Simple Fixes for BigQuery Data Engineering Worst-Case Scenarios
How knowing a few SQL and Google Cloud Console tricks can save your mental health and maybe even your job.
If you’re like me, you might find that beginning your first data engineering job is a scary proposition. In addition to suffering from a bit of imposter syndrome initially, as most tech newbies do, I found that I was nervous when it came to being granted full access to my organization’s data warehouse.
I was even more nervous since I work remotely and felt that there would be no one watching over my shoulder to ensure I didn’t accidentally alter important datasets, tables and other vital company assets.
For my first few months I had an irrational fear that, through some physics-defying action, I would delete terabytes of data, be ridiculed and be promptly shown the door.
The cure for this doubt and unfounded fear? I made the mistakes I feared (not the one about deleting an entire data warehouse, luckily). In the process, I determined that if you’re resourceful and calm, there is a sort of control-z process for undoing nearly every mistake a new data engineer can make.
To that end, in my first six months on the job, I managed to:
