I'm wanting to change paths in IT and I value the knowledge and deep understanding people here have in many areas, so I'm asking HN followers what you think.
I've been a sysadmin for 20 years. I work with everything from Linux, macOS, Windows Server, Windows 10, PowerShell, Bash. I run a Microsoft 365 system as admin as well as a Google Workspace system as admin. I've basically got all the tooling, etc., down pat. I'd like to get into data analytics and out of the user account, break-fix, machine down, keeping machines running mode and into something more interesting.
Caveat: I came into IT at 30 and am now 50. I have a degree and 20 years of experience, but am now just bored with VMs, servers, running email servers, and troubleshooting user data being lost, etc. I'm leaning heavily towards the Google side in terms of Google infrastructure, data analytics, etc., vs Microsoft because having worked with both ecosystems, Google's side represents less friction, it's truly federated, etc., and frankly the tools just seem to work better.
Google is about to launch a Data Analytics certification through Coursera. From what I can glean, I should also learn Python, Tableau, Excel very well (spreadsheets in general), and how to visualize data. Any thoughts or ideas, constructive criticism, whatever, is most welcome.