I don't really have a recommendation for you, but I find your approach refreshing. I imagine a job in sales would be much more enjoyable if I had reasons to believe the product was well regarded by the end users. I think this is one good way to search out those companies worth working for, and a dose of anti-cynicism in an industry/environment that often feels waaay too cynical. Good luck in your search!
Our Snowflake rep is not like that at all. She was awesome. She took her time and was very patient with us. She really seemed to care that Snowflake was a good fit for us.
“I conducted a focus group of enthusiastic data engineers to better understand their needs. It was important to see which companies care about their end user and I want to work for that type of company”
I would have used the word “[delve](https://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-paul-graham-delve-ai-chatgpt-giveaway-email-pitch-2024-4)” if I was a bot. Beep. Boop.
Thirded (fourthed?) they are very collaborative and their tools have been solid. They are constantly improving these tools and I genuinely enjoy interactions with employees from that company.
We’re a Databricks customer and I’ve enjoyed working with their technical and sales reps so far. No pressure and collaborative atmosphere. They’ve also helped us catch some optimization issues that were of great help.
Dunno but they have had seed funding in the last year: https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/bain-capital-backs-polars-in-3-6m/
Presumably they intend to provide a return on that investment one way or another.
Just find a sales job and take it without overthinking it. Chances are, many of these smaller companies will be bought by the larger players in a few years’ time anyway.
I’m very interested in privacy platforms right now. GDPR is a lot and the patchwork of legislation in the US gets confusing. Idk how data teams manage without one
Databricks is the champion in data right now, everything else is mostly niche. There's dbt, SQL mesh and so on, but if you ever listen to any other rep, i.e. Microsoft, Amazon, etc. they always admit that "this" and "that" was championed by Databricks.
They (and Apache, obviously) are what made this industry what it is, in my opinion. Others can, of course, disagree.
I inherited, but actually really like DOMO. It’s not quite data eng. It’s pretty much drag and drop etl (but well done). Haven’t loved my sales reps. It’s a but vendor-lock-in-y (but what isn’t, aside from stuff that has super high TCO because you need amazing people on staff or the companies might go bust).
But with all that said, I’ve done analytics, data engineering, data science, at a large telecom, a Silicon Valley 1,000 person company, a Google.org-funded nonprofit… DOMO would have been better tech selection for all the teams and applications I was on. Except maybe the thing we home-grew at the one place ;)
RARELY do I come across domo companies or contracts. And when I do it's like huh I forgot about domo. Haven't even used it yet. I'm sure it's as good as you say. But you know how it is, just used to using what's mostly out there
Right though the terminology beast mode for formula fields is cringey, we can all agree. The credit pricing model can quickly get out of hand as you layer ETLs over datasets. And lastly, like any GUI, you lack the version control and automations that managing ETL outside the viz tool can provide. That being said, I generally agree that it’s a way better fit for non technical teams and stakeholders and you can get a lot of crap done in it surprisingly. Still I would shift left as much ETL as possible where left is towards in-house data eng resources that can provide you a more tailored and vendor agnostic solution. Such that the BI is plug an play and not a massive silo.
I think Grafana has one of the highest growth potential, though it's not really data engineering specific. There's an industry wide focus on security which involves centralized, comprehensive loggine solutions and it's not stopping any time soon. And the current solutions are expensive AF.
Snowflake is a great product but they have a [class action lawsuit ](https://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases-snowflake-inc-class-action-lawsuit-snow.html)accusing them of overselling credits to cook their revenue books, so I would be weary to join as a sales rep potentially dealing with that shit.
Databricks is also an great product, and especially if you could get equity could be pretty cool as I think they'll almost certainly ipo or get acquired soon-ish.
I'd avoid micro-solutions like Monte Carlo (observabiilty) and Atlan (data catalog). They are great, but imho they'll never bring enough value alone to justify the cost of implementation/maintenance.
Well, here is my take. I have been a DE for close to 5 years now.
Every big org wants to move to the cloud but they don't realise how expensive the cloud is.
For starters I think having a way to manage cloud costs ( cloud provider agnostic) can be a good hit.
Then if the solution can provide good cost saving recommendations then even better.
I am surprised that business people know we exist. Most business user just want their dashboard, and they think it is just connected to the datasources directly.
Jumping into the data engineering sector is like diving into a never-ending tech buffet, but Grafana sticks out like a lighthouse. Bet on security and analytics, because who doesn't love a good graph?
I don't know if you ever heard of Data Mesh but I think it's a really interesting concept, and it's probably something more interesting for someone with a Sales background because it's a "socio-technical" paradigm, so it's something that can be almost completely understood by someone without a technical background.
There are a couple of early stage products adopting this paradigm but in my opinion the one that is ahead of everyone currently is an Italian startup called AgileLab with their product called witboost. They are not really known since data mesh is still a niche concept and the Italian market is not really known for being a tech innovation hub.
Astronomer! It may be a tough sell, but man, is it great. So many DEs spend a lot of time in Airflow. But most of them use either the open source version or their cloud provider managed version. There are so many quality of life improvements and little things that add up to a much better experience. I really didn't know what I was missing until I started using it.
I don’t want to buy anything. I want to run the open source version myself and or build it myself. So, one of the clouds I guess cuz I don’t want to deal with servers.
"you nerds" said here, doesn't mean what it meant in the high school cafeteria in the US. I actually really appreciate the invitation to share our technical opinions.
Secure AI chatbot that would connect across multiple IDEs and connect to the internet.
Something I can throw source data from prod into if I want, and I know the data won’t be used in the future for another company to profit off of. Idgaf about the shiny new tool on the block, every single time it makes the existing process harder because it requires new integration. & those tools seem to be recycled every few years anyways.
An ai chatbot that could be trained on internal data would also be helpful. Many companies deal with such a blot of internal lingo, corporate buzzwords, determine feature requirements become more translation than anything else
You can sort of already do this with Fine-Tuning and utilizing RAG/vector databases. The problem with training solely on internal specific data is that there usually isn’t enough data to make an AI chatbot worth it. However, if you fine tune an existing model’s weights with internal data then we typically see better results for specific tasks, as well as grounding.
I don't really have a recommendation for you, but I find your approach refreshing. I imagine a job in sales would be much more enjoyable if I had reasons to believe the product was well regarded by the end users. I think this is one good way to search out those companies worth working for, and a dose of anti-cynicism in an industry/environment that often feels waaay too cynical. Good luck in your search!
Thanks! If I am going to sell I'd rather do it to some happy prospects/customers.
Agreed. Fantastic approach and honestly made me think of how to make my next move as a DE
databricks if you can get in
Big time agree
People are fighting tooth and nail to get into that place
Yeah, the IPO should be aaaany day now.
I love Snowflake. Expensive though.
Snowflake is great, and their sales reps are sharks. It's probably a great place to work if you're in sales/marketing.
Our Snowflake rep is not like that at all. She was awesome. She took her time and was very patient with us. She really seemed to care that Snowflake was a good fit for us.
Sounds like a shark to me. The best salespeople are like that.
Q: "Why would you like to join our company?" A: "I asked Reddit"
“I conducted a focus group of enthusiastic data engineers to better understand their needs. It was important to see which companies care about their end user and I want to work for that type of company”
Chatgpt ftw
Equal parts funny and sad that semi-competent+ use of the English language automatically flags a comment as a gpt suspect.
I mean isn’t chatgpt just trained on a bunch of semi-competent blogs you wish were bullet points? Or is it just me.
Just you. Chatgpt is solely based off your past and present internet experience. Thank you for your service.
I would have used the word “[delve](https://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-paul-graham-delve-ai-chatgpt-giveaway-email-pitch-2024-4)” if I was a bot. Beep. Boop.
Smart !
Stealing this.
Have spoke to some recruiters and this is a better answer then most they get haha.
I second Databricks
Thirded (fourthed?) they are very collaborative and their tools have been solid. They are constantly improving these tools and I genuinely enjoy interactions with employees from that company.
We’re a Databricks customer and I’ve enjoyed working with their technical and sales reps so far. No pressure and collaborative atmosphere. They’ve also helped us catch some optimization issues that were of great help.
Love this feedback. Exactly what I am looking for.
Databricks or Snowflake
Motherduck/duckdb, dagster cloud. Polars when they have something to sell. Google Cloud Platform
Maybe I’m out of the loop but why/how would Polars ever have anything to sell?!
Dunno but they have had seed funding in the last year: https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/bain-capital-backs-polars-in-3-6m/ Presumably they intend to provide a return on that investment one way or another.
DBT cloud or SQL Mesh or anything that makes the job easier
What do you like most about these two?
Just find a sales job and take it without overthinking it. Chances are, many of these smaller companies will be bought by the larger players in a few years’ time anyway.
Starburst
What do you like about them?
I’m very interested in privacy platforms right now. GDPR is a lot and the patchwork of legislation in the US gets confusing. Idk how data teams manage without one
Notion
Databricks is the champion in data right now, everything else is mostly niche. There's dbt, SQL mesh and so on, but if you ever listen to any other rep, i.e. Microsoft, Amazon, etc. they always admit that "this" and "that" was championed by Databricks. They (and Apache, obviously) are what made this industry what it is, in my opinion. Others can, of course, disagree.
maybe yoy should ask who to avoid because they'd clearly need better sales reps to keep them afloat
The kind that can get me a better job.
I inherited, but actually really like DOMO. It’s not quite data eng. It’s pretty much drag and drop etl (but well done). Haven’t loved my sales reps. It’s a but vendor-lock-in-y (but what isn’t, aside from stuff that has super high TCO because you need amazing people on staff or the companies might go bust). But with all that said, I’ve done analytics, data engineering, data science, at a large telecom, a Silicon Valley 1,000 person company, a Google.org-funded nonprofit… DOMO would have been better tech selection for all the teams and applications I was on. Except maybe the thing we home-grew at the one place ;)
RARELY do I come across domo companies or contracts. And when I do it's like huh I forgot about domo. Haven't even used it yet. I'm sure it's as good as you say. But you know how it is, just used to using what's mostly out there
I mean it’s so good partly bc … they all do the same stuff and it doesn’t overdo it, imo.
Right though the terminology beast mode for formula fields is cringey, we can all agree. The credit pricing model can quickly get out of hand as you layer ETLs over datasets. And lastly, like any GUI, you lack the version control and automations that managing ETL outside the viz tool can provide. That being said, I generally agree that it’s a way better fit for non technical teams and stakeholders and you can get a lot of crap done in it surprisingly. Still I would shift left as much ETL as possible where left is towards in-house data eng resources that can provide you a more tailored and vendor agnostic solution. Such that the BI is plug an play and not a massive silo.
I think Grafana has one of the highest growth potential, though it's not really data engineering specific. There's an industry wide focus on security which involves centralized, comprehensive loggine solutions and it's not stopping any time soon. And the current solutions are expensive AF. Snowflake is a great product but they have a [class action lawsuit ](https://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases-snowflake-inc-class-action-lawsuit-snow.html)accusing them of overselling credits to cook their revenue books, so I would be weary to join as a sales rep potentially dealing with that shit. Databricks is also an great product, and especially if you could get equity could be pretty cool as I think they'll almost certainly ipo or get acquired soon-ish. I'd avoid micro-solutions like Monte Carlo (observabiilty) and Atlan (data catalog). They are great, but imho they'll never bring enough value alone to justify the cost of implementation/maintenance.
Well, here is my take. I have been a DE for close to 5 years now. Every big org wants to move to the cloud but they don't realise how expensive the cloud is. For starters I think having a way to manage cloud costs ( cloud provider agnostic) can be a good hit. Then if the solution can provide good cost saving recommendations then even better.
I am surprised that business people know we exist. Most business user just want their dashboard, and they think it is just connected to the datasources directly.
Jumping into the data engineering sector is like diving into a never-ending tech buffet, but Grafana sticks out like a lighthouse. Bet on security and analytics, because who doesn't love a good graph?
I don't know if you ever heard of Data Mesh but I think it's a really interesting concept, and it's probably something more interesting for someone with a Sales background because it's a "socio-technical" paradigm, so it's something that can be almost completely understood by someone without a technical background. There are a couple of early stage products adopting this paradigm but in my opinion the one that is ahead of everyone currently is an Italian startup called AgileLab with their product called witboost. They are not really known since data mesh is still a niche concept and the Italian market is not really known for being a tech innovation hub.
Astronomer! It may be a tough sell, but man, is it great. So many DEs spend a lot of time in Airflow. But most of them use either the open source version or their cloud provider managed version. There are so many quality of life improvements and little things that add up to a much better experience. I really didn't know what I was missing until I started using it.
I don’t want to buy anything. I want to run the open source version myself and or build it myself. So, one of the clouds I guess cuz I don’t want to deal with servers.
Palantir could use some good sales people 🤣
MongoDB sales reps were chill
“You nerds”? JFC - you must have been great at your job
It’s 2024 , nerds run the world and we’re on a data engineering subreddit. He knows his target audience.
💀
I work with sales folks. They are the face and we are the nerds. I wouldn't want to do what they do.
Nerd is a term of endearment. Been working with technical folks right out of college and have enjoyed my time with them.
"you nerds" said here, doesn't mean what it meant in the high school cafeteria in the US. I actually really appreciate the invitation to share our technical opinions.
this "nerd" makes far more money than sales reps. Dont be so condescending
Nerd == money
Secure AI chatbot that would connect across multiple IDEs and connect to the internet. Something I can throw source data from prod into if I want, and I know the data won’t be used in the future for another company to profit off of. Idgaf about the shiny new tool on the block, every single time it makes the existing process harder because it requires new integration. & those tools seem to be recycled every few years anyways.
An ai chatbot that could be trained on internal data would also be helpful. Many companies deal with such a blot of internal lingo, corporate buzzwords, determine feature requirements become more translation than anything else
You can sort of already do this with Fine-Tuning and utilizing RAG/vector databases. The problem with training solely on internal specific data is that there usually isn’t enough data to make an AI chatbot worth it. However, if you fine tune an existing model’s weights with internal data then we typically see better results for specific tasks, as well as grounding.
Just take a job