The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: How High Performing Data Teams Put Tooling in the Background

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

This week on the PRQL, Eric and Kostas discuss tooling as they preview the upcoming show with Paige Berry of Netlify.

Welcome to the Data Sack Show prequel, where we take a look at the show that is going to come out. So we just talked with Paige, who's a staff data analyst at Netlify, and Costas, it was an awesome conversation. You know, one of the more fun episodes that we've recorded in recent weeks. Of course, we love all of our guests. But I'm going to ask you a question here. So we talk so much about the tools in the data stack.

And my sense, one of my big takeaways from the conversation was that even though we did talk about some of the tooling, was that it was almost as if, you know, they implemented like a pretty sophisticated stack. And then that was just kind of there, you know, and it wasn't a main talking point was more about all of the amazing things that the team is doing. Because the stack makes like all these different things easier do you think that is the way that it should feel when you have infrastructure you know that sort of is set up to really serve you know a high functioning team like netlify's data team yeah i mean what i found like is extremely mean, okay, it's a little bit funny.

I wanted to joke and say, you know, where it's like, it's all about the people at the end. But anyway, I mean, okay, you didn't hear from Page, like, something super exotic happening in their data stack, right? Like, you have mode analytics, probably like the most exotic thing that we heard about was like the metrics repository that they have, right? Yeah, transform, yep. Yeah, but at the end, I mean, you can have like the most sophisticated stack

if like the organization on top of that, like the team does not function properly and they don't, let's say, work in a way the organization on top of that, like the team does not function properly. And they don't, let's say, work in a way that's like creative and functioning and all that stuff. Like it doesn't matter. And that's what like, I think it's the most important outcome from like the conversation with page, to be honest, even if they were writing in Perl,

I would probably still like to be there and work with them yeah i would too it reminds me there was a commercial a while back i can't remember exactly what the context was that they did one of those like secret camera things and they had a real race car driver go to a dealership just a car dealership and say i want to test drive this car and so you know the car salesman gets in the car with him and the race car driver just goes crazy you know it's like drifting the car and the guy you know the salesman's like scared out of his mind you know i don't know i think he's screaming like you know we're gonna sue you like all this sort of stuff but i know that's a weird analogy but i think about that and it's like, that guy's doing things in a normal car that I can't, I couldn't do if I had, you know,

the most equipped car. And I really think about, you know, their team is so high functioning that, you know, they have a great data stack, but like, you know, it's sort of, it fades into background, right? It's really about the team that's sort of operating it and using the results of it. So while we're at the buzzer here for the prequel, if you were interested by anything we just said, the episode is chock full of that exact discussion and Paige is super smart and helpful. We learned a ton. So be sure to tune in for the next episode.