Three steps forward one step back
SQL beat me up these past two weeks. Here’s my mistakes, save yourself some headache and don’t do what I did.
For those not interested in the whole story it boils down to this.
1) Don’t use functions you don’t fully understand
2) Audit more often
My toiling in SQL this past week was a great learning experience. One for which, even in this frustrated state, I am thankful. For those who haven't read the series, I am an associate at Corsair’s Analytics currently working in the real world WHILE learning the analytic trade. My natural strengths in this field are not held in the technological portions of this role; forcing the ascent of the steep learning curve of SQL.
The function that I thought I knew how to use this past week was the group by function. I know, what a basic tool, how did you not know how to use it. While in the whirlwind of starting a new job in a new field, I would just keep adding new fields to the group by until there was no errors and that to me was a signal what I was working on was correctly done! HA! NO! Don’t do that.
Talking opening about a failure… a mess up.. a slip of mind. It may not be the most comfortable for some but accidents happen and addressing them head on makes them WAY more easy to deal with in round two. THIS feedback mechanism is one that makes me thankful and a life without it would scare the living shit out of me. Imagine being hired full time and no one is there to help you find your bearings.
George Earl asked me on Friday “dude, do you know exactly how group by works?” It only took me a moment to realize “No” was the only answer I could honestly reply. What happened next made me more confident in my decision to become a Corsair. George Earl was super cool about it and simply explained the concept to me. Having a boss do that isn't a guarantee.
Think for a second how that would feel to have a tough boss ask “do you know what a group by function does…” Instead of questioning my hire, I was taught.
So the weekend came and I set the bar for myself pretty high. I wanted to finish the job I tried to do since Thursday. I tried to cannibalize our old code, bad idea. Rewriting our sub tables caught a misspelling in an alias and rewriting the final join was great practice. I’m happy to say it came together and the outline of the attribution modeling is fully functional! Google University, hard work and Corsair's Publishing offering advice was all it took!
Now that I have first hand experience and the technical know how, what took me 3 weeks, I could probably build in 2 days!
If you find yourself interested in joining us, Corsair’s is looking! Feel free to DM me here or on Twitter I’m happy to address any questions.
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