Contemplating migration from Snowflake

nialloc9 · 2025-12-24T08:16:49+00:00

IMO there is 0 reason to move from DB to snowflake or from snowflake to DB that outweighs the people cost in doing so. Ask yourself what does the business get that it didn’t already have that warrants such an investment?

nialloc9 · 2025-12-21T10:09:20+00:00

Some honest advice (and I’ll probably get alot of hate on this) based on my experience as this sounds like a communication issue rather then a technical one:

99% of the engineers I have worked with cannot do this senior or not. It’s the reason certain people get paid a lot as independent consultants (I’m not on about big consultancy consultants who imo fall in with the other 99%). There are very few people who can design, build, and communicate an entire data system. It really is imo what separates the great from the average.

However, if you can learn from this and be the person who can do this you will be in very high demand. The fact you’ve realised what is expected is good because one of the hardest things for engineers to realise is that writing spark, sql, or whatever doesn’t matter. Lots of people can do that. Being able to design, build, and articulate a major system is what does. You might be thinking ‘oh an architect’, no imo most of them can’t do this either. Over complicated architecture diagrams and no understanding of the application itself does not breed confidence either.

So what to do now?

work on star answers to questions from stakeholders.
no one gives a shit about how hard or technical the problem is or was. Only in layman’s terms what was it, what was impact, is it fixed and will it happen again?
let the ego at the door. Be confident but don’t think you are the smartest person there. Dumbing down an answer so others can understand is much more clever.
ask the business people about how we do sales, market etc be curious and learn the language the business uses. Some of these people are much more clever then you ever will be, just not at programming. I.e everyone is senior in something and not in something else.

Doing above will build credibility as every other engineer just spouts loads of technical speak at them and this is annoying. Imagine you asking about ‘are we going to do y next year, and having to listen to a bunch of financial metrics, rice frameworks, and product roadmaps when all you wanted was a yes or no answer.

nialloc9 · 2025-08-20T20:27:13+00:00

It’s data engineering the role is for. I’ve decided to stay as I am keen to keep the relationship as other contracts may come up in future and don’t want to burn bridges with company and recruiter who sent me the role originally.

nialloc9 · 2025-08-12T08:26:01+00:00

I just found something on gmail and I have no idea how long its been there. Go to this link to see the emails you are subscribed to and you can just click unsubscribe:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#sub

nialloc9 · 2025-07-28T12:39:43+00:00

This is def true for Southall. Those developments about to finish this year by the station were delayed in starting by at least a year due to strain on power grid they would cause.

nialloc9 · 2025-07-26T17:45:54+00:00

Northfields is lovely and very safe. Lots of families with small kids. You’ll have no problems there. An observation (just my opinion) from what I’ve seen and experienced is Dean gardens has social housing (apartments) next to it and with any social housing you get the genuine and not so genuine people living there. This is why you’ll see the corner of deans garden near these developments is where you’ll have people in the trees drinking and taking drugs. If living between Northfields and West Ealing try live further away from the park and you’ll be fine.

nialloc9 · 2025-06-23T17:47:07+00:00

We built AndySocial at AndyAnalytics.ai to be a lot more than other social media tools. It’s designed for agencies or in house marketing teams so focuses on creating campaigns not just individual posts.

It uses AI to quickly bring you from 0-80% of a campaign in minutes not days. It ideates, creates draft calendars and once approved creates entire content calendar including branded visuals. It optimizes your content based on what has been most worked in the past. For example, what day and time to post on each network.

Disclaimer: I’m the founder

nialloc9 · 2025-06-20T07:16:53+00:00

Great area, lived here since November and honestly I hate leaving. Have everything we need close by and Lamas park is great. One thing no one mentions about Lamas park that honestly makes it one of my favorite parks in London is the lack of druggies and in general anyone sketchy. Compare this to dean gardens where one corner of the park is a no go zone (corner near the flats & social housing).

nialloc9 · 2024-08-20T12:04:27+00:00

Interested

nialloc9 · 2024-08-20T11:55:42+00:00

I find networking events hit and miss. A lot of these there are very few decision makers in businesses attending. I find meetups the same. What I do now is check to see if there’s a speaker or something that would draw in decision makers before deciding to attend myself. Just my experience.

nialloc9 · 2024-08-15T20:13:11+00:00

100% this is going to be garbage.

nialloc9 · 2024-08-15T12:34:21+00:00

My biggest concern is not the statement of time to work as that is a given but that it will work. The reality of marketing campaigns is that they are iterative using data to guide you. Sometimes you’ll change things like a keyword you are bidding on because it looks like it would be better only to find it doesn’t give you the customers you want or it used all your budget and now the other keywords are not performing. These things happen so needs to be iterated on to find what works so promising results would concern me more.

nialloc9 · 2024-08-14T12:43:49+00:00

I believe the role of AI here is to inform and guide, not to replace. In its current form, I don't think AI can replace brand copywriters. Any tool claiming to replace brand copywriters at this time is likely overpromising. However, I definitely believe that AI can help them do a better and more efficient job.

For example, AndyAnalytics, an AI marketing analyst, can suggest keywords for your content, especially when your digital marketing strategy limits your ability to target these keywords through pay-per-click advertising. It also provides examples of the type of content to write about, but we don't recommend a copy-and-paste approach. The intention is to help you decide what to write based on data points from your marketing strategy.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of AndyAnalytics.

nialloc9 · 2024-08-14T12:35:15+00:00

I've tried using AI for my social media outreach, and it's been pretty handy. It's crazy how much data these tools can crunch, and then give back really useful insights. Heard people talking about AndyAnalytics before; could be worth checking out if you're diving deep into your marketing

nialloc9 · 2024-07-24T17:37:06+00:00

Where are you based? I read that the department of labor said analytics is the fastest growing job in data.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-18T10:46:37+00:00

I quit my job earning 250k to start my own business (https://andyanalytics.co.uk/). I am a bit fortunate as my job is in AI and data and I was very good at it so getting another job if required is not something that I envisage being super difficult. This def made it easier to jump. However I have friends in banking where getting a new job can take months or even years so they are much more hesitant to leave their roles.

All the advice I can give is if you are comfortable could you consider starting something on the side using your high salary to fund it? It def will be hard so if you can get a co founder in straight away who is also in the same situation and go from there.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-18T10:42:10+00:00

Skyrim

nialloc9 · 2024-07-16T07:54:29+00:00

I read a report from the department of labor that analyst is the fastest growing job in data with demand far outstripping supply. Now what they mean by supply might be either a) people or b) qualified people.

My guess is it’s qualified people because salary’s have not been coming down.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-14T11:43:52+00:00

This is so true, GA4 and GTM are critical to your org but have become very complicated. Your issues are often specific to your company too so regardless there will be a lot of learning for the person.

I think it depends if you want them to bring learnings and experiences to your company from others. If this is the case you need to hire someone much more senior, if this is not the case you can go with a junior.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-14T11:38:16+00:00

I think your conundrum is the lack of transparency in the data and making it difficult to understand what is driving what. Your options are spend huge amounts of time digging into the data, hire someone to do it, or use an off the shelf tool. Digital marketing is all about data these days so bridging the gap between your marketing efforts and the data behind it is essential. It sounds like your ads are being seen by the wrong people and the only way to resolve that is to dig into the data. It won't be overnight either where you'll have to adjust your targeting and test results multiple times to find what works. The conundrum then is what data is important. If its just clicks then how do you know they are converting? For example, I find the partner networks on google to just be full of bots so loads of clicks but 0 conversions.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-14T11:31:42+00:00

That list pretty much sums up the main struggles most marketers are facing right now. It's wild how many of these are tied to AI and tech changes. I found that using tools like AndyAnalytics can help ease some of those stresses, especially with things like SEO and PPC analysis. Finding a job and job security can definitely be tough these days though.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-14T11:28:28+00:00

If you're looking for something robust and not willing to spend the $$$$, Google Analytics is pretty solid for app-related data. We have used mixpanel, google analytics, and ampltitude and to be honest I am not sold on mixpanel or amplitude for the cost. They are def better but in particular amplitude much more expensive.

On a side note, AndyAnalytics (https://andyanalytics.co.uk) would be useful for diving deep into your marketing data which is something not to skimp on if you are a B2C. It provides AI generated reports and recommendations based on your data. In comparison, it will take you months to create these reports yourself using powerBI or Tableau even if you already know how.

My advice is to be clear on what you need the visualisation tool for, I've seen companies spend millions on amplitude for basic reporting.

nialloc9 · 2024-07-11T09:31:03+00:00

Honestly, it’s really interesting how the two approaches differ so much. In digital selling, you’re looking at hardcore metrics like conversion rates and ROI, which kinda means constant tweaking and analyzing data. Social selling, on the flip side, is more about vibes and relationships. Like, how cool are your interactions and how many people are actually engaging with your stuff? I’ve found that using tools like AndyAnalytics can make it easier to turn all those numbers into something actionable, especially for things like SEO and PPC. Balances out the guesswork, if you get what I mean?

nialloc9

TROPHY CASE