Essays by Ry Walker

Essays on AI, startups, and software engineering by Ry Walker, founder of Tembo and Astronomer.

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Feb 3, 2026Going Stats-Free: Why Sometimes the Numbers Don't Matter

Why rigid metrics can slow decisions when data is noisy, and how intuition plus small experiments can guide better calls.

Oct 31, 2017How to Succeed in the Data Revolution

A self-assessment and prescriptions for becoming data-driven: hire a data scientist, establish a warehouse, and track your Daily ETL Tasks.

Oct 24, 2017From Behavioral Analytics to Data Science

How Astronomer evolved from USERcycle analytics to a data engineering platform. The organic growth from clickstream to Apache Airflow to Kafka.

May 9, 2016How to Measure Data-Drivenness

Could Daily ETL Tasks be an effective indicator for how data-driven your organization is? A thought experiment inspired by Airbnb's data infrastructure.

Jan 6, 2016The Growing Data Opportunity

Data silos are a growing problem as SaaS proliferates. How cloud computing, mobile, and machine learning are creating a data revolution.