The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Data Engineers in the Front End with Josh Wills

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this bonus episode, Eric previews his upcoming conversation with Josh Wills, an experienced data scientist who has worked with IBM, Google, Slack, DuckDB, and more.

Welcome to the Data Stack Show prequel, where we replay a snippet from the show we just recorded. Let's do it. What a fascinating conversation with Josh Wills. I think one of the biggest takeaways from his time at IBM, Google, Slack, and other companies is that he has this tenacious curiosity that compels him to build his data projects by actually writing code in areas where he doesn't have any authority or, as he says, sort of any skill, which is really interesting. You know, he talked about at Google going in and actually updating the code base for Google's ad auction for search in order to get the right data to do data analysis and setting up data engineering pipelines there. Which was, you know, that's very intrepid in and of itself. But even with DuckDB, which is what he's been working on recently, you know, he said he

had written C++ in 10 years, right? And he's submitting pull requests and collaborating with the people who started DuckDB because he just has this intrepid curiosity. So really incredible episode. So much to learn about tool adoption, growing a data team, learning from your mistakes and curiosity. But I think the big takeaway is that his intrepid curiosity is really what sort of led him to all of his success. So great episode. Subscribe if you haven't, tell a friend and we will catch you on the next one.