Episode 62: Leading Organizations Through Analytics Transformations with Gordon Wong

Show Notes(02:09) Gordon briefly talked about his undergraduate studying Psychology and Philosophy at Rutgers University in the early 90s.(03:24) Gordon reflected on the first decade of his career getting into database technologies.(05:34) Gordon discussed his predilection towards consulting, specifically his role in the professional services team at AB Initio Software in the early 2000s.(08:02) Gordon recalled the challenges of leading data warehousing initiatives at Smarter Travel Media and ClickSquared in the 2000s.(13:14) Gordon emphasized the advantage of a multi-tenant database over a traditional relational database.(18:30) Gordon recalled his one-year stint at Cervello, leading business intelligence implementations for their clients.(21:59) Gordon elaborated on his projects during his 3 years as the director of business intelligence infrastructure at Fitbit.(26:09) Gordon dived into his framework of choosing data tooling vendors while at Fitbit (and how he settled with a tiny startup called Snowflake back then).(30:02) Gordon provided recommendations for startups to be data-driven.(33:24) Gordon recalled practices to foster effective collaboration while managing the 3 teams of data engineering, data warehousing, and data analytics at Fitbit.(36:44) Gordon went over his proudest accomplishment as the director of data engineering at ezCater, making substantial improvements to their data warehouse platform.(38:59) Gordon shared his framework for interviewing data engineers.(41:39) Gordon walked through his consulting engagement in analytics engineering for Zipcar and data warehousing for edX.(46:17) Gordon reflected on his time as the Vice President of business intelligence at HubSpot.(50:50) Gordon unpacked his notion of “Data Hierarchy of Needs,” which entails the five pillars — data security, data quality, system reliability, user experience, and data coverage.(56:55) Gordon discussed current opportunities for driving better social outcomes and empowering democracy through data.(59:48) Gordon shared the key criteria that enable healthy team dynamics from his hands-on experience building data teams.(01:02:13) Gordon unpacked the central features and benefits of Snowflake for the un-initiated.(01:06:25) Gordon gave his verdict for the ETL tooling landscape in the next few years.(01:08:33) Gordon described the data community in Boston.(01:09:52) Closing segment.Gordon’s Contact InfoLinkedInMentioned Content

People

Tristan Handy (co-founder of Fishtown Analytics and co-creator of dbt)Michael Kaminsky (who coined the term “Analytics Engineering”)Barr Moses (co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, who coined the term “Data Observability”)

Book

“Start With Why” (By Simon Sinek)

About the show

Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.

Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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