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Sanity Check

About

I write Sanity Check because I keep finding myself in the same conversation.

Ben Wilson, the editor

It usually starts when someone asks what I think about AI and data work. The honest answer is: idk yet, but I have some observations. Then we end up on a thread that goes for an hour, and I leave thinking the conversation deserved to be a piece of writing instead.

So Sanity Check is that. A working data engineer thinking out loud about what is actually happening on the ground. What is hype, what is quietly shipping, what I am betting wrong on, what I had to walk back.

I am not pre-mortem-ing my career or building a thought-leadership brand. I am trying to think carefully about a thing I work in, in public, with people who would rather ask the next sharp question than post the next confident take.

Who this is for

If you are a working data person watching your job get rebuilt around agents, you are in the right place. If you came here for hot takes, you will be bored. The takes I publish are takes I have actually run. The reframes I publish are reframes I can defend with the work.

How I am running this

  1. One issue when the thinking is done. Not on a schedule.
  2. Each piece is one rep, written up. Not a calendar of takes.
  3. Specific examples over abstract claims. If I cannot point at the thing, I do not write the piece.
  4. I will tell you when I am still figuring something out. Idk is a real signal, not a hedge.

Sanity Check is a practitioner journal at Ray Data Co. Made in Tampa Bay.