Ginger Grant provides consulting services in advanced analytic solutions, including machine learning, data warehousing, ETL, reporting and cube development, Power BI, Excel automation, data visualization, and training. Ginger works with data solutions across a wide range of industries, including insurance, education, health care, finance, and transportation. She is a prolific blogger at Desert Isle SQL ( www.desertislesql.com ), and a frequent speaker at conferences and events worldwide addressing current developments and future trends in data.

She is proficient in creating solutions using the entire Microsoft Data Stack, which includes SQL Server, T-SQL, SSIS, SSAS, Power BI, and Azure data cloud components, including Data Factory, Data Lake, Data Lake Analytics, IoT, Event Hub, Machine Learning, and Machine Learning Workbench. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer, she offers training on technical topics. Microsoft has recognized her technical contributions by awarding her the MVP in Data Platform. She can be reached on twitter at @DesertIsleSQL.

Mala Mahadevan: Describe your journey to the data profession.

Ginger Grant : I started working as a .Net NET website developer. I did more of the back-end work, such as, hooking up the screen to the database, or whatever we were using, and calling APIs [application programming interfaces] to pass the data. The people sitting next to me were graphic artists and UI [user interface] designers. They were really, really good at the front end. There were three of them, and they all drew phenomenally. Whenever they showed me their work from their sketchpads, I was always terribly impressed.

Dave, who had been tasked with designing the webpage, showed me one of the most amazing sites that I have ever seen. He arranged all the photos in a pinwheel, and when you clicked on a picture, it spun out to a full-sized view of the picture with a full description of it. It looked great. I said, “That’s absolutely phenomenal,” and asked, “Whatever gave you that idea?” He said, “Well, I was looking at the trash blowing around, and this came to mind.” I thought at that point that I was going to do back end because there was just no way I could up come with such beautiful front-end stuff, as I didn’t have those amazing artist skills.

Mala: Wow, interesting.

Ginger: At the time we were hooking up to an Oracle database, then I changed jobs and was more involved into taking data from a website into the data components, and then from there, writing stored procedures, doing database work, and from there it was pretty much all data.

Mala: Describe a few things you wish you knew when you started your career that you know now, and you recommend to people who are new.

Ginger: When I first started in technology, I thought I was going to be writing this kind of code, and that was it in perpetuity. What I do now is seek out something that I find really interesting, and learn about it. It’s so easy to learn now all there is about technology topics. One thing that I would like to tell people is that there is no reason to believe that you will be doing what you’re doing now forever. If you are a dev and you want to become a DBA [database administrator], that can definitely happen. You’re going to have to put in the effort on your part to make it happen, but you’re not stuck. I didn’t think that when I first started out. I thought I was stuck.

Mala: Yeah. When you say “stuck,” do you mean doing the same thing day after day?

Ginger: Yeah, I felt like I was always going to be doing a set of tasks at a particular kind of job. I didn’t see that I would be working at any other kind of job.

If you want to get into another aspect of the field, you certainly can. There’s nothing stopping you but you. Just because you don’t see how you can work toward the job that you want, doesn’t mean you can’t get that job.

Mala: What is a typical day in your life as a professional?

Ginger: That’s kind of an interesting question because as of December of last year, I’ve gone independent. I kind of split my day between doing work for clients and various marketing tasks.

I lump a lot of things into the marketing category, including working on my website, creating presentations, writing SOWs [statement of work], and going to events. I look at what is due when, how many hours that I have, organize the work accordingly, and figure out how I am going to make it happen. I’ve been working from home now for about four years, and I really enjoy it. I have kept the same routine and work every day, if I have client work or not, as there are always things I think I should be doing. I keep very regular hours, and some days they are regularly very long. But every so often, I go out to lunch and stay gone because I feel like it. I don’t work that much on the weekend and try not to work very late at night.

Mala: I’m jealous.

Ginger: I generally start at seven, and I end at five.

Mala: Describe a BI professional. Expand their skills and embrace the new world of analytics.

Ginger: One thing that’s great about today is there are so many people who are providing information at very little to no cost, which just means that you have to figure out the time you are going to take to learn, and how you’re going to make that work for you.

Just as an example, yesterday I learned that there was a conference in Austin on data and covering a lot of data science topics. A number of people who attended have posted their slide decks on SlideShare. That’s one place you can look at the content from a number of different presentations on events you did not even attend. There is also a lot of content on YouTube, which is kind of an interesting animal because much of the stuff that’s out there is awful, but all of the past sessions for virtual chapters are generally out there. If you want to look, I think that those are generally quite good and very specific to the kind of work that we do. Finding the old recordings of somebody who’s very well known in the industry talking about an aspect that you might be specifically interested in is a great way to learn.

One technology topic that I am spending lots of time on is new fields of data science. There are a number of courses out there that cover it, and I am working on mastering everything. The biggest problem I have is figuring out how to do everything. You need to figure out when you’re going to study new stuff and how much time you’re going to do it and make that happen. That’s up to every individual to figure out how they’re going to make that happen. I have a mentee, and I am always telling him, “Tell me what your plan is. I want to see how you’re going to do this.” Don’t say, “I want. I want.” That’s just a dream. Make it a reality by developing a plan.

At the same time, it is important to come up with a plan that’s realistic. Write the plan down, and then over time come up with something that you can actually achieve. There was a point in my life that I had a lot of personal issues, and I was kind of depressed. One thing that I found to be really rewarding is to set goals that I could actually hit, which I found very encouraging. Goals may be a certification, or completing a class. If you set goals that you can’t possibly meet because they’re unrealistic, then you’re just beating yourself up more because it’s something else that you didn’t do. Plans really need to be positive.

Let’s say that you want to be certified in a month, and life intervience and instead it takes three months. You can at least say that you achieved your goal. Maybe the time’s wrong. Maybe you set it up to complete a class on Python, or initially you thought, “Yeah, I’ll do it in a week,” and you got busy, and you do it in three weeks. That doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. It means you completed your goal. Use your plans as a method of positive reinforcement to get to where you want to go.

Mala: What are some of the technologies that you’re watching as interesting for the future, starting as a SQL Server person.

Ginger: Starting as SQL Server person, there have been just so many changes. The integration SQL Server with other languages, such as R and Python, in data science is a big thing. There is currently a big discussion in the industry on what is the best language. I think, over time, given a lot of things that are happening in the industry, that’s going to be Python, and there are going to be people doing R in the future. I am personally working toward that being the case. I’m betting my time and my resources on that being true.

The other thing that I’m seeing in the industry is the evolution of big data. It used to be that everybody was dumping data into data lakes and keeping everything to go back and analyze. Going back, it’s kind of like documentation—everybody thinks it is a good idea, but nobody gets to the point where they actually write it. What happens is you store your data, and later on, you can’t figure out what you have. You’ve got comma-delimited records, and you don’t know what they mean.

I see there is now more of a goal to plan how you are going to store huge amounts of data. I think that Cosmos DB —storing data in a modified JSON format—is going to be a large part of that in the future. It provides structure so that your data is not ever really stored in a pile that’s going to be documented in a data catalog in some other place away from the data itself. I think that the data is going to be stored in a way that it can be easily analyzed, because if you don’t, the amount of time it takes to perform any kind of analysis doubles or triples, or may not even be possible depending upon what you’re looking at. That’s kind of a big move I see in the industry—how data is stored in very big data components.

Mala: What are some of the ideas that you recommend a DBA or a BI person can present to management as far as analytics, big data, and buzzwords like that? What is practical and doable?

Ginger: What I think is doable, to start with, is initially install SQL Server 2017, even if it’s just the developer edition. It’s free. Install that on your computer somewhere. Ideally, you’d be able to get a dev version of SQL Server 2017 on a server at your company. That way you are building your skills toward the day when management decides to update. Start learning the best practices and how to use the new features. I’m seeing companies that are not looking at anything new, and they’re painting themselves in a corner with some of the things that they are deciding to do. You do need to have some knowledge about what you’re doing when you’re starting in this kind of development.

One thing that DBAs need to understand with the Machine Learning Services in SQL Server is the impact of how code is going to run, where it’s going to run, and how to monitor it. I’ve written a couple of blog posts on that topic. Another big area of concern is the ongoing issue of maintaining R or Python libraries that are used in the code.

In terms of management, if you want to do some kind of complex analysis of data, look at learning it yourself to gain some level of mastery. Then I would propose that analyzing some of your company data to find insights, and present those insights to management. Ask if they think it would be okay. It can be simple things, like the geographic distribution of all customers in relation to the amount of money that they spend with us. Something like that.

I think it is important is to get management buy off on doing advanced analysis. This also provides the ability to show that you can do this kind of analysis, and talk your way into doing more of it. DBAs need to know how to manage. What am I doing here? Do I need to have a lot of memory? Is this R code going to crash my server? It’s not, by the way. What are the settings? What user permissions do I need? These are the thing that you need to know prior to doing any kinds of implementation, especially when it comes to maintenance. How are you going to maintain it?

As a DBA, how do you know whether or not people are exaggerating regarding the performance of their code? What things can you look for? Even if you don’t know anything about the code, there are some simple things that you can look for. Perhaps an R code, for example, to see if the code will execute if it runs out of memory. There are some things you can do with R code to make that happen, and if you don’t, it will run out of memory. As a DBA, you may not know much about R code, but you can find out.

Mala: Good thought. A lot of people struggle with whether they need to know a lot of math to get into analytics. What’s your opinion on that? Is a good knowledge of math necessary, or are there things you can do to help with the process even without being much of a math person?

Ginger: Let me cut to the chase. Eventually, you are going to have to understand statistics. You are not doing math problems. I know a lot of people shy away from it because they didn’t find differential equations that exciting in college or in high school. The most important thing, I think, is to look at what you’re trying to do, and then look at the math that’s required to understand it. A lot of times, it’s understanding probability—the way that it’s doing the analysis, but I don’t think you need to understand a lot about math. You do need to understand a lot about statistics. I think a lot of it can be gained over time.

However, I will say that there is a real bias in the industry right now for people who have advanced science degrees, but I think that is perpetuated by the people who have these advanced degrees. Over time, I don’t see that holding up.

Mala: So true. Don’t you think that’s going to last for a long time?

Ginger: No, because people want the analysis, and there aren’t enough people with degrees to do it.

Mala: Correct. One of the much sought-after skills now is data visualization. What has been your approach to this, and how do you recommend learning more about it?

Ginger: I’m not a particularly visual person. What that means is I consider myself to be a person who needs to rely on experts when it comes to things like picking appropriate colors. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a number of different websites to help you pick out various colors.

Visualization is really a science. It’s not I can draw, I can’t draw. It’s understanding the way that the eye and the brain work, and how those components can tell a story very quickly. I know that Meagan Longoria has done a number of really interesting series on her blog that talks about this—datasavvy.me. A lot of it comes down to how your eye works and how people learn. You don’t need to be a visual person to understand that. I think it’s really important to understand and implement the rules so that you can provide information in a way that people can readily understand it, but I also think that you need to figure out what you’ve got and what you can do with it before you get all hung up on how you’re going to lay things out.

Sometimes you don’t have the data needed to tell the story that you want to tell. Before you get head deep into data visualization, it’s very important to have a really good understanding of what’s possible to provide so you’re not disappointed when you can’t do it.

Mala: What’s your experience with agile and business intelligence?

Ginger: I’ve worked on a number of projects with agile. I think that agile is important from a management perspective to determine how a project is going. It also holds people accountable in that somebody’s going to ask them tomorrow, “What did you do today?”, which helps the procrastinator stay on task. In that aspect, I think it’s good. In terms of how it to database administration, I don’t know that it’s necessarily a good fit. I think that agile is really good when it comes to knowing the goal and then asking, “How are we going to get there? What’s going on?” If those are the questions that you’re looking to answer, I think that agile is really helpful.

If you’re looking to answer how you can modify something to perform the best way possible, then that’s not really something that lends itself to agile because you don’t necessarily know how long it’s going to take to come up with those types of answers. Maybe agile is good for reporting and tracking progress, but not necessarily for having a solution in three weeks.

Mala: I completely agree with that. What is the role that documentation plays in your job, and how important do you think that is?

Ginger: Documentation is really important to help people understand what they are paying for. It’s kind of a boundary setter. If you are looking to do a project for somebody, it’s very important to have a document that tells them, “This is what I’m going to do.” You draw a box around it. “I’m not going to fix everything on the planet. I’m going to do this small set of things.” This is a big deal in Power BI because, generally speaking, there’s a lot of things you can do, but when engagements last three weeks or four weeks, you’re not going to do everything. Describe exactly what you’re going to do. That’s what the documentation is good for.

Documentation is also very helpful in presenting your results. You always want to be able to create something that somebody else can maintain. Creating something that is meaningful to you and to you only is a giant waste of everybody’s time. Clear documentation needs to include what it really does when you’re done. If you are doing maintenance, it’s important to let other people in on whatever it is that you’re doing so that if you want to go on vacation, there’s documentation that’s available so that other people know what you did. Let’s face it, at some point in time, you’re going to want to leave wherever it is that you are. Documentation needs to be available so people don’t curse you when you’re gone because they have no idea what you did.

Mala: So true. Describe the importance of communication in this kind of work.

Ginger: Communication is really important. A lot of times with remote work, people don’t know what you’re doing. They figure that you’re just sitting around Starbucks drinking coffee all day, but you need to counter that thought by communicating so that there’s a good understanding of what’s going on. It also provides a level of comfort to people. For example, if somebody assigns you a task and says, “Oh, that’s only going to take a day.” You agree initially, but upon reviewing the task, you look at it and you’re like, “No way. This is a mess. This is a nightmare. There’s no way I can get this finished in a day. It’s ridiculous.”

This is what communication is. Not only do you need to know when to raise flags and say, “What’s the current state? I have found something. I can’t do what I said I was going to do, and this is why.” I know nobody wants to tell somebody, “I can’t do it,” or, “I was wrong,” or that kind of thing, but the sooner you can elevate the problem and provide that kind of communication, the better.

For example, I had a situation where I didn’t want to say that I couldn’t do a job. I spent a good day on something that was a lot bigger than what I thought. The next day when I met with the client and I described the problem. The client said, “Well, if that’s the case, then we won’t even do that at all. We’ll do X-Y-Z instead.” It’s really important to communicate what you’re doing. Use communication tools like Skype for Business. Nothing drives me bananas more than people who always put their Skype set to say that they’re busy.

Mala: So true.

Ginger: Telling the world you are busy all the time means you are never busy. When everything is a number-one priority, then nothing is. If you are always so busy, then you’re basically saying, “I don’t want to talk to you.” That’s all sorts of the wrong signals. Be able to block off time when you’re busy. I know people who only answer email at certain times of the day, and that’s fine. Just communicate what your status is so that people feel comfortable approaching you at appropriate intervals. If you want to set those yourself, fine, but whatever you do, don’t just say you’re always busy and only be available when someone schedules a meeting with you. That’s the kind of communication that people need to avoid as well.

Mala: What are your favorite books, blogs, and other means of learning?

Ginger: I’m one of those people that look at various blogs when there’s a topic that I’m interested in at the time. I like Data Science Central, SQLServerCentral. In terms of online training, I like DataCamp the best because the quality, I think, is quite good. In terms of books, I don’t have any right now that I’m that crazy about. I’m kind of scattershot. I keep a list of the stuff that I look at frequently, and I put it in Excel, so wherever I’m at, I can take a look. I mentioned Meagan’s blog, which I like. She’s got a lot of really good data visualization stuff. Mico Yuk’s got a lot of really good data visualization.

Mala: Oh, yeah. I love Mico’s stuff.

Ginger: I do a lot of with Power BI. Of course, staying up-to-date on Power BI blogs is important. The Guy in a Cube videos, naturally. Jonathon Stewart has got some good content out there on data visualization as well.

Mala: What are your recommended ways of stress management and developing healthy work/life balance? I thought you said you sign off in the evening at a certain hour.

Ginger: Shutting my computer is a big deal. When the computer’s shut, I’m done. I feel you need to draw boundaries as to when you will and won’t do something. I’m into cooking, which I enjoy doing at the end of the day. I find it relaxing. I also find working out and yoga to be good ways to relax. When I get very stressed, I meditate. This is awful because I should do this all the time, as I find it helpful, but I don’t.

If things aren’t that stressful, I tend not to meditate and keep it as a last resort. I really think that working out is helpful for clearing out your brain.

Mala: Yes. I completely agree. Describe your style of interviewing a data professional. What do you look for?

Ginger: It’s funny because I was recently at a Meetup where I was talking to a whole bunch of people who just graduated from coding boot camps. They were talking about their interview process, and I thought about that and what I would ask. Later on, they were talking about their computers. Based on what they said about their computers, I probably wouldn’t have hired any of them. The reason why is they coded for a living and didn’t know anything about the computers they were using. One girl said that she spent two months’ rent on her computer, and she couldn’t tell me how much memory was in it. I don’t think that shows you are very involved in technology or are interested in learning things if you don’t think how much memory your computer has. It is something you should know.

I had somebody tell me that you can learn technical skills, but you can’t learn passion, which is what you should interview for. If you can’t even bother to know how much memory you’ve got on your machine, I question your desire to really be engaged in the industry. If I was to interview somebody, and they couldn’t come up with any blogs on the related topic off the top of their head, I probably would end the interview right there.

Other questions are nothing that you can Google. “What are the processes that you would use to develop a database? And tell me why.” I’m only after the why, and I want to know what you learned in the past year and how you did it because I’m looking for people who will grow. I’m not interested in people who just want to be there, or who are just there because they’ve always done it.

Mala: What are your contributions to the community, and why do you recommend people be involved with the community?

Ginger: When you’re working from home, it can seem remote. That’s one of the great things about being involved in the community. It’s important, not only for just casual conversation, but at some point in time, you’re going to need help. Everybody does, and to develop a community where you can ask for it is valuable. I like to think that I am somebody who can help others. Recently, I read an article about how you really don’t learn something unless you can explain it, and being involved in the community is how you can make that happen. I think that’s another really valuable aspect as well.

I have heard that public speaking ranks among the things that people find the most terrifying, which I find kind of funny. A lack of good material scares me, but the public speaking part doesn’t. I think that once you’ve practiced being a public speaker, you are a much better on-the-spot thinker.

For example, if you’ve recently given a talk on a topic and somebody asks you a question about it, you need to provide an answer right away. You figure out how to answer the question. After you’ve done this for a while, when you’re meeting with your manager and he asks you to describe something, you are ready to provide a quick answer in the same way that you would do for a talk. There are things you learn about public speaking that can be implemented in your daily life all the time.

Mala: That is so valuable. It makes it easy to think on the spot.

Ginger: Perhaps somebody’s going to ask you, “Hey, what do you think about this project?” If you’re practiced in some public speaking methods, first you tell people what you’re going to talk about, and then you talk about it, and then you repeat it. If you do that in regular conversation, it improves your communication skills no matter who you’re speaking with.

Mala: Absolutely true.

Ginger: It’s fun. Let’s face it.

Mala: Describe your experience with cloud adoption and data warehouses.

Ginger: What is interesting about the cloud, is that there are a lot of people who are all in with cloud, and there are a lot of people who are really reticent to be involved in it. A lot of times, people are looking at the cost model in different ways. For example, I worked at a company where they decided to put up their own duplicate data center. This involved buying a building, and refurbishing the building, and adding diesel generators. Oh, by the way, if you’ve ever been in a building where they have diesel generators, you need to run the gas clean out of them about every three months.

Mala: Oh, my. Okay.

Ginger: This process is very loud and somewhat noisy. Developing all of the infrastructure necessary to ensure that the data can be up twenty-four hours a day is a big investment. You need two data centers, geographically spaced with duplicate power. You do have to think about that when you’re looking at the cost of the cloud. A lot of people don’t necessarily look at that.

The other thing that I’ve found when people migrate to cloud is they determine that, “Well shoot, if I’ve got all of this in the cloud, then I don’t need people anymore.” I talked to a DBA recently who was the DBA for nine hundred databases because his company figured if they’re in the cloud, then they didn’t need support anymore.

Mala: Wow.

Ginger: I worked for a defense contractor recently, and their whole concept of the cloud was, “No, we’re not going to do it.” I also have researched a little bit into some of the white hat hacking, and let’s just say I was interested in the methods used for penetrating other instances on the cloud that are touted to be quite secure. The cost model has to be in a way that people are willing to adopt it.

Mala: I completely agree. Have you had cases where people adopted it without due consideration, and then they want to back off later and such?

Ginger: What I see happening is there is a new manager, and the new manager is like, “This is costing us how much per month? This is crazy.” I’ve never been involved in rolling back, but I have heard of places that chose to do that. I’ve also seen where they determined that they were not going to migrate other applications to the cloud because they were oversold when it came to how much cooler, better, cheaper, and more wonderful it would be, and then later determined it wasn’t the case.

Mala: That is my experience. Do you have an interesting or funny story you want to share?

Ginger: When I first starting doing database development, I did the same thing over and over. I thought I was stuck. Through involvement in the community, I realized how you can get unstuck in what you do. The other thing that I find amazing is how easy it is to learn stuff with all the information that’s available online.

You want to be a DAX expert, you can do it. The information is out there— free and not. Starting out there were a lot of times I used to sit thinking, “I’m stuck. I don’t know how to solve this. I don’t know how to solve this.” That doesn’t need to happen anymore. I think my superpower is finding things on the Internet. You name it, I can find it. Having that skill has made a lot of things just invaluable. Literally, there’s no end to the things that you can do if you know where to look on the Internet.

I will put a little caveat on that, and yes, I know there’s a whole lot of crap out there too, but figure out the difference, and you can find and be anything, because the information is literally at your fingertips.