All Hands on Data #88
Welcome to the last All Hands on Data of February! Has anyone else noticed the weird extra day of February that is happening tomorrow?
The Modern Data Stack is a Mess
I love the term the author uses for the modern data stack: "Frankenstacks" - large, unwieldy, cobbled-together resources that unnecessarily increase costs and complexity without providing value. The author points to a number of potential factors causing this and it's definitely worth a quick read. - John Forstmeier
Aspiring Analytics Engineers, Start Here.
Starting out in data can be quite a daunting task. Following my chat from last week's All Hands on Data, I think Analytics Engineering is one of the most exciting roles in data. If you are looking to get started in that role, this article gives you some great tips to get rolling. - Steven Johnson
You should stop writing Dockerfiles today - Do this instead
I actually like writing Dockerfiles, they're a fun way to build up a system, and I love the containerization technology. However, another cool piece of AI is coming for our containers. I'm excited to try this feature for more robust and secure Dockerfiles. - Eric Elsken
Visualisation 101: Choosing the Best Visualisation Type
Data visualizations are crucial for revealing insights that might be hidden in tables of numbers. As Mansurova puts it, we can use them for exploring or for explaining data. In addition to an extensive discussion about the tools and chart types, Mansurova provides a few questions we can ask ourselves before choosing a visualization method. Here are some that were most interesting to me: What context does my audience already have? What concerns/questions might they have? Am I showing the whole picture? - Katt Baum
Why Orchestration matters
I wanted to crowd source info from the anonymous world of reddit specifically as to why orchestration matters. To my non technical mind, management of multiple tables (dimension, transactional, fact tables) to expedite time and insight in real time of data running, seemed like a great use case we are seeing at shipyard with small to mid sized data teams. - Jack Ryan
Building the Modern Data Team: Why Diversity Matters
We always talk about the modern data stack, but this article focuses on the crux of any good data team, the people. This article chats through the importance and benefits of diversity in data teams and highlights the value these unique perspectives bring. - Angel Catalan