Notes on dataarchitecture.
Short essays on architecture, cost, hiring and AI: one cartoon, one idea, most days of the week. No tutorials, no listicles.
The Real-Time Data Paradox - Everyone Wants It, Few Need It
90% of "we need real-time" conversations end with a batch job running at midnight.
Read →The Team That Automated Themselves Out of Firefighting
A data team spent 60% of their week doing the same manual tasks - and nobody questioned it for two years.
Read →The Data Strategy One-Pager (What Execs Actually Need)
The best data strategy I've seen fit on a single page.
Read →What the Books Got Wrong About Data
The DevOps playbook assumes you can roll back - data doesn't work that way.
Read →The Data Contracts Rollout - From Chaos to 60% Coverage in 90 Days
Data contracts sound great in theory. Here's what it actually looks like to implement them - week by week, with the parts that almost …
Read →The Medallion Architecture Backlash
Bronze, Silver, Gold. Three layers that make sense on a slide and fall apart the moment someone asks "where does this transformation …
Read →The Tiered Storage Strategy (Hot, Warm, Cold)
Hot, warm, cold. Three tiers, one policy, and suddenly your storage bill makes sense.
Read →The Feedback Loop - Why Data Incidents Keep Recurring
Your data team hides problems because they'll get blamed for them. The Unicorn Project calls this the downward spiral. Here's how to break …
Read →The Migration That Didn't Solve Anything
The most expensive way to avoid fixing your organizational problems: migrate to a new data platform.
Read →The Data Incident Response Playbook (MTTR Edition)
When your data breaks, how long until someone notices? If the answer is "when the CFO calls," you don't have an incident response process.
Read →Want expert eyes on your data architecture?
No pitch. An honest conversation about whether I can help, and what shape it would take if I can.