What even is the modern data stack (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Benn Stancil’s weekly Substack on data and technology provides a fascinating perspective on the modern data stack & the industry building it. On this episode, Benn joins Jerod to dissect a few of his essays, discuss opportunities he sees during this slowdown & explain why he thinks maybe we should disband the analytics team.

Leave us a comment

Changelog++ members save 13 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Cronitor – Cronitor helps you understand your cron jobs. Capture the status, metrics, and output from every cron job and background process. Name and organize each job, and ensure the right people are alerted when something goes wrong.
• Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog
• Neon – Fleets of Postgres! Enterprises use Neon to operate hundreds of thousands of Postgres databases: Automated, instant provisioning of the world’s most popular database.

Featuring:

• Benn Stancil – Twitter, LinkedIn
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Benn’s Substack
• It’s time to build
• github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core
• Disband the analytics team
• A gambler’s guide to giving talks
• gilesbowkett/archaeopteryx

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Bab

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Cronitor (00:01:14)

https://cronitor.io

3. Start the show! (00:05:37)

4. Welcoming Benn Stancil (00:05:46)

5. Defining "modern data stack" (00:11:50)

6. It's time to build (00:16:03)

https://benn.substack.com/p/its-time-to-build

7. Opportunity in the slowdown (00:19:51)

8. A. Is there enough money? (00:25:59)

9. B. How do you pick a target? (00:27:57)

10. The hardest parts of Mode (00:30:28)

11. Sponsor: Retool (00:32:26)

https://retool.com/changelog

12. Disband the analytics team (00:36:58)

https://benn.substack.com/p/disband-the-analytics-team

13. Is it all worth it (00:43:59)

14. What's interesting these days (00:46:30)

15. What's next for Benn (00:49:30)

16. Sponsor: Neon (00:51:42)

https://neon.tech/enterprise

17. A gambler's guide to giving talks (00:55:14)

https://benn.substack.com/p/a-gamblers-guide-to-giving-talks

18. Take the risk (01:01:43)

19. Benn with two Ns (01:08:38)

https://benn.substack.com

20. Coming up next (01:10:03)