1:1 or 1:Many?
Joe's Nerdy Rants #49 - Weekend reads and other stuff
It’s been a few weeks since my last newsletter. I took a much needed two week vacation in Europe with my family, then spent last week locked down finish filming my upcoming Data Engineering Specialization on Coursera.
What’s different about this course versus my book Fundamentals of Data Engineering?
The book is meant to last for at least five years, and hopefully much longer. That’s a lifetime in tech publishing. An author accomplishes this by NOT including code exercises or focusing on tools/technologies. When you include code or specific tech, the expiration date moves from years to months or weeks. Plus, I think code exercises in a book are a waste of paper. A better place is Github, YouTube, or courses.
Courses (online or in person) teach people in a hands-on and interactive manner. The Coursera experience is very lab and exercise-heavy, alongside amazing instructional videos. The learner gets in-depth experience, detailed instructions, and video walk-throughs. It’s impossible to create the same experience in a book.
The book and course are complementary and pair well together. Get both :)
While working on the new book and course, I thought a lot about my moves over the next few years. For many years, I’ve run a data engineering consultancy, Ternary Data, alongside Matt Housley (my business partner and co-author of Fundamentals of Data Engineering) since 2018. I like and dislike consulting.
A positive aspect of consulting is that it gives you perspective on various companies of all sizes, maturities, and industries. And it’s great money, often paid upfront (we don’t do hourly). With consulting, you’re not usually chasing subscription revenue or competing against well-funded startups in your vertical. Typically, it’s just you and similar companies vying for business.
This sounds amazing, and you might be wondering about the downsides of consulting. The first downside is that consulting is very high friction and linearly scalable. The high friction comes in various ways, but the ones that stand out to me are deal flow and engagement. Since there’s no recurring revenue, you’re constantly chasing new work, “feeding the beast,” as they say. And engagements are always, shall I say…interesting. You’re continually working closely with clients and their teams. You often play therapist to leaders in the organization that hired you. You quickly realize that most companies - big or small, startups or massive - are essentially the same. Same personalities, problems, etc.
Even more challenging with consulting is that your impact is one-to-one, meaning one consultant and one client. While it’s fulfilling to help clients get on a solid path with data and achieve their goals, I couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a better way to impact more companies.
When Fundamentals of Data Engineering was published two years ago (around this time), Matt Housley and I figured the book would do well. That was a vast underestimation. The book exploded worldwide, was translated into many languages, and remains a best-seller. Its impact on countless people, companies, and organizations humbled Matt and me. Not a day goes by that I don’t get a message from someone who loves the book. That’s so awesome!
The book also impacted us in extraordinary ways. Matt and I have been able to travel the world to give talks and meet with countless data professionals. It’s also offered a ton of inbound leads for Ternary Data. So, writing the book was a good move. It was the first time I felt the impact of operating in a one-to-many fashion on a global scale. And it got me thinking—why not do more of this?
The book’s success allows me to pursue other avenues for earning a living. I’m working on a new book on data modeling under a new imprint I’ll unveil later this year. Then, there’s the collaboration with Deeplearning.ai, which I mentioned earlier. There are many more projects in the pipeline, which I’ll share when the time is right. Given the amount of fun I have creating books, courses, and other content, and the sheer number of opportunities to impact many people, I’m dedicating most of my time to 1-to-many pursuits.
You might be happy with your job (1-to-one), but can you impact more people in your organization or the world outside of it? I hope all of you can find a way to impact more people in a 1:many way. It’s gratifying and creates a flywheel where more impact leads to more opportunities to create an even more significant impact.
On another note, the very popular Data Therapy Session calendar is posted here. It’s an incredible group where you can share your experiences with data - good and bad - in a judgment-free place with other data professionals. If you’re interested in regularly attending, add it to your calendar.
Hope you have a fun weekend!
Thanks,
Joe
P.S. If you haven’t done so, please sign up for Practical Data Modeling. There are lots of great discussions on data modeling, and I’ll also be releasing early drafts of chapters for my new data modeling book here. Thanks!
Cool Weekend Reads
Gen Z's Confessional Style Fuels Generational Divide on LinkedIn (Bloomberg)
Generative AI’s slop era (The Atlantic)
Mainframes Find New Life in AI Era (WSJ)
The Current State of LLMs: Riding the Sigmoid Curve (The New Stack)
A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage (WSJ)
The FTC finalizes its rules clamping down on fake online reviews (Engadget)
Elliot Management letter says AI is overhyped and Nvidia is in ‘bubble land’: Trial Balance (CFO)
New Show & Upcoming Events
The Joe Reis Show
5 Minute Friday - 1:1 or 1:Many? (Spotify)
Christian Steinert - Consulting in Unsexy, Niche Industries (Spotify)
5 Minute Friday - Courses and Books (Spotify)
Chris Bergh - DataOps Deep Dive (Spotify)
Lexi Pasi - The Shapes of ML/AI Problems (Spotify)
Joseph Machado - Balancing Tools and Fundamentals in Data Engineering (Spotify)
Bill Inmon - History Lessons of the Data Industry. This is a real treat and a very rare conversation with the godfather himself (Spotify) - PINNED HERE.
Monday Morning Data Chat
Joe Reis & Matt Housley - The Return of the Show! (Spotify, YouTube)
Nick Schrock & Wes McKinney - Composable Data Stacks and more (Spotify, YouTube)
Zhamak Dehghani + Summer Break Special (Spotify, YouTube)
Chris Tabb - Platform Gravity (YouTube)
Ghalib Suleiman - The Zero-Interest Hangover in Data and AI (Spotify, YouTube)
Events I’m At
SLC Low Key Happy Hour - Salt Lake City. September 10. Register here
Big Data London - London, UK. September 18-19. Register here
DataEngBytes - Australia/New Zealand. September 24 - October 4. Register here
dbt Coalesce - Las Vegas. October 7-10. Register here
Helsinki Data Week. October 28 - November 1. Register here
Forward Data Conference, Paris - November 25. Register here
Data Day Texas - Austin, TX. January 25, 2025. Register here
Data Modeling Zone - Arizona. March 4, 2025. Register here
Winter Data Conference - Austria. March 7, 2025. Register here
Much more to be announced soon…
Thanks! If you want to help out…
Thanks for supporting my content. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider subscribing to this Substack.
Would you like me to speak at your event? Submit a speaking request here.
You can also find me here:
Monday Morning Data Chat (YouTube / Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts). Matt Housely and I interview the top people in the field. Live and unscripted.
My other show is The Joe Reis Show (Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts). I interview guests on it, and it’s unscripted and free of shilling.
Practical Data Modeling. Great discussions about data modeling with data practitioners. This is also where early drafts of my new data modeling book will be published.
Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Matt Housley and I, available at Amazon, O’Reilly, and wherever you get your books.
Be sure to leave a lovely review if you like the content.
Thanks!
Joe Reis
I'm looking forward to this course 🤓