The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Data Analytics: Same As It Ever Was

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

In this bonus episode, Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming conversation with Aron Clymer of Data Clymer.

Welcome to the Data Stack Show prequel. We just recorded a show with Aaron Clymer. He runs a consultancy called Data Clymer. Super interesting. He actually did amazing work going through sort of data-driven transformation, I would call it, at Salesforce over almost a decade, which is crazy. He was at PopSugar, did amazing things there. And then he wanted to see a wider breadth of problems in the market. And so he started a consultancy and he's doing really interesting things there.

Costas, one thing I loved about this was we actually talked a lot about legacy infrastructure and delivering sort of data-driven results in the context of legacy infrastructure, right? So I'm trying to think of a guest we've had on the show who has talked about delivering really significant company-wide results with data where they're running on Oracle on-prem. Like, I don't know if we've actually had someone on the show who has talked specifically about that. I think we've had an episode about Intuit at some point.

Right, but they were migrating to the cloud. Yeah, they were using MS SQL the cloud. They were using MS SQLite for a very long time. Oh, that's right. What was interesting about what Aaron said to me was, well, let me just say it clearly, and I think this actually

would be for me motivation enough to listen to the show. What he talked about was so similar to what we've heard other data leaders talk about, right? I've come into a company, data's all over the place. Many teams are not capturing data. And in order to sort of achieve the next level of whatever the company wants to do, you have to ingest all this data and then make it valuable and, you know, sort of deliver whatever that looks like. You deliver feature adoption stuff to product managers or executive dashboards or whatever those things are. tools and all these sorts of things. And he was doing that on, you know, on-prem, like pretty

legacy stuff. But what really struck me was that he talked about it in the exact same way that everyone else on the show talks about it. Right. Which I think was a really good perspective builder for me in terms of like, yeah, it's actually the same sort of mechanisms or like internal organization, organizational changes that you need to tackle, it just so happens that it was like way more annoying for him because on-prem is harder, slower, you know, whatever, more cumbersome in many ways. So I don't know.

I really liked that, but what was your take? Do you, is that a good read? Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. I don't think that the organization and even the problems that we are trying to solve, like they change that much. Right. Yeah.

We have like better tools and better technologies to do that. But it's not like, okay, people started doing analytics in 2020, right? They are doing that for many years, right? And it's successful. Like, you have companies out there that they are still using Oracle and they have done like amazing things on that. And Oracle is a pretty sophisticated product, right? Sure.

Just that I think we are also, let's say, a little bit biased in a way because we come from an environment where we always try to be only state-of-the-art because we are state-of-the-art, let's say, what we're building ourselves. We are trying to be state-of-the-art, let's say, what we're building ourselves, or we are trying to be state-of-the-art, and we are trying to challenge what already exists. But we should always respect what already exists, because that's something that has proved already what value can be earned. We still have to prove that we when you try like to change something,

like you have to be, you need like the right amount of like arrogance and being also humble at the same time. Right. So yeah, Oracle is there and I don't see Oracle going anywhere. So yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that's a great way to describe it. Yeah, Oracle's there and I don't see Oracle going anywhere. So, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great way to describe it. I think what listeners will love about this episode is that

Aaron was so knowledgeable about how to accomplish delivering insights from data using a wide variety of tools. I mean, he certainly didn't come across as arrogant. He was just very confident, right? Like, here's how you do this, right? But he just talked about it in a way that was very technology agnostic. I mean, he has preferences that like, I think that's because he came from doing that on like very different

technology than he does it on today, but he has a respect for the fact that it's the same problem. Yeah. Yep. Which is great. I actually think about that. When I ride my bike to work every day, I pass this accounting firm, you know, it's a small building and it's accounting firm. And

the name of the firm is Abacus. And I really appreciate that because there's kind of this, there's a humbleness there that recognizes like people have been doing this for thousands and thousands of years. Right. And the basic principles are, you know, are the same. So yeah, it'll make me think about it more next time I, well, when I ride my bike home from work today. So, all right. Well, really good stories from Salesforce, PopSugar, and lots of interesting things actually just about what's happening

on the cutting edge of warehousing and BI today from Airclimber. So definitely tune in and many more great episodes coming your way and we'll catch you on the next one.