Episode 18
Your VP Is Doing a Rogue Analysis in Cursor Right Now with Nell Thomas
Nell Thomas has spent two decades in data — from equity research to the DNC to Facebook to leading a 400-person data org at Shopify. She walks Michael and Wes through the modern data stack role by role, gets honest about what AI is and isn't changing about data work, and admits the semantic layer has been her greatest leadership failure. Plus: Sneakers gets the respect it deserves.
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EPISODE NOTES
What does it actually look like to run data infrastructure for millions of merchants while the entire industry reinvents itself in real time? Nell Thomas (VP of Data, Shopify) talks vibe-coded dashboards, political campaign data scarcity, blameless postmortems, and why no one should be locking in on an AI strategy just yet. Recorded live in Times Square.
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What's Inside:
- Mapping the modern data stack, role by role
- Why data quality is still the #1 problem
- What "good scrutiny" looks like on a data team
- Vibe coded dashboards and the trust problem
- Shopify's MCP for their data warehouse
- The throwaway tech problem in political campaigns
- Why the semantic layer is so damn hard
- Sneakers!
HOSTS & GUESTS
Principal Software Engineer, Posit
Michael Chow
Chief Scientist, Posit
Hadley Wickham
Principal Architect, Posit
Wes McKinney
Head of Data, Shopify
Nellwyn Thomas