What I'm working on

At work

The new platform is live and the old one is switched off. Most of my time now goes on proving that the new warehouse is right, rebuilding the parts that aren't, and rebuilding the team. We have one data engineer now, and I'm adding machine learning to the team with a Senior ML Engineer.

I'm also pushing for the data function to have a proper budget. At the moment spend is decided case by case, which makes it hard to plan past the next quarter or to have an honest conversation about what a data source costs to collect against what it earns.

Next

I'm open to my next data leadership role, permanent or contract: a Head of Data job, running a data team for a while, rescuing a platform, or reviewing one before a big decision. Here's what I'm looking for.

Thinking about

• Which parts of what AI wrote for us I'd keep, and which I'd write by hand next time
• How much process a two-person data team needs (less than most people would give it)
• What a Head of Data should own in a company with no formal budgets
• Pricing data honestly: the cost to collect a source against the revenue it supports

Reading

• An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson. The most practically useful book on engineering management I've read.
• The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, again. Still the best way I know to think about bottlenecks in a data platform.

Building

• This site
• A written version of the platform review I'd run for a new client, which has lived in my head for too long

Beyond work

Trying to get out on the hills more. The Peaks are close enough that I have no good excuse. Playing guitar most evenings, usually working out fingerpicking arrangements of songs that were not asking to be fingerpicked.