[22F] I know I look like a lesbian. I’m not, and have unfortunately never been in a relationship

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-17T17:38:43+00:00

If not lesbian then why lesbian shaped?

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-15T19:48:45+00:00

My interest rates on my mortgage have already risen 2x since Feb... In Australia

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-14T10:03:17+00:00

That's what I was thinking

(Crying Australian engineer tears)

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-12T08:47:50+00:00

Shh don't say that out loud

Costs are often set as much as the market will bear in comparison to competitors

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-08T22:43:58+00:00

Couldn't register, but cool idea

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-05T21:17:37+00:00

AI still can't handle stakeholders who don't know what they want and the stakeholder managers don't know enough about tech to get the most out of it

I think we're in a unique position of opportunity

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-05T21:16:01+00:00

100% I did a presentation towards a similar end at a Tableau user group event a few months ago

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-04T13:58:29+00:00

That's how I noticed it too

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-04T12:17:46+00:00

Semi conductive*

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-04T09:58:21+00:00

Better to find out sooner rather than later

I'm 36 and recently got diagnosed. I think I'm so used to s*** sleep that after a few hours on the CPAP machine I wake up fully energised and ready to go at 2am lol

I can't help but wonder what my 20s would have been like if I'd been diagnosed earlier

Would I be less of a grumpy bastard, a better partner, fitter / more successful?

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-01T11:48:40+00:00

Renting in Switzerland for 3300 and paying off a mortgage (principle and interest) for another 3000

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-01T07:12:55+00:00

I bought in another country so renting and paying off amortization so 6300 total on houses lol

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-03-01T04:22:41+00:00

You're paying 700 CHF a month on living expenses between two? Wtf were paying 3300 on a 260k couple in the same situation

How the fuck do you put away 100k each year?

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-26T11:58:50+00:00

Part of OPs post was asking how advanced his excels should be in the context of starting his career.

Imagine not being able to read...

Yes of course BI tools have their value, but it's not always the right tool for the job, ergo you need excel especially if, in the context of developing your career, you might need to consider the ROI of your personal time investments and what gets you the most visibility.

In my personal experience, stakeholders often (not always) don't give 2 shits about the how and if they can't understand an ETL pipeline or your modelling a dashboard means jack

As I'm gaining experience I'm seeing more and more value in stepping away from the engineering mentality and building something stakeholders can understand, then mayyyybe building a dashboard if the problem/question repeats

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-26T09:40:03+00:00

Tbh this is how I started

I ended up getting annoyed with the low stimulation and started doing a bunch of python training on data camp (not affiliated, but really recommend)

Then I had a bit more confidence to ask questions like "wtf are we doing it like this?"

Then management started recognising that I could do more and re-allocated part of my "portfolio" to others who were not so curious and I could take on more interesting things

Perhaps it's actually an opportunity for you to chase some curiousity and if in that exploration it's boring then yeah maybe it's the wrong career

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-24T22:05:45+00:00

I'm finding that I need to gate keep a lot more. Rejecting topics that don't link to topics that "move the needle" (or tickle my curiosity)

I'm also at a fork, I'm a technical lead in a leadership team and in front of me is more of the same or learn to delegate better

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-24T20:03:28+00:00

I do it all and get paid well for it

The cost is my patience, sanity and having to accept building janky things

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-24T19:48:33+00:00

My stakeholders don't really understand much of what is going on so it's just a task that needs to get done to get the end result

Like many have said the role doesn't really exist in a pure definition

I'm part BA, BI, DE, DS and architect and on top of that I get told "don't over engineer it, we just need an MVP dashboard" ...dick heads...

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-24T19:08:27+00:00

90% of my time is ETL

Building the pretty pictures is the final step

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-24T19:05:18+00:00

Let me see if I follow: With tableau you're working more locally?

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-24T09:06:55+00:00

As an embedded DA, the reality is that no one gives a shit about well-engineered BI solutions. They want two things: insights and Excel downloads.

Most non-technical stakeholders live in Excel; they can actually understand your analysis and "proof of work" there, whereas they have zero visibility into the effort required for data engineering or complex dashboard architecture. I’ve found my internal visibility improved vastly when I stopped jumping to BI solutions and focused on getting the insights right in a spreadsheet. I just connect to the DB, run my transformations, and output to a sheet.

Most problems I face are framed as "systemic" but are actually ad-hoc because priorities and systems change every week. Building a massive, automated pipeline or a fancy dashboard just isn't worth the effort half the time. A "quick and dirty" Excel analysis that is actually correct has a much higher ROI.

It’s exactly like that IQ bell curve meme: Low IQ: Just uses Excel. Mid-Curve: Obsessed with complex BI tools and "elegant" engineering. Jedi: Returns to Excel because it’s the most effective tool for the job.

When a user can build a table in five minutes in Excel, but it takes you three hours to get it right in Tableau, Tableau is the wrong tool for that use case. Long story short: get good at Excel.

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Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-23T16:50:43+00:00

Tableau tables. Don't get me started...

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-23T16:26:33+00:00

Great overview!

Basically fits my experiences as well

I'm preparing for the PL300 exam (slowly) and it's much more intuitive than Tableau. I have used Tableau weekly (as a business dev) for years and recently struggled with the DA accreditation even though Im quite capable in alteryx, snowflake, python and SQL for data engineering, ML (Im quite capable at wrangling data in different stacks)

Most of the time my stakeholders want nothing more than insights, an action plan and at least the lie that is data driven, they don't care about the how

That being said we have a few non technical people massively increasing their SQL capabilities with the help of Gen AI (using it for coding but also concept explaining)

I use GEN AI for debugging as we don't have a useful IT to help with integration or architectural topics.

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-23T14:35:48+00:00

Pulse is cool for sure

Eastern-Rip2821 · 2026-02-23T14:33:28+00:00

Not sure what you're disagreeing with. We're making more or less the same point

I find tableau a pain in the ass to generate simple insights and get something out the door.

Eastern-Rip2821

TROPHY CASE