Tableau v/s Power BI

MY TAKE ON TABLEAU v/s POWER BI

I have been using Data visualization tools for the last 5 years. I started pretty basic with Excel visuals and slowly hopped on to Power BI and Tableau. Even today, we see people debating regarding the usage of Power BI or Tableau. Here are my two cents on this topic. These are my personal opinions on both tools.

    I started with Power BI when I was working in India, and built dashboards for my company. I even formed a data team around me and taught them the usage of Power BI. It was a decent tool to build dashboards with predefined chart types. It was very user-friendly. 

    Coming to the US, I started my journey with Tableau. Also, as I had a Mac, I did not have access to Power BI Desktop, and the be version needed enterprise login. Tableau is amazing. Every minute detail that we see in Tableau is editable as per our choice. That is the most prominent feature for me in Tableau. Working with Tableau made me realize that the amount of creativity is much less in Power BI. We can use only the predefined chart types. DAX was also a topic that was very hard for me to figure out.

    During the last 4 months, I had the opportunity to work both on Tableau and Power BI dashboards as part of my portfolio-building. Upon using Power BI, I could see a lot more features being added. It took a couple of hours to figure out where all the tools were, but was able to do the tasks fluently post that. I believe the tool we use shouldn't be a dealbreaker during the interview process. I still find few recruiters mentioning we need candidates who used Tableau only/ Power BI only! But, I personally feel that it doesn't matter which tool you are proficient in, you will be able to catch up with the other tool in no time.

    Some companies use Tableau and some use Power BI based on their company policies, costs, etc. If you are an aspiring Data Analyst/Business Intelligence Analyst like me, I would suggest trying both out. You can be an expert in one tool, but make sure you at least know the basics in the other. This helped me crack interviews. And make sure you build dashboards in both tools and build your portfolio.

    If you ask me strongly to pick only one, then I would go with Tableau on any given day! I believe we can be creative in Tableau. The Tableau community is also very active and helpful as far as I have experienced. It is full of resources, weekly challenges, and competitions.

What do you think? Please do share your views on them too!