# Tableau Made My Career – Here's Why That's Becoming a Problem

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2025-10-01
- **Format:** Video · 25 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Career, Tool strategy, Industry trends
- **Tools:** Tableau (data modelling, prep)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-made-my-career--heres-why-thats-becoming-a-problem
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7STemf8syME

I reflect on why I've lost some of my passion for learning Tableau after more than a decade with the tool. I trace my learning journey from HTML and CSS through stumbling into data and Tableau, explain why Tableau Next leaves me cold, and announce my plan to split my content across three separate YouTube channels.

## Key takeaways

- My passion for learning has always been tied to a passion for understanding something else — the web, my own data, music — with the tool as the vehicle rather than the goal.
- Tableau Prep stands out to me as one of the best data experiences anywhere because it separates understanding what you're about to do from seeing what you've done.
- Much of Tableau's value lives in subtle, learned 'intuition' behaviours (double-click to add, drag onto marks) that I miss when working in Sigma and Power BI.
- Tableau Next feels like relearning the tool from scratch, which kills the excitement that made Tableau special for me.
- I'm splitting content into three channels: Tableau Tim (core Tableau), a broader 'Tim' data channel for other tools, and Tableau Next with Tim.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Losing passion for learning Tableau
- 1:12 My early journey with HTML and CSS
- 4:28 Stumbling into data and Tableau
- 9:31 A decade riding the Tableau wave
- 11:08 Why Tableau Prep is the best
- 12:46 The problem with Tableau Next
- 18:20 A crowded analytics space
- 22:51 Splitting into three channels
- 24:53 Teaser on Tableau Public

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-made-my-career--heres-why-thats-becoming-a-problem

---
just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena