Leadership: Risk or Opportunity Focused

As I’ve worked with teams engineering teams big and small – in both enterprise and startup contexts – over the last 20 years I’ve noticed two distinct patterns in leadership and their impact on the culture and productivity of those teams. Pattern: Risk Focused Leadership Risk focused leadership emphasizes the up front identification and mitigation of… Continue reading Leadership: Risk or Opportunity Focused

Big Data – Empowering the Age of Agile Analytics

Big data is a buzzword, no question. Given that it is incumbent on practitioners – in particular architects – to tie the new patterns available in a “big data” enabled infrastructure to practical business benefits. While there are a variety of business benefits that are enabled by big data infrastructure the single most tangible is… Continue reading Big Data – Empowering the Age of Agile Analytics

Data Architects – no one cares about your ERD…

Data Architecture has changed – massively – and most data practitioners haven’t caught on yet. In a SaaS world – where business users can sign up for and use powerful platforms by simply signing up we have to radically rethink what data architecture means. It certainly isn’t about your ERD – your elegant description of… Continue reading Data Architects – no one cares about your ERD…

How to spot a fake Big Data Engineer

Photo Credit: counterfitsoner on Flickr

I interview a lot of candidates… I mean a LOT. And every resume I get these days has a “Big Data Project” listed. So, naturally, my first question is – what is it that made it a “Big Data” project? Top five immediate disqualification answers are: We were using Hadoop We had TONS of data… Continue reading How to spot a fake Big Data Engineer