The Sequel Show

Lessons in building and scaling data teams w/ Erik Bernhardsson, former CTO of Better.com

Episode Summary

<p>In today’s episode, I talk with Erik Bernhardsson, the former CTO at Better.com and early engineering manager at Spotify. We talked about how to build recommendation systems (including whether you should build them at all). We also covered some best practices on building and scaling data teams, what the essence of music is, and whether data teams should be thought of as an engineering discipline (and what programming languages we should embrace in the data world). We also took a deep dive into how to manage and govern the data team and how to measure the impact. </p> <p>Also - if you're looking to stay up to date on the best and most colorful data industry commentary between episodes, check out our new newsletter: <a href="https://blog.getcensus.com/#subscribe" target="_blank"><em>The Operational Analytics Diggest</em></a><em>. </em></p> <p><strong>Resources:</strong></p> <p>Erik’s Website: <a href="https://erikbern.com/" target="_blank"><u>https://erikbern.com/</u></a></p> <p>Find Erik on Twitter:<a href="https://twitter.com/bernhardsson" target="_blank"><u>https://twitter.com/bernhardsson</u></a></p> <p>Find Erik on Linkedin: <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/erikbern/" target="_blank"><u>https://linkedin.com/in/erikbern/</u></a></p> <p>Erik’s Github: <a href="https://github.com/erikbern" target="_blank"><u>https://github.com/erikbern</u></a></p> <p>Music by the talented Joe Stevens: <a href="https://www.joestevenssound.com/" target="_blank"><u>https://www.joestevenssound.com/</u></a></p>

Episode Notes

In today’s episode, I talk with Erik Bernhardsson, the former CTO at Better.com and early engineering manager at Spotify. We talked about how to build recommendation systems (including whether you should build them at all). We also covered some best practices on building and scaling data teams, what the essence of music is, and whether data teams should be thought of as an engineering discipline (and what programming languages we should embrace in the data world). We also took a deep dive into how to manage and govern the data team and how to measure the impact.

Also - if you're looking to stay up to date on the best and most colorful data industry commentary between episodes, check out our new newsletter: The Operational Analytics Diggest.

Resources:

Erik’s Website: https://erikbern.com/

Find Erik on Twitter:https://twitter.com/bernhardsson

Find Erik on Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/erikbern/

Erik’s Github: https://github.com/erikbern

Music by the talented Joe Stevens: https://www.joestevenssound.com/