Hi fellow data professional! Quick question: How much could I pay you to switch your job? Conventional wisdom in the tech industry in the last handful of years is that the way to supercharge growth and max out your career earnings is to frequently change jobs. On average, job switchers could and should target an increase of 15-20% of their current salary. But in a rocky economy (at least here in the U.S.), career experts are urging would-be switchers to consider the benefits of a stable role...
16 days ago • 2 min read
Hi fellow data professional and Happy New Year! In the second half of 2025, I made a radical choice: I (largely) stopped blogging. Over the past year, Medium (where I host my content) made a series of changes that de-prioritizes technical content, leading to the departure of several major publications, including Toward Data Science. Pair that platform disillusionment with a bit of burnout, and the result is a feeling that it’s time for a change. For 75+ weeks, I’ve preferred concise,...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Hi fellow data professional - Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Since an email is probably one of the least exciting things to open on Christmas morning, I'll keep this brief. As a thank you for subscribing and reading the newsletter this year, I'd like to offer a gift: My FREE guide to web scraping in Python. Centered around 3 "real world" projects, the guide highlights the importance of being able to retrieve, interpret and ingest unstructured data. Get your guide here. Have a restful...
30 days ago • 1 min read
Hi fellow data professional! Once thought to be a purely back office role, data engineering is undergoing a radical transformation and gaining a new responsibility: Front-end deployment. The folks already deploying applications in this capacity are known, incidentally, as forward deployed software engineers or forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Before you worry about needing to learn JavaScript or other web programming paradigms, know that I’m referring to the preparation, deployment and...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi past, present or future data professional! As time in 2025 dwindles, I wanted to share what I learned about optimizing design, development and troubleshooting time while working 3 days per week this fall. Quick background: If you’ve been a long-time reader, you’ll know that in March my wife and I had our first child. Consequently, through my employer, I was eligible for several months of parental leave. Anticipating my wife’s return to work (after much needed time off!) I allocated the...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi past, present or future data professional! As the winter holidays approach, we’re entering a period of downtime for most orgs. Assuming your employer has hit goals (or accepted losses), allocated coverage for the slew of inevitable vacation requests and maybe even entered a “code freeze”, you’re entering data & tech’s slow season. If you’re working, during this time you may be asked to do any number of “downtime” (actual free time, not data outages) tasks ranging from code refactors to...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hi past, present or future data professional! If you’re in the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving! I’m prepping for my food coma, so I’ll make this week’s newsletter quick. Like millions of Americans, I’ll be watching NFL football (go Ravens!). The average NFL game is 3 hours. If you can skip just one of today’s games and carve out that time for professional development, here’s how I’d spend it. In the spirit of football, I’ll split the time designation into 4 quarters. Documentation pass - if you read...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from PipelineToDE Hi past, present or future data professional! In 2 weeks or so The Oxford English Dictionary will reveal its 2025 word of the year, a semi-democratic process that lends academic legitimacy to words like “rizz” (2023’s pick). If you’re currently employed or interact with white collar workers, you would think the word of the year is “headwinds.” Used in a sentence: “We’ve pivoted our AI strategy but still encountered headwinds that...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from PipelineToDE Hi past, present or future data professional! After choosing a dataset, one of the most significant decisions you must make when creating displayable work is: How am I going to build this thing? For some, you may try to “vibe code” along with an LLM doing the grunt technical work. If you choose this approach, be warned: Nearly half of all “vibe code” generated contains security vulnerabilities and that’s before you even consider its...
2 months ago • 1 min read