Two months as a BIE⌗

Promoted to BIE on the same team I have been on since September.

Worked hard during my first four months on the team, put together a doc with my boss and got approved starting about two months ago. Since Septmeber I’ve done a lot of stuff:

A little Background⌗ 

- Redshift Cluster Maintenance and Query optimization of our longest running jobs
- Working toward establishing code reviews and a central code repository
- Created new production tables for partner teams
- Made adjustments/additions to some of our most critical tables that buoy all reports

How to improve⌗

Looking back, I am very happy with my effort, but I want to do two things better.

ONE) I have not asked “WHY?” enough. I often get a request and my mind instantly goes into solve mode: how do I do this, how do I do this optimally, how quickly can I do this, etc… I need to clarify the ask and get a better understanding of if they EVEN need what they are asking for.

  • “Hey can you add this to the output of the model?”
  • “Why do you want that?”
  • “I’m not sure someone else just mentioned it”
  • “Ok let me know what the use case is, and I can see what I can do” _ Never hear about it again _

This helps to avoid useless work…

TWO) I’m struggling to detach from work. I just took two full weeks off; it was nice, I went to Europe, hung out with my girlfriend, saw family… but I also wanted to be working. I get way to attached to work, and I feel like my greatest source of satisfaction right now is recognition/ appeciation from people I work with.

I’ve recognized that my level of committment is 24/7 and my derivation of self-worth is much too entwined with my job. I am grateful to be passionate about what I do, and I am not saying that I want to de-commit, care less, and avoid work… I need an off button. I will work 7AM to 7PM no problem, when I’m done working I will go to the gym and think about how to solve work problems, and when I get home I will check my computer to see if any emails came in. I need to learn that throwing more effort, more concern, and more intent at a problem isn’t always the way… sometimes you need to close your copmuter at 5PM and leave it shut until the next day. I’m trying.

Forward Looking⌗

One thing that might help with my above problem is I’m being forced into an office 3 days a week starting July 1. None of my team is in the same state is I am, but I will have to drive 30 minutes to plug my computer into a different monitor to take calls and write code.

On learning, I’ve been deep diving DBMS internals mostly through Andy Pavlo’s CMU lectures (so good). I have been tinkering around with different AWS resoruces, GIT, read a book on SPARK, learned about a python library called Polars, and continue to just consume a ton of information on data engineering tools/topics.

I love what I do everyday, I’m having a great time learning new technologies, and I’m grateful I get to help others with my learnings.