NYC Data #341: Roku, MTA's Airflow Implementation, 20 years of Y-Combinator, Spectrum, Center for Population Health, Will Larson's Career Advice, Machines of Loving Grace

Plus, How Many Artists Did The Beatles Kill?

Hi friends: Open Data Week starts tomorrow: you should check it out. Also, it’s March Madness, and I don’t have a bracket this year but congrats to my Alma Mater on its first win. Roar Lion roar!

As always, help me keep this space up-to-date: please send me posts, events, and job openings. If you know someone who might enjoy or benefit from this newsletter, please share it with them. [image credit: AP/Ben McKeown]

Good Local Posts

• My big discovery this week was Chris Dalla Riva’s Substack: Chris is a musician and data analyst, and I got sucked in by a post of his that was on Marginal Revolution: ‘How Many Artists Did The Beatles Kill’, about how musical tastes changed in the 60s. Based on his analysis it turns out tastes probably changes more in the 90s. Also Chris reminded me that an album of monks performing Gregorian chants was purchased over a million times in the 90s. It’s true! My dad bought that album! You really had to be there!

• Rahnuma Tarannum and Shubham Mittal of the MTA write in-depth about their Airflow pipelines to automate updating Open Data, which they are justifiably proud of: seems like a solid system. Good summary for people new to orchestration.

• Vicki Boykis wrote a wonderful piece about 20 years of Y-Combinator, and specifically Hacker News. Vicki and I have had somewhat similar career paths, and like her I really learned a lot from visiting Hacker News almost every day for a decade. Really a huge part of my development as someone in a software role.

Upcoming In-Person Events (new listings in bold)

3/21 - 4/6: Corpus: Bodies of Data
3/22 - 3/30: NYC Open Data Week
3/24 - 3/25: DCD>Connect
3/27: MLConf NYC
4/2: Columbia’s Data Science Day 2025
5/15: AI Summit NYC: The Technology Conference For Non-Tech Professionals
5/28 - 5/30: Lifetime Data Science Conference

Open Roles

• Squarespace is hiring for several data roles, including a BI Analyst and Product Insights Analysts.

• NYC’s Center for Population Health Data Science is looking for a Senior Director of Data Transformation.

• Clear Street is seeking a Data Engineer.

• Spectrum Reach is hiring a Principal Data Engineer.

• Roku is looking for a Senior Data Scientist.

• The New York City Criminal Justice Agency is seeking a Lead Data Engineer/Analyst.

Miscellany

• I finally made my way through Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic)’s Machines of Loving Grace. At 14,680 words it’s an investment, but I think getting insights on the positive case for AI from one of the most important people in the space is basically required reading for someone in my role.

• My former colleague Péter (or Eszpee as we all know him) wrote a great piece on how to praise as a manager. I am definitely guilty of being much more sloppy with my positive feedback than my constructive feedback, and this is a good reminder to be thoughtful in how I structure all guidance to my team!

• Will Larson has a great piece on career advice in 2025. This part really resonated with me and is something I’m seeing as well:

  Many people who first entered senior roles in 2010-2020 are finding current roles a lot less fun. There are a number of reasons for this. First, managers were generally evaluated in that period based on their ability to hire, retain and motivate teams. The current market doesn’t value those skills particularly highly, but instead prioritizes a different set of skills: working in the details, pushing pace, and navigating the technology transition to foundational models / LLMs.

  This means many members of the current crop of senior leaders are either worse at the skills they currently need to succeed, or are less motivated by those activities. Either way, they’re having less fun.

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