Opinion

Anna Filippova 30 Jul 2021

The data world needs more purple people — generalists who can navigate both the business context and the modern data stack. Let's put aside skillset dichotomies, and learn to feel comfortable in the space between.

Tristan Handy 1 Dec 2020

My thoughts on where our space has been and where it might be going.

Emilie Schario 29 Oct 2020

Translating business logic into code is technical knowledge. Building a marketing attribution model, forecasting, or calculating MRR is technical knowledge. Understanding the inner workings of the business is technical knowledge. So...is there such a thing as a non-technical data analyst?

Tristan Handy 15 Oct 2020

I originally wrote this as a part of our new analyst onboarding program back in June of 2017, shared with new analysts on their first day. It’s as true today as it was the day I wrote it, so I wanted to publish it more broadly. Maybe you’ll find it useful!

Tristan Handy 12 Aug 2020

A recent post, Dashboards are Dead, sparked a conversation about the future of data reporting.

Claire Carroll 3 Oct 2019

My love for group by 1, 2 developed when I was a fledgling analyst and has only grown. Even if you disagree, I hope this rant will inspire you to be more opinionated in your SQL style.

Tristan Handy 24 Sep 2019

If your time is valuable, it should be important to you to operate with the highest possible leverage. This allows you to get more done with your fixed number of hours. Simple. Here's how analysts can operate with leverage.

Claire Carroll 15 Jul 2019

The natural state of the universe is chaos: entropy tends to increase in closed systems, and there’s really nothing that we can do about that. So too is the nature of data warehouses: unless action is taken to maintain order.

Tristan Handy 10 Jun 2019

Holy crap! Within the past week we’ve seen the acquisitions of the two biggest players in the modern BI landscape, Looker and Tableau.

Tristan Handy 4 May 2019

Thoughts on pricing strategy and what it communicates about your company's vision for the future of the market you're in.

Claire Carroll 11 Mar 2019

As dbt is adopted by a wider community, we want to be extremely clear about when dbt is, and is not, a fit for your project. This guide will help you figure out if dbt is right for your data transformations.

Tristan Handy 11 Dec 2017

Modular analytics tools allow companies to choose components to fit their needs and switch out or augment components as their needs change. Here's what I think is missing from the market.

Tristan Handy 18 Sep 2016

This post, originally published in 2016, was most recently updated in November 2017.

Tristan Handy 18 Sep 2016

Business intelligence tech has changed really dramatically over the past 3-4 years since the advent of cloud-based analytics databases.

Tristan Handy 3 Aug 2016

Over the past three months I’ve been in the lab building Fishtown Analytics. There’s a lot of the company formation process that’s been fun for me. I love checklists, and treated the opening of this business as a really big one.