iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Hannah Khwaja @hannahkhwaja.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

We're looking for someone to join our lovely team at Data Orchard as an Analytics Engineer! This is a really diverse and exciting role working on a wide range of #data projects for our wonderful nonprofit clients and our own data products. Please do apply if this sounds up your street 👩‍💻 #dataSky

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

The biggest challenge at a startup that's growing quickly is how often your job changes. What matters and where your focus needs to be is always changing.

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

amanda fioritto @afioritto.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

I wish there was a way for the dbt Cloud Explore DAG to filter to content that exists *between* two nodes. Anyone know of a fun work-around for this with other tools? #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

What's on my mind this week (as Head of Data at a growth stage startup) * Hiring 🔜 * Upcoming vendor contract negotiations * Priorities pulse check with our stakeholders * Couple lil IC tasks to standardize a metric a bit better #dataBS

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Zach Renwick @zachrenwick.work · 07/01/2025

Perpetually flip flopping on self serve analytics Some days it feels like it could be the holy grail - enabling downstream users to do their own exploration and analysis on governed metrics. Fewer ad hoc requests! Reporting automation! Other days: So what? Does that actually move the needle?

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

The questions to decide are: * Where is the inflection point where ROI and effort are aligned -- aka how deep to invest * For which functions should it be prioritized * What does the support model look like * What is the process for getting more help when needed

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

As a leader, you can't ignore it and it's impossible to universally achieve. When making consequential decisions stakeholders want consensus and a partner. When assets exist you still have to teach new people what they're called and where to find them. Metrics have to keep up with the biz.

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Kirsten Lum @machsci.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Don’t think of it as whether the data has error or not. Most of the time it will. Think of it as whether the error in the data will cause you to make a different decision than if the data was perfectly clean. Most of the time it won’t.

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Andrew Schechtman-Rook @andrewrook.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

One of the biggest tips I have for anyone doing data analysis, especially data from people, is to spend some time drilling down to the most granular data and just looking at individual records. You will find the craziest shit you never imagined and your analysis will be better for it #databs

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

My #dataBS new year's resolution is to stop feeling guilty when I tell someone to go self serve their QQ. What's yours?

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Emily Riederer @emilyriederer.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is for any of the abandoned GitHub repos that half-implemented the Hemingway writing app as a VS Code extension to finish the job. Please put your best TypeScript dev elf on this 🙏

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Watching Hex's internal hack week demos is like Christmas early 😍

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I'm going to cite this as evidence of how great our team is next time we get to hire, watch me.

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

amanda fioritto @afioritto.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

a poem by poetry: poetry run dbt compile command not found: dbt poetry show | grep dbt dbt 1.0.0.38.22 pip freeze | grep dbt dbt==1.0.0.38.22 which dbt dbt not found (look, no one said it was a happy poem) #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Which is a bummer because unless you carefully guard the inputs the recursion can run away forever!

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Fascinating! Confirmed this works in DuckDB, but would need some concepts ported to Snowflake to work in our warehouse. Nice work on this! #dataBS

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Kshitij Aranke @rn.ke · 11/12/2024

Wait I found a solution in pure SQL using list transformations (works in DuckDB): gist.github.com/aranke/74206...

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

It nerd sniped our whole team in the best way! We used a recursive solution!

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

The Boolean is the correct answer! The challenge is to create it. I haven’t found a way to do it in SQL with lag functions but I’d love to see one!

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

And full confession I did not solve it

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

to make the base select '2024-06-10' as d union all select '2024-08-20' as d union all select '2024-08-22' as d union all select '2024-09-17' as d union all select '2024-09-19' as d union all select '2024-11-01' as d union all select '2024-12-11' as d union all select '2024-12-21' as d

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Super #SQL brainteaser for your Tuesday that kept a few folks on our team thinking pretty hard until someone made an elegant solution. The desired behavior per unit: * First event qualifies * Subsequent events qualify only if it's been more than 90 days since the last Sample dates below #dataBS

A table of dates. 2024-06-10, 2024-09-17, and 2024-12-21 are labeled true. 2024-08-20, 2024-08-22, 2024-09-19, 2024-11-01, and 2024-12-11 are labeled false for is_after_cooldown

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Continuing my theme of banger PRs -- this one improved documentation for a field confusing to a lot of folks #dataBS

A PR title for #1607 that reads `Erika/delight caitlin`

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Just had a great chat about being the first data person at a startup. Pros * Building at high velocity is fun * Work with smart people Challenges * Always more than you can do * Hard to know how good to build when Folks that have done it, what's on your pro/challenge list? #datasky #dataBS

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

amanda fioritto @afioritto.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

dbt job: "Can't parse a JSON blob, I'm out." me: *looks for a needle in the 100M-row haystack* me: "Aha! This looks fine? Guess I'll paste it in a text editor to double check." text editor: "Uh, boss" me: "Is that...is that a tiny red 'BS'?" BS broke my data. I can't make this shit up. #dataBS

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

Christian Minich @christianminich.com · 05/12/2024

This is a great post about a thoughtful data warehouse redesign! My favorite part is where @afioritto.bsky.social talks about how Hex’s schemas were organized before and their names, and how they were organized afterward and their names! #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Amanda did absolutely fabulous work on this project! We got a clean and shiny data warehouse, you get an interesting read. Everyone wins. #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Your Monday reminder: Lots of people who seem smart, talented, accomplished, and confident on social media also feel insecure, silly, and stupid sometimes. What matters is that you show up and keep learning, day after day. #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Them: These numbers don't match Me: Yes, because they are different Them: Oh Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, cohorts confuse everyone #dataBS

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Reposted by Erika Pullum (she/her)

amanda fioritto @afioritto.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I am convinced that the YML-based semantic layer was as much invented by a data professional as the stiletto heel was invented by a woman (the stiletto heel was invented by a man) #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

What's on my mind this week (as the Head of Data at a growth stage startup) * Renegotiating a vendor contract * Insights re:channel ROI for marketing * Team member priorities / projects * A blissfully low-meeting week #datasky #dataBS

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

You would love our repo, we've had some real bangers as a group. =

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

In this case it was Poetry. 🙃 You have *one* job my friend.

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Neither was particularly interesting or challenging to put together. I'm always impressed by how much the fundamentals matter and how impactful simple collaboration and partnership can be.

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

The other was a series of simple joins to a base dataset from our accounts table to help marketing focus an upcoming initiative.

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

This post inspired by two dead simple datasets I pulled together this week that were "exactly what I needed" One was a simple datediff calc with a where filter on one of our major tables that placated one side of a debate about a decision to be made.

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Data people kinda hate QQs, esp without context or the word "just". The right simple dataset to the right person at the right time unblocks decision making and leads to higher quality decisions. The challenge is sorting out which QQs are levers for business partners and which are a waste of time.

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

So great to hear! We love feedback -- positive or negative. Happy to pass anything you hear along. This was actually built by an engineer during a hackathon originally (at our request/bribe) and then productionized from there!

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Erika Pullum (she/her) @erikapullum.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Do I know anyone in #dataBS who has built out a fairly full-scale metrics layer in MetricFlow (dbt) or Cube? Looking for someone who'd connect for ~30 with someone on my team starting the process for us at Hex!

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