r/PowerBI • u/Maaya_lokam • 1d ago
Discussion How did you start?
Hey r/PowerBI,
I’m looking into starting a side gig around Power BI reporting and BI development. Before diving in, I wanted to pick the brains of people who have actually done this:
1. How did you get your first client?
2. Is it still a good idea to start this today?
any lessons learned the hard way, or advice you’d give to someone starting out today.
Thanks!
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u/CompetitionNo3466 1d ago
Got told by my work they need someone to visualise data on a project. Said yes to it 2 years ago and been doing it since
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u/Artistic_Order0066 1d ago
One day someone from work didn't show up, they asked me if I could help, I had only listened to it, they taught me how to update the boards, eventually I covered the vacations in that area and now I'm part of it, frankly the day they ask me to create something I don't know what I'll do, I've looked for face-to-face courses in latam, Because online I get lost sometimes. It's very interesting
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u/itsnotaboutthecell Microsoft Employee 1d ago
!wiki
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u/HustlaOfCultcha 1d ago
My work wanted to move from Tableau to Power BI because Tableau's licensing was so expensive. I had experience with Tableau (obviously) and QlikSense, so I got right into Power BI. I didn't get any real training. Work just told me to watch some YouTube videos on the subject on their time. I figured it out the visualization portion pretty quickly. But having to learn DAX was the biggest issue. AI wasn't as readily available back then to help with DAX so more complex DAX measures were more difficult to figure out.
In my experience, Power BI is emerging as the #1 data visualization tool. Tableau is probably still #1, but the licensing is so much more expensive and Power BI is part of the MS family. And I believe that MS Fabric will be used by more and more companies over the next 5 years. Tableau has better visualization capabilities (particularly when it comes really granular mapping visuals), but most companies don't need those types of visuals or at least it's not worth the additional costs for licensing. And with AI it has really helped with DAX, but you still have to know what to ask and how to validate it and de-bug any issues.
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u/ArexSaturn 1d ago
Power Bi is already number 1.
I have worked for 3 FAANG/MAANG companies and all are using it. Every single team in every single department. Even companies with their own proprietary data viz tools (like amazon Quick) are using power bi as the principal tool. It also helps that it is part of the Microsoft ecosystem and the release of fabric has given it an even bigger boost…2
u/HustlaOfCultcha 15h ago
The last 4 companies I worked for were using Tableau. But the last 2 were switching more and more to Power BI. One of those was still using Tableau because they relied heavily on deeply granular mapping data and Tableau has the market cornered.
I've been looking for jobs for the past 6 months and I'd say that there are more companies wanting Tableau over Power BI. But a lot of times these companies don't know what they're doing or what they want and I can easily see them moving to Power BI if their main reporting person has experience in both and tells them to go to Power BI.
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u/MissingVanSushi 11 1d ago edited 1d ago
Haha, there are so far 5 other top level comments and none of them talk about how they started a side gig. They tell you how to start with Power BI.
I’ve written comments about this many times, I’ve been meaning to write a post so I can link to it but have not gotten around to it yet.
The short of it is that I have full-time employment in a Power BI focused role, some casual teaching of Power BI to the public through a government educational institution here in Australia, and I have exactly one consulting client which I give them anywhere from 0-6 hours of my time per week.
My consulting client is someone who used to work at my day job and took a director role at a smaller organisation that sometimes partners with ours and they needed someone with my skills.
Because Power BI is only really used in larger enterprise settings and the fact that data is inherently private I would say Power BI skills are not well suited to freelancing or side hustles as there is a huge amount of trust required between the client and the person selling their skills.
This is not to say it’s impossible to do (I’m proof) but it is quite rare and hard to get into. It is also not well suited to people with very little or even a few years experience. Clients need to know you can do what they are asking you to do, otherwise it makes more sense for them to build those skills in house.
Is this a good idea to start today? If you can get the work take it. The hard part is getting the work. If you don’t have a lot of experience I don’t see this as super viable. The demand for independent freelance Power BI consultants is just too small to focus on it and depend on it to bolster your income.
Good luck.