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...
18 days 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...
25 days 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 1 month 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...
about 1 month 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...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from PipelineToDE Amid layoff announcements from Meta, Amazon and even UPS, it's job aggregator Indeed that signals a different concern for entry-level data job seekers. This week a post on Blind revealed Indeed’s plan to quietly reduce junior roles. They’re not necessarily going to stop hiring or layoff juniors (though they are losing 1300 employees by end of year)—they’re just going to stop paying attention to them. Specifically, Indeed will no longer...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from PipelineToDE Hi past, present or future data professional! I want to share the single most important realization I had back in the summer of 2021. I was burned out, juggling two part-time jobs, trying to plan a wedding, and drowning in full-time job applications. I felt overwhelmed and underprepared as I plunged into a sea of candidates I perceived to be more intelligent and better "fits" than me. My portfolio was full of the usual Titanic, Iris,...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from PipelineToDE Hi past, present or future data professional! One of the most validating and terrifying professional moments is reaching the final interview round. It is in this context that you meet candidacy’s final boss, who incidentally, usually ends up being your boss' boss. Specifically I’m referring to the department executive responsible for bringing in additional headcount, i.e. you. While this may sound intimidating, the role of the executive...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from PipelineToDE Hi past, present or future data professional! If you’re a job seeker in the data space, your GitHub portfolio has only one job: To act as a calling card that gets you to the next step of the hiring process. Too often, I review portfolios for potential referrals and see brilliant code buried under structural mistakes that have nothing to do with programming skill. Your GitHub is not just cloud storage for your code; it’s a public display...
2 months ago • 2 min read