship with them now means having support when it matters most.

---

The impact

The whole process usually takes me 3–4 weeks.

And by the end of it, I have huge value for the company:
I understand their domain.
I understand how they work.
And most importantly… I speak their language.

This changes everything:

• Building or fixing data pipelines becomes faster

• Integrating data from different sources is easier

• Understanding requirements happens instantly

• I can even propose improvements the business had not considered

But they were missing one key thing.

I have never stood out because I was the best coder. I stood out because I became the person who truly understood the business process, the data, and the people.

When you do that, you are no longer just part of the team.
You become the person they cannot imagine doing the project without.

Thanks for reading ❤️

Baraa

---

New Video This Week

This week I dropped a new video for Python learners, diving into one of Python’s hidden control flow tricks… the for-else loop. I’ll show you exactly how it works, the logic behind it, and how to use it in real projects.

Also, here are 3 complete roadmap videos if you're figuring out where to start:

📌 Data Engineering Roadmap
📌 Data Science Roadmap
📌 Data Analyst Roadmap

---

Hey friends —

I’m Baraa. I’m an IT professional and YouTuber.

My mission is to share the knowledge I’ve gained over the years and to make working with data easier, fun, and accessible to everyone through courses that are free, simple, and easy!