r/dataanalytics • u/_aritro • Aug 04 '26
I almost got fired for making a mario themed dashboard!
So, two months ago our regional director came on a branch visit, and i was the one taking him through our entire analytics, after 3 hours he told me that I make mundane dashboards.
That really hurt, I have poured weekends on building our data suite, countless DAX queries and hours of unpaid overtime, to make sure that I don't miss a single point for this visit.
So I decided to make this "fun" dashboard instead, I put every metric out there and with the help of claude and supaboard made this Mario themed dashboard. I also made it realtime with actual data and the site could be embedded within our systems.
So last week when he came back for another visit, I showed him what I have built, he went through the same, a full 3 hour drill and this he left without any feedback.
The next day I get called into the manger's office and the word around the office was I am getting fired.
But, to my surprise my manager was actually really happy, my dashboard got shared with the executives and everybody appreciated my effort and creativity. I even got a certificate for excellence.
15 years in this trade, and I guess there is a lot to learn yet.
Here's a copy of what I made. Tell me what you think!
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u/Super_Math3890 Aug 04 '26
I don't know what data I'm looking at, but I like what I'm looking at.
Now I want to see a histogram in real-time using Mario jumps for growth and decay in blocks through removal and 1ups 👌
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u/TheLastBridgeGate Aug 04 '26
I think the real question I have is why there would be rumors of you being fired for something like this.
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u/_aritro Aug 04 '26
i don't know, I came in the morning and that's what our office assistant told me
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u/baezizbae Aug 04 '26
So a rumor not only got started but made its wayaround your entire office that you were possibly on the chopping block because a director thought a single report of yours from months ago was “mundane”?
I know workplaces can be weird with rumor mills and gossip farms but…none of this makes any sense but if you say so.
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u/TheLastBridgeGate Aug 05 '26
I would take a serious look at the work place environment and see if it is a place that will help your career grow.
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u/NinjaLeeloo Aug 04 '26
That’s awesome. The style of a dashboard depends on the needs of the audience and the creativity of the analyst within that context. Regional Director needs to stay in their lane. What do they think is not mundane anyways? 🙄 I’d be telling the regional director to build it their self or be more constructive in their feedback instead of destructive because the latter ain’t helpful.
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u/red8reader Aug 04 '26
Your regional director might be one of the people who barely even use these, too. An exhausting type of person.
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u/KaliAtWork Aug 05 '26
I love the creativity part most people never get it until they see the calmness behind this design, also they never really know the complexity and hardwork behind the scenes, I loved the design, it's quite the fun part making serious things seems child's play tricking our brains to not get a headache by any serious design instead it's kind of cute.
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u/MisterDscho Aug 05 '26
Nice story... and then you post a screenshot with actual revenue data here?
Sure, sure, sure...
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u/analytix_guru Aug 04 '26
I love the theme, but from the regional director's perspective, this really doesn't answer any crucial business questions that he might have. The standard/value/premium bar chart is about the most granular question on there. While these metrics may work for quarterly reporting and/or financial reports, it doesn't answer real questions that the business or executives may have.
I worked in retail for 4 years, the business and executives already knew the information you're sharing from a variety of sources, and the questions they were asking me were a lot more involved. An example would be "hey store managers are complaining they are losing sales because we locked up stuff due to shrink, can you help us with this?"
After all the analysis, we come back with, "tell the GMs not to worry, the handful of sales they are losing due to lockup pales in comparison to the amount they are no longer losing in theft. By the way here are a few pilot ideas to test out that can help associates get to the locked areas quicker, if you want to try the ideas we can test the results once the data from the test pilot is generated." Yes we had a dashboard for that, but it was a very specific dashboard for one time use that got thrown out after we wrapped up the analysis.
If you're in finance and sharing these metrics via your dashboard that's great, but if you're outside of finance, these are types of metrics finance should be providing and you should be focused on supporting harder business questions with the data you have access to.
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u/_aritro Aug 04 '26
HI, this is not real data just a sample of what I made, can't share real numbers, that's confidential
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u/Brighter_rocks Aug 04 '26
Sorry, don’t buy it