Episode 101: Scaling Data Engineering, Building Data Teams, and Managed Data Stack with Tarush Aggarwal

Show Notes(02:24) Tarush shared his upbringing in India and his decision to study abroad in the US.(03:51) Tarush walked through his college experience studying Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.(06:24) Tarush described the non-existent state of data infrastructure at Salesforce when he joined as the first data engineer in 2012.(11:21) Tarush went over his contribution to the automation and benchmarking frameworks over his tenure at Salesforce.(15:50) Tarush recalled lessons learned from building and managing a data team as a Data Manager at Wyng.(19:54) Tarush explained how a data team can serve other functional units more efficiently.(22:37) Tarush elaborated on his decision to adopt Looker for Wyng's Business Intelligence needs.(26:30) Tarush talked about his decision to join WeWork as their Director of Data Engineering in 2016.(30:39) Tarush went over the origin and evolution of Marquez - WeWork’s first open-source project around data lineage - during his time as the director of WeWork’s Data Platform team.(33:49) Tarush highlighted the main challenges of building an internal data platform.(35:43) Tarush recalled his move to China to help establish WeWork’s Asia operations and focus on the hyper-growing Chinese market.(39:01) Tarush shared the founding story of 5x during his sabbatical in 2020.(42:39) Tarush explained the industry's need for a managed data stack.(45:20) Tarush went over 5x’s process of sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding data engineers who are pre-trained on the modern data stack.(48:37) Tarush talked about finding the right vendors that make up the modern data stack to partner with.(50:06) Tarush walked through his production process to put together a lot of good videos to explain what 5x does and raise awareness about the company.(51:52) Closing segment.Tarush's Contact InfoLinkedInTwitterMedium5x ResourcesWebsite | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram5x Explained in 2 MinutesManaged Data PlatformOn-Demand Data Engineering ServicesIntegrationsMentioned ContentPeopleGeorge Fraser and Taylor Brown (Founders of Fivetran)Prukalpa Sankar (Co-Founder and CEO of Atlan)Frank Slootman (CEO and Chairman of Snowflake)Books