Top Data People

Generic Education: "Learn Time Management" Specific Education: "Learn how to pit exec's asks against each other and go over junior people's heads so you can manage your workload as a data person." Most large companies have learning and development platforms that give options for generic educational content. It's mostly a "check the box so people don't complain" initiative - they don't get a lot of usage. The reason is, as you can see in the opening of this post, what most people need is specific education, not generic education. Teaching "Time Management" is COMPLETELY different than teaching "Time Management For Data People." There's a reason you probably haven't ever taken a "time management" course. But you would be pretty interested in the best ways to manage when multiple execs are asking for things at the same time... And how to get around that one person who is focused on filling 150% of your bandwidth with only their priorities... In data, people figure these things out on their own, the hard way, over many many years. My goal with Top Data People was to take all the lessons I've learned managing hundreds of data people and seeing what the best did differently... And package it up into SPECIFIC education for data people on how to be good at the business side of data work. Regardless of how you do it - it's important to learn the specifics of your industry. Yes generic education is useful. But specific education is way more aligned to your specific challenges. ----- p.s. I have a crazy holiday offer for the Top Data People development program, DM me for details

I've got an absolutely insane Black Friday offer for anyone interested in the Top Data Person professional development program. If you're a senior or mid-level IC data person who wants to get great at driving business impact with data... Or you're a leader who wants to help your data people get better at all the business / non-technical aspects of data work... You should not miss this. It's the kind of offer that ONLY a new business getting started would ever even think of offering. It's so good, I can't even share the details publicly. You'll have to DM me for details, and there are limited spots (you'll understand why once you hear it). I know it's extra effort to DM me, so in return, everyone who does it will get a free gift of a digital product that normally goes for $100. (note, the offer is for US, UK and Canada only, but if you DM me from somewhere else I'll still give you the gift 🎁 )

As a data person, there's a secret benefit of building relationships with the execs of the teams you support... Their reports will be more respectful of your time and more likely to work with you as a partner vs. someone who fetches their data. Imagine you're talking through a project with a junior person and say: "I can get 80% of what you need quickly, but the larger project might take lot of work. Does that smaller scope work?" If there is no downside to asking for 100%, the people will sometimes say - actually, I want it all, can you just do it? (sales will almost always ask for it all) But if they know you have a relationship with their senior leaders and are trading off projects across the team, they will be much more likely to work with you and make it easy. They know they might need to justify to their leaders why it's this project vs. others that might help the business.

The largest data contracts influencer blocked me, and ever since then I've seen almost nothing on my feed about data contracts. Was it always mostly this one account talking about them? We're a couple years into the idea - is anyone using them in production? NOT dbt tests / data observability tools / actually using the schema feature in your event tracker... Data contracts as they were pitched: A new middleware system between data teams and devs that blocks software developer CI/CD for potential breaking changes to data team infrastructure. p.s. I have learned that MULTIPLE people critical of data contracts have gotten blocked. This creates the false impression in the comments for a very large audience that everyone agrees about the value of data contracts when in reality that is not true. Filtering out all the data and opinions that you don't like is certainly a creative way to uphold the value of high data quality. It also shows deep confidence about the strength of the arguments for data contracts in the market of ideas. Unfortunately this strategy only works if nobody says anything, yet here I am saying something... We should have a real discussion, not a manipulated one.

We all talk about snowflake vs. databricks, but many companies use BOTH Snowflake and Databricks! If this is you, share what you do with them in the comments! Are you happy with both, or are you thinking about consolidating?

You DON'T want to be the kind of data person who can only do what someone else tells them to do... Figure out what your company needs and do that! If you go to your manager and stakeholders with: "This thing I'm doing seems to not be generating much value, but this other idea I have could make a huge difference to the company. Can I start working on that?" Or better yet: "I've been spending 15 hours a week on this task, but I completely automated it so now I have some extra capacity. ABC has been a huge issue for the business and I have an idea for how to solve it. I think that by having XYZ data which I can build, we can finally get around the problems we've been having. Can I work on that?"

The people at the DMV are there to help you, but it doesn't feel like that. Data people are similarly there to help, and it's our job to make sure the people we're helping never feel like they're at the DMV.

The utter disdain in his voice when my manager said: "She accepts a lot of mediocre performers on her team" made me do a double take. That one line helped me understand how much executives judge each other based on the strength of the teams they build. It instantly raised my bar for talent. I NEVER wanted ANYONE to ever say that about me. I'm lucky to have had this experience, because I think data makes it very easy to fall into this trap of having a mediocre team. There's no objective measure of performance. If a team member is smart, and working hard, and the business stakeholders aren't complaining, isn't that good performance? Maybe, but also maybe not. A better bar is "undeniable impact." Is it obvious to everyone that this person is driving significant results and is crucial to your ongoing success? That's definitely great work. Try for as many of those as possible.

Data people will be categorized into one of two buckets by executives: 1. Trusted thought partner 2. Someone who fetches my data So much of your career success is about getting into that first bucket. And for leaders, you're being judged by how many team members are in the first bucket vs. the second.

"Just keep doing exactly what you're doing and you'll eventually get promoted. There are no 'buts' to this advice. Eventually you'll move up into a role where you'll come across new problems and you can start preparing a little now, but don't let that distract you from continuing to execute exactly as you're doing..." This was some advice I gave recently to a member of the Top Data People professional development program, and I thought it would be interesting to share. People think advice is about what you need to change, but often it's just as important to get reinforced about what NOT to change. If you're doing something that's working really well -> DON'T STOP DOING IT Instead of doing something else, try to do more of what's already working.