✨ LAUNCHING: Free ebook — Secrets of a Modern Data Leader
Featuring interviews from leaders at dbt, HubSpot, Immuta, Meltano, and more
Without a doubt, being a modern data leader is one of the most important and exciting jobs today. Play your cards right and you can truly shape the future of your organization or even the world, creating better products for real people and a better work environment for your colleagues.
The problem is, today’s data leaders are working without a playbook.
The modern data stack is so new, and modern data teams even newer. This means that unlike many other leadership positions, there is endless possibility in the role — but also endless uncertainty.
What is the right strategy for your first 60, 180, and 360 days? What is the first crucial decision you should make, and the first person you should hire? How can you cultivate the right data culture and data stack over time?
This uncertainty is daunting, but it’s also a gift. The more we talk about these challenges, the more we can use this time to decide what it means to be a great modern data leader — before others define it for us.
That’s why we’re super excited to share our latest ebook — Secrets of a Modern Data Leader: The First 365 Days Inside a Data Team!
It’s chock-full of the insights we wish we had when we were a data team ourselves, built on insights and learnings from some of today’s best modern data leaders:
Erica Louie: Head of Data at dbt Labs
Gordon Wong: Principal Consultant and Founder of Wong Decision Intelligence; formerly Senior Leader of Business Intelligence at Hubspot and Fitbit.
Stephen Bailey: Data Engineer at Whatnot; formerly Director of Data and Analytics at Immuta
Taylor Murphy: Head of Product and Data at Meltano; formerly Manager of Data and Analytics at GitLab
This week’s Metadata Weekly features some great information from Erica that didn’t make it into the ebook. Enjoy, and be sure to check out the ebook for much more content like this!
✨ Spotlight: Leadership lessons and fresh perspectives on managing a modern data team
Most of us have talked about the fundamental changes brought about by the modern data stack — but there’s a change we all often forget to mention.
Since the modern data stack is so new, no one can have decades of experience working with it. This has opened the ability for younger people to join and shape the data world as we collectively define what it means to be a data leader.
That’s why today we’re seeing amazing people like Erica Louie, Head of Data at dbt Labs, who is shaking up tradition and setting a great example of what it looks like to build a modern data team.
Still in her twenties, Erica leads the internal data team at dbt Labs. She is one of the youngest leaders at her company and leads with a people-first approach — all without a formal degree in data.
What stands out about Erica is her clear vision and drive to create the environment she's always wanted to work in. “I'm the youngest on the leadership team,” she says. “I had to really reflect hard on what good and bad management looked like based on what I experienced. I think the role of a data leader is to make sure that your team is operating and scaling well.”
For other young data professionals hoping to move into leadership positions in the near future, here is some great advice and insights from Erica.
🤝 Not all old ways apply — your approach to leadership can be personal
The longer you work as a leader, the harder it is to remember what it’s like to lack decision-making power. One of the advantages of being a young data leader is that those memories are more acute. For Erica, they were top of mind while she was developing her hiring and management plans.
When their team was just three people, she organized an offsite to collectively develop values for their team. “Basically, we explored what we had experienced. Let's unpack our workplace trauma,” she laughs. "And let's talk about what we value as we currently are today, and the traits that we want to have our fellow teammates have.”
Those values still inform everything about how the team works and Erica manages. Being the same age or younger than her direct reports meant her relationship with her team members was inherently different than that of a more senior leader — despite the hierarchy, the result was naturally collaborative. That relationship style has carried forward as the team has grown, which makes for an environment where everyone feels safe to admit they don’t know something or ask questions.
“In all my monthly one on ones and performance reviews, I always ask, how can I support you better?” she says.
“It isn't about knowing everything, but it's about making sure that your team feels like they're growing professionally and that they're happy.”
💪 Trust yourself
Erica wasn’t always so confident about leading a team of people who might have been in the industry long before her. “I'm really young for my role, and I always felt like I had to know the answers to everything,” she says. “And I wondered, how can I earn the respect of some of my direct reports — if they're older than me, they probably have had more experience.”
But as a young modern data leader, one of the most important lessons she’s learned is to trust her gut and believe in herself. “If I don't know something, I just tell them — ‘I don't know this.’ And if they don’t know it either I say, ‘let's learn it together.’”
Being a young leader means not being afraid to learn from your peers or even your reports, because what you’re bringing to the table is a vision that supports the company’s goals. So much of modern data leadership is about making decisions that make sense for the organization at large — that can happen at any age.
“I think that by me being upfront and transparent and vulnerable, it created this really comfortable work environment for us where everyone is open.”
Those who are more willing to ask questions are more likely to find answers that can then be used to improve your product and business. Increased learning opportunities no matter your seniority can only make things better.
🌟 Let your work speak for itself
No matter what industry you work in, young leaders can be met with skepticism. I’ve learned not to spend much time arguing with those who are unwilling to see my vision — often your work can be so much louder.
“There are sometimes going to be people who will question your validity as a leader because you’re young. But don’t do politics, just do good work and it will speak for itself.”
There’s so much to manage as a data leader — building relationships with department heads, creating strategies, building infrastructure, etc. Don’t waste energy trying to change people’s opinions. A happy team, efficient work, and company-wide impact speak volumes about your capacity as a leader.
“Anyone who questions what you're doing won’t really have anything to back it up,” says Erica. “Because you're going to be doing great work. That's all that matters.”
🎤 ICYMI: Why you’ll need data contracts
“I don't think that there is a data practitioner who has not faced the impact of not having some kind of agreement with a data producer who changes something inevitably and that leads to something that you're working on a daily basis.”
For those who missed it, I appeared in a recent episode of the Analytics Engineering Podcast, hosted by Tristan Handy and Julia Schottenstein, where I had a great chat with Chad Sanderson about data contracts.
The modern data stack introduces challenges in terms of collaboration between data producers and consumers. How might we solve them to ultimately build trust in data quality? Data contracts are the latest proposed solution. But what are they actually? Why have they struck a chord with data practitioners? Are they really needed for production use cases? What about on Day 1?
Listen to the podcast for these answers and much more ➡️
💫 Last month in Atlan: Announcing 13 major product updates
This is always a busy time of the season as the end of the year approaches. Friends and family to connect with, parties to plan, Q4 work to wrap up… there’s so much to do in a short amount of time. The vibe is no different here inside Atlan, where our team has been hard at work pushing out as many improvements as possible before we jump into 2023.
Last month, we released 13 new features to feed your data appetite. With new ways to access metadata context, enrich your metadata landscape, and glean insights from data, there was a lot to be thankful for this November.
Here are a few of the highlights:
New releases: The first-ever metadata-enriched query editor!
New features: Governance Dashboard, bulk updating metadata from Google Sheets, downloadable impact analysis report, tighter security for sample data preview, automated emails for failed scheduled queries, and much more
New connections: A new SAP HANA connector package, and support for Microsoft SQL Server
Read our November product roundup here ➡️
📚 More from my reading list
The thrill of deprecating dashboards by Sarah Krasnik
You have too many metrics by Sean Byrnes
What good data self-serve looks like by Nate Sooter
Data insights as a product by Luke Lin
Should we be grateful for the modern data stack? by Benn Stancil
How to manage data teams, build a reliable platform & ensure data quality by Anna Geller
Understanding the data platform at Canva with Greg Roodt on the Modern Data Show podcast
See you next week!
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