I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a young gentleman upgrading my Google Fiber. While he was originally pursuing a career as a software developer, he and his friends decided against it after seeing the progress of ChatGPT over the last couple of years. As a father of two teenage boys, I often think about the nature of work, including …

Tiankai Feng joins me to chat about the people side of data, aligning on the value of data strategy, and much more.

This morning, a great article came across my feed that gave me PTSD, asking if Iceberg is the Hadoop of the Modern Data Stack? In this rant, I bring the discussion back to a central question you should ask with any hot technology - do you need it at all? Do you need a tool built for the top 1% of companies at a sufficient data scale? Or is a spread…

Health insurance denials are a big topic in America right now. Holden Karau joins me to talk about using AI to appeal health claim insurance denials. Fight Health Insurance: https://fighthealthinsurance.com/

I’ve been asked many questions about building a personal brand for the last few weeks. Perhaps it’s the uncertain job market, people wanting to branch out, or something else. I’m unsure what’s in the air right now. In this episode, I share some thoughts on building a personal brand.

Hannes Muhleisen is the creator of DuckDB and CEO of DuckDB Labs. We finally got a chance to meet in person at the Forward Data Conference in Paris. We hit it off immediately, and at times, I felt like I was talking with my long lost brother. Hannes is a very cool guy! While at the conference, we recorded a chat about all things DuckDB, the challen…

Dave and Johnny run Estuary, a data integration company focused on real-time ETL and ELT. We're also friends, so we decided to have a chat. In this episode, we chat about the current state of the data integration space, running a startup while raising kids, and much more. Estuary

Regular guest Gordon Wong joins me for a half hour to chat about tech stacks for analytics, semantic layers, and much more. Gordon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordonhwong/

Bill Inmon is considered the father of the data warehouse. I just got back from spending a couple of days with Bill, and we discussed the history of the data industry and the data warehouse. On my flight back, I realized people could benefit from a short version of our conversation. In this short chat, we discuss what a data warehouse is (and is no…

Valentin Becerra and I chat about DJing, AI, space engineering, and much more.

Multi-tenancy in databases is very difficult to pull off at scale. Gwen Shapira and I chat about multi-tenant databases at Nile (and elsewhere), AI, RAG, and much more.

While at lunch with a friend today, the question came up of whether he should invest his time into content (videos and courses) or consulting. Having run a consultancy (and exiting the consulting game), I quipped that consulting often has a negative net present value. What do I mean? Listen on... Note - I'm trying out a new format where I'll record…

What if the world's metadata were interconnected in a decentralized way? This is part of the vision of Ole Olesen-Bagneux's Meta Grid. We have a chat about what it is, and its implications for the data industry.

We've got so many awesome tools and technology, but I often don't think we know how to properly use them. In this episode, I discuss what I think is one of the biggest problems in the data industry - the skills gap.

Albert and I discuss the do's and don't of finding a job in the data field. Do you do a portfolio project? What's the market like these days? This and more are discussed. Enjoy.

Tanya Bragin and I have a wide-ranging chat about the tension of open source and commercial products, Clickhouse, aligning marketing and product, and how she manages her time.

People often ask me for career advice. In a tough job market where people are sending out thousands of resumes and hearing nothing back, I notice a lot of people have weak networks and are unknown to the companies they're applying to. This results in lots of frustration and disappointment for job seekers. Is there a better way? Yes. People need to …

Chris Riccomini and I chat about building his latest project SlateDB, building data intensive infrastructure, writing, investing, and much more.

In this episode, I have a chat with Antti Rask, Juha Korpella, Niko Korvenlaita, Russell Willis, and Kosti Hokkanen. We chat about data, startups, and business in Finland and Europe.

Let's do things the right way, not just the fast way. My works: 📕Fundamentals of Data Engineering: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-data/9781098108298/ 🎥 Deeplearning.ai Data Engineering Certificate: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/data-engineering 🔥Practical Data Modeling: https://practicaldatamodeling.substa…

I speak at a lot of conferences, and I've lost track of how many questions I've answered. Since conferences are top of mind for me right now, here are some tips for asking good (and bad) questions of speakers. My works: 📕Fundamentals of Data Engineering: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-data/9781098108298/ 🎥 Deeplearning.ai Data…

Wes McKinney and I chat about Positron, Arrow, how he created Pandas and Arrow, and what makes him tick.

I've seen a TON of horror stories with tech debt and code migrations. It's estimated that 15% to 60% of every dollar in IT spend goes toward tech debt (that's a big range, I know). Regardless, most of this tech debt will not be paid down without a radical change in how we do things. Might AI be the Hail Mary we need to pay down tech debt? I don't s…

Anne-Claire Baschet and Yoann Benoit recently wrote a wonderful article called The Data Death Cycle, which describes the feedback loop of doom that many data teams find themselves in. Here, we discuss the Data Death Cycle in detail. Article: https://medium.com/craftingdataproducts/the-data-death-cycle-6b10ef261d8e…

Larry Burns and I chat about all things data teams—how they fail, their challenges, and how they can add value. To add value, we need to reimagine not only how we think about data but also how we manage knowledge. Larry brings a fresh and battle-worn perspective to the data field, and if you work on or manage a data team, this conversation is worth…

This week I posted about how some major conferences charge a bunch of money for tickets and sponsorship, but don't pay speakers. As a speaker, I find this unethical and exploitative. Here, I unpack my thoughts on speaking at conferences. If you're a speaker, or want to become one, this is worth your time to listen. My post: https://www.linkedin.com…

Vijay Yadav (Director of Data Science at Merck) joins me to chat about a very interesting project he launched at Merck involving LLMs in production. A big part of this discussion is how to make data ready for generative AI. This is a great example of an LLM-native use case in production, which are rare right now. Lots to learn from here. Enjoy! Lin…

In my newsletter last week, I wrote "Data’s still a mess. Most data initiatives fail. Data teams are seen as a cost center and not getting the support they deserve. Same as it ever was." Here, I unpack those four sentences. Data teams need to stop stop playing to not lose. Instead, they need to play to win!…

Navnit Shukla is a solutions architect with AWS. He joins me to chat about data wrangling and architecting solutions on AWS, writing books, and much more. Navnit is also in the Coursera Data Engineering Specialization, dropping knowledge on data engineering on AWS. Check it out! Data Wrangling on AWS: https://www.amazon.com/Data-Wrangling-AWS-organ…

I've spent the last three weeks visiting the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Here are my observations and anecdotes about the data and ML/AI industry from countless chats with executives, practitioners, and pundits.

Ilya Reznik has been in the ML game for ages, having worked at Adobe and Twitter and led teams at Meta, among others. We chat about leading ML teams, AI today, creating content, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibreznik/

As I travel this Fall, I'm reminded that most people don't work at fancy tech companies. Most people work at traditional companies with "boring" data and tech stacks. And that's OK. Boring is good.

Jordan Morrow has written a ton, including four books. We chat about the process of writing books, the ins and outs of working with a publisher, the role of AI in writing, and much more. If you're interested in writing a book, this is a crash course in what you should know. Enjoy!

Venkat Subramaniam is a programmer, author, speaker, and founder of Agile Developer, Inc. I've seen him speak several times, and was always blown away by his passion and technical depth. So, I was excited to have him on the podcast. We chat about agile development in the real world, learning to do less, and much more. Venkat is extremely wise, and …

Uncle Rico is a character in the movie Napoleon Dynamite, who is stuck in the past, reminiscing about his days as a high school football star. If only he'd won the game and went to the state championship. Some of the data industry reminds me of Uncle Rico. During a recent panel, there was a question about whether AI can help with data management (g…

Paco Nathan is a national treasure. He's not only an OG in the field of AI, but he's also instrumental in early hacker and cyberpunk culture. When I first met Paco, it suddenly clicked that I'd seen his name in various cyberpunk and alternative zines back in the 1990s. We have a chat all sorts of crazy stuff, and I feel like we only got to 5% of th…

Bethany Lyons and I chat about disrupting the recruitment industry, startups, and the future of work.

Last week I talked about how good you have to be at your job. Yesterday's OpenAI announcement of it's "reasoning" model, o1, got me thinking about how good AI needs to be to do our jobs.

Ergest Xheblati is a data architect and author of Minimum Viable SQL Patterns. We chat about the opportunities and challenges of SQL, things that don't change in tech and data, writing and publishing books, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ergestx/ Other links: https://www.ergestx.com/links/…

Dylan Anderson is a UK-based data strategist. We chat about bridging the gap between data and strategy, why talking about business value is a waste of time, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylansjanderson/ Substack: https://thedataecosystem.substack.com/

While speaking to one of my best friends, who's worked as a pilot for over 30 years, he mentioned that a "good" pilot doesn't crash the plane. In tech and data, "good" is viewed differently. How good you have to be at your job?

Jordan Tigani is back to chat about why small data is awesome, data lakehouses, DuckDB, AI, and much more. Motherduck: https://motherduck.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jrdntgn?lang=en

Demetrios Brinkmann is the co-founder of the massively global MLOps Community. We chat about AI hype vs reality, building a global tech community, and ROI of AI projects, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/ MLOps Community: https://mlops.community/

"Do you and Zach Wilson hate each other?" I get asked questions like this, and it makes me laugh. We're good friends for the record. Most people play zero sum games, where one person wins and another loses. Questions like this got me thinking about how content creation is a positive sum game. You can consume content from many people, and this benef…

Vinoo Ganesh is an open source enthusiast and contributor, and a data and ML engineer. We chat about strong open source communities, LLMs and AI, and much more.

Lekhana Reddy is a data content creator focusing on mindfulness. We chat about how mindfulness in technology is key, especially given the need to maintain humanity with the rise of AI. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lekhanareddy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storytellingbydata/

Until recently, Nik Suresh wrote under a mysterious blog that had several viral posts, including the famous "I Will F*cking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again." For the longest time, he was an underground sensation, with nobody (not even his friends) knowing his identity. In this episode, we chat about his blog posts (I'm a huge fan), the realit…

I've been saying for years, most companies are barely doing BI, let alone AI. Last week, I posted about this on LinkedIn and it went viral. Here, I unpack what I mean by that post. The post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7230408663125913600

Rehgan Bleile joins me to chat about the challenges and importance of AI governance and adoption. We also discuss the lack of representation of women in conferences, and efforts to create genuine opportunities for women speakers. AlignAI: getalignai.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rehganavon/ Women in Analytics: https://www.womeninanalyti…

Most people approach their careers via 1:1 - 1 employee: 1 employer, 1 consultant: 1 client, etc. In this rant, I discuss why you should consider 1:many as a way to level up your career and visibility.