Episode 119: Experimentation Culture, Immutable Data Warehouse, The Data Collaboration Problem, and The Rise of Data Contracts with Chad Sanderson

Datacast

Jun 16 2023 • 1 hr 22 mins

Show Notes

(01:38) Chad reflected on his early career as a freelance journalist working in Southeast Asia.
(04:27) Chad explained the benefits of writing for anyone working in a technical field.
(06:15) Chad touched on his entrance to data analytics through Conversion Rate Optimization.
(09:06) Chad walked through his decision to dive deep into the field of experimentation.
(13:28) Chad recalled how he spent time learning the basics of statistics.
(15:32) Chad discussed the differences in experimentation cultures at Subway, SEPHORA, and Microsoft.
(19:11) Chad shared the technical details behind the evolution of Convoy's data platform since he joined in 2019.
(23:05) Chad emphasized the role of data in Convoy's digital freight business.
(26:17) Chad brought up the importance of solving data discovery at Convoy and their decision to choose Amundsen.
(29:02) Chad shared lessons learned setting up a flexible experimentation platform at Convoy.
(32:46) Chad unpacked the problems with Change Data Capture and how his team built an internal change management platform called Chassis (a source of truth for definitions of events, entities, and relationships.).
(41:33) Chad discussed the existential threat of data quality.
(44:38) Chad explainedwhy the modern data warehouse is broken and why the "Immutable Data Warehouse" can be a solution.
(51:39) Chad zoomed in on the death of data modeling.
(57:42) Chad is bullish on the rise of the knowledge layer and data contracts in the upcoming years.
(01:03:37) Chad talked at length about the data collaboration problem.
(01:09:28) Chad gave advice for data organizations to be more customer-centric.
(01:11:55) Chad shared components of a high-quality Data UX function that any centralized data team should consider when developing data experiences.
(01:14:46) Chad touched on his mental framework for evaluating potential investments in the data space.
(01:18:57) Chad brought up the valuable skills he acquired as an internal product manager.
(01:20:05) Closing segment.

Chad's Contact Info

Mentioned Content

Talks

Aligning Experimentation Across Product Development and Marketing (CXL Live 2019)
Chassis: Entities, Events, and Change Management (Data Quality Meetup, 2021)
1,000 Experiments Club with AB Tasty (July 2021)
Data Discovery at Lyft and Convoy (July 2021) (with Mark Grover)
The growth of the data platform product manager role (The Tech Trek, Dec 2021)
Implementing Amundsen at Convoy (Building the Backend, Jan 2022)
Getting ROI from Experimentation: How AB Experimentation plays out in Organizations (Data Council, March 2022)
Why are we so bad at this modern data stack? (Catalog and Cocktails, April 2022)

Articles

Experimentation not only protects your KPIs but your job as well (Dec 2019)
Is The Modern Data Warehouse Broken? (April 2022) (with Barr Moses)
The Existential Threat of Data Quality (May 2022)
The Death of Data Modeling (June 2022)
Data Collaboration Problem (June 2022)
The Rise of Data Contracts (Aug 2022)

People

Barr Moses (Monte Carlo Data)
Juan Sequeda (data.world)
Adrian Kreuziger (Convoy)

Book

Agile Data Warehouse Design (by Lawrence Corr)

Notes

My conversation with Chad was recorded back in July 2022. Since then, I'd recommend looking at:

His two-part series on engineering guide to data contracts (Part 1 and Part 2)
The Data Quality Camp community
His most recent post on how scale kills data teams
Data Facade (of which he is an angel investor)

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 khanhle.1013@gmail.com.

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