Reaching 20k+ readers on Medium and over 3k learners by email, I draw on my 4 years of experience as a Senior Data Engineer to demystify data science, cloud and programming concepts while sharing job hunt strategies so you can land and excel in data-driven roles. Subscribe for 500 words of actionable advice every Thursday.
What Is Your 3-Year Data Engineering Plan?
The Latest From Pipeline: Your Data Engineering ResourceHi past, present or future data professional! I hope you’ll indulge my sharing of an important career milestone; unfortunately, I’m not retiring with a gold Rolex snug on my wrist. Instead, this week marks 3 years in data engineering. I’m excited about this work-iversary because it marks a period of time in which I’ve been working in data engineering longer than my prior non-data job. If you’ve read my work you know I’ve taken an unconventional path to break into data engineering and to advance to a senior role. Ideating, writing and publishing code, projects and stories has been central to my success in standing out as a candidate with nearly zero pre-job experience. Additionally, here are 3 lessons that have helped me break in, gain proficiency and advance in a competitive and complex role.
To understand how I learned and put these lessons into practice, read the latest here. And if you want to know one of the most surprising lessons I’ve learned in 3 years, read this. Until next time–thanks for ingesting, -Zach Quinn |
Extract. Transform. Read.
Reaching 20k+ readers on Medium and over 3k learners by email, I draw on my 4 years of experience as a Senior Data Engineer to demystify data science, cloud and programming concepts while sharing job hunt strategies so you can land and excel in data-driven roles. Subscribe for 500 words of actionable advice every Thursday.
Hi fellow data professional! This edition almost became an apology because I’ve been on a tight deadline and pre-baby morning wake up thinking/writing time has become GSD (get sh!t done) hour. Long story short: I got brought in late to a time-sensitive project that required me to speed through a planned pipeline migration. As a recovering news junkie (aka journalist), I used to live and die by deadlines. But, given the unpredictability of data-oriented work and internal deliverables, it’s...
Hi fellow data professional! For years, the opening of The Simpsons, specifically Bart writing lines on the chalkboard, has been incredibly relatable to me. Not because I’m up to mischief (none I’ll admit to here, anyway), but because I spend most days writing the same three lines of SQL over and over again. If you've ever been paranoid about a table's content, you might know what I'm talking about. It’s the aggregate COUNT(*) grouped by a date field, ordered by date DESC. The output of that...
Hi fellow data professional! In a previous newsletter, I mentioned an idea that I wanted to explore deeper. At the risk of double-quoting a la The Office’s Michael Scott quoting Wayne Gretzky (“You Miss 100% Of The Shots You Don’t Take - Waynze Gretzky - Michael Scott”), here is the idea. “To be marketable as a candidate, you don’t just want to show how you can go from A to B (requirements->pipeline). You need to go from A to C (requirements->pipeline->scale/support).” You might be asking...