Seattle Data Guy

If you want to learn SQL fast in 2026, check out these articles and videos:

1. Understanding SQL Query Execution - What Happens When You Run A SQL Command

↳ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvACO...

2. Back To The Basics With SQL: Understanding Hash, Merge, and Nested Joins

↳ seattledataguy.substack.com/p/back-to-the-basics-w…

3. Learn SQL Beginner to Advanced in Under 4 Hours

↳ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT1RE...

4. 3 SQL Interview Tips And Questions For Data Scientists And Data Engineers

↳ seattledataguy.substack.com/p/3-sql-interview-tips…

5. How to analyze merchant homepages visually at scale with SQL

↳ www.getroe.ai/post/ai-frontier-data-analyst-super-…

6. Can Data Engineers Do Better Than SQL? - Should We Replace It?

↳ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUFoH...

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

Seattle Data Guy

VP: We need to revamp our data strategy and become AI-Driven. So which tool will help us get there Snowflake or Databricks?



These are the honest conversations happening, and on some level it makes sense.



You don’t want to pick a platform that limits your companies capabilities that you believe will matter over the next five years.



But at the same time, AI does not drive the business…the same way data doesn’t drive the business.



People do.



More specifically, people with clear goals and the ability to execute do.



They have seven data warehouses, twelve pipeline tools, five BI platforms, three catalogs, and a pile of half-finished “strategic initiatives”…



None of which made them succeed, and maybe some that failed because they had too many…



A poor carpenter blames his tools.



Yes, Snowflake and Databricks can likely both support your teams data and AI strategies.



But they will not fix unclear priorities or bad processes.



They won’t fix the fact that your VP is ignoring your metrics and going with their gut anyway.



Now if you're serious about solving actual business problems and not just building a rube Goldberg machine, and if you're headed to the Snowflake Summit, then reach out!



I'd love to say hi!

1 month ago | [YT] | 41

Seattle Data Guy

You've likely seen companies play the never ending migration game…



Snowflake to Databricks to BigQuery back to Snowflake.



Feels a little game of thronesy actually..



But somehow companies still end up with the same problems.



Because your data platform was never the real bottleneck. The main issues you'll often run into are generally around:



- Ownership

- Key person dependency issues

- Data teams not saying no

-And of course, there are some technical reasons, such as cost and features, but I’ll talk about that in a future newsletter short!



Tool choice matters.



It’s not the thing holding you back.



If a team doesn’t have clear ownership, the courage to push back, or resilience beyond a single “hero engineer,” then switching platforms won't magically change that.



Nevertheless, I can assure you, some VP somewhere is currently blaming a tool and proposing yet another migration as the solution

1 month ago | [YT] | 18

Seattle Data Guy

Are you trying to learn more about data engineering and MLOps this week?

Here are 7 great articles and post that can get you up to speed fast on these two topics.

1. Normalization Vs Denormalization - Taking A Step Back And Data Modeling
seattledataguy.substack.com/p/normalization-vs-den…

2. How And Why We Need To Implement Data Quality Now!
seattledataguy.substack.com/p/how-and-why-we-need-…

3. Multimodality and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) by Chip Huyen
huyenchip.com/2023/10/10/multimodal.html

4. How Does League Of Legends Deploy Machine Learning Models Into The Game? by Ian Schweer
seattledataguy.substack.com/p/how-does-league-of-l…

5. The Realities Of Airflow - The Mistakes New Data Engineers Make Using Apache Airflow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkKY6...

6. Growing From Analyst To Data Engineer In 100 Days
seattledataguy.substack.com/p/growing-from-analyst…

7. What does an 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 look like? by Aurimas Griciūnas
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:71779…

Feel free to share some of your favorite posts below as well!

2 years ago | [YT] | 14

Seattle Data Guy

Data engineering isn't easy. It's not just about writing SQL queries and calling it a day.

There is...

- Constantly changing data infrastructure, like Hadoop, Flink, Snowflake and Databricks
- Data pipelines often break not because of there design but because the source systems changes without telling you
- Data governance and compliance - ensuring that data handling meets stringent legal and security standards.
- A crazy amount of orchestration and ETL tools exist
- Mastering query optimization, indexing strategies, and data partitioning to efficiently handle large volumes of data.
- Understanding multiple disciplines and technologies including networking, system architecture, SFTP, etc
- Trying to implement business logic to fix issues from the application

This barely scratches the surface.

I'm not saying this to complain by the way. I love data engineering.

If you'd like to learn more about data engineering and infra you can check out my newsletter here - seattledataguy.substack.com/

2 years ago | [YT] | 89

Seattle Data Guy

I created a guide for data engineers, software engineers, data scientists, analysts, and other technical professionals who want to start consulting.

It has templates for proposals, decks, and emails as well as links to books, YouTube channels, and videos you should look into if you want to start your own consulting company!


I'm accepting PRs so we can crowdsource this effort and have a really comprehensive list of resources!

Like, repost, share to spread the word and make this as awesome as possible for everyone.

github.com/sdg-1/consulting-handbook

2 years ago | [YT] | 149

Seattle Data Guy

How is your new job going?

3 years ago | [YT] | 220

Seattle Data Guy

When someone from the business team says, "I just need data xyz, it shouldn't be hard"

3 years ago | [YT] | 122

Seattle Data Guy

Do you want to start a data consulting company?

I am starting to do lives to help guide you so you don't make the same mistakes I made.

Sign up with the form below to not miss out as I will put it on a calendar invite.

forms.gle/v5tTCovNrJK5izQS8

3 years ago | [YT] | 14

Seattle Data Guy

Thank you all!

We have officially passed 50,000 subscribers!

I will be doing a live later in January. I have a few other events that I need to do first. But we will celebrate!

3 years ago | [YT] | 99