Aug 29NRR Rules Everything Around MeLessons from the Last Few Months of NRR Adventures on the Data Cloud — I write this blog post from my bunker in an undisclosed location. NRR in and around Snowflake and the broader Data Cloud world is going bananas, but we have collectively learned some great lessons here in the past few weeks. Like I said back in May, Snowflake’s waning NRR is…Data Engineering8 min readData Engineering8 min read
Aug 18dbt Cloud’s New Pricing Model: The Sinister Phase IIWhy dbt Cloud Customers Should Betray Other dbt Cloud Customers in the Game Theory of SQL Bloat — One of my all-time favorite classic articles from The Onion is about the US populace suddenly and collectively realizing that Starbucks is up to no good and will soon be entering a mysterious and dark Phase Two. As it turns out, there was an ulterior motive all along on the…Data Engineering11 min readData Engineering11 min read
Jul 27Don’t Do Accounting in dbt CloudAndreessen Horowitz and their VC cartel are setting up Pickett’s Charge of cloud data workloads. It’s up to you to hold the high ground. — In June, 1863, Confederates under the command of General Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania. Two years of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia (AWS us-east-1) exchanging territory back and forth across Virginia with the Union Army of the Potomac had left both sides weary. Confederate supply lines had been bombed…Data16 min readData16 min read
May 23The Great Cloud Data NRR Squeeze is Going SwimminglyLast month, on April 19, dbt Labs published “The Next Big Step Forwards for Analytics Engineering,” a rambling, jargon-laden puff piece that lays out how dbt Labs plans to remain solvent as a business. At the core of this narrative is model sprawl, or SQL sprawl, or stacked CTE sprawl…Data Engineering12 min readData Engineering12 min read
Apr 13Fivetran Puts the Customer LastStop letting venture capital politics and consumption attribution games dictate how you design data infrastructure — It has come to my attention that Fivetran now offers the destination of Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service. S3. The Fivetran S3 revolution was not televised. The Fivetran S3 revolution was delivered at Fivetran’s sparsely-attended Modern Data Stack Conference this past week.Data Engineering10 min readData Engineering10 min read
Apr 2Customer Empathy is DeadA line in the sand is drawn. Imaginationland is on one side. Customers, the FTC, and hedge funds are on the other. — Customer empathy is the ability to see the world from the customer’s perspective. It is understanding what a person experiences when they use your products or services. It’s also understanding what customers of your competitors experience when using competitive products and services. It’s also understanding that ‘the customer’ can refer…Venture Capital19 min readVenture Capital19 min read
Mar 20It’s Time to Dump Data-in-a-Box Companies Like Baremetrics and ChartMogulData-in-a-box companies are going out of style like bell bottom jeans and mood rings. There are easier ways to manage your data. — Have you ever looked at a report in Baremetrics or ChartMogul or SaaSOptics and realized the numbers are way off? Not just slightly off, or maybe a day out of date, or only “correct” if you make that One Special Assumption about netting out certain customers? Back in 2019 when…SaaS6 min readSaaS6 min read
Feb 27A Snowflake Credit, an Analytics Engineer, and a Venture Capital-Backed Data Observability Startup Valued at One Billion Dollars Walk Into a BarThe Snowflake Credit orders three tall glasses of whiskey. The bartender says, “Sorry, Snowflake Credit, you’re already wasted.”Venture Capital1 min readVenture Capital1 min read
Feb 1Introducing the Tech Bros Show: A Higher Interest Rates PodcastWhy start a weekly podcast show in 2023? Aren’t there already too many pontificating talking heads in the tech world? When is enough enough? Most tech podcasts these days are run by pool boys. …Tech4 min readTech4 min read
Jan 24Snowflake is a Table Game; Google Cloud is a CasinoThere are these two young cloud data engineering fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older cloud data engineering fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’re the cash flows?” …Data Engineering11 min readData Engineering11 min read
