If you all wondered who our data detectives are and what they are like, well, dive into this short interview. We tried catching up with Dario to tell us something about himself. He usually spends his day deep in data, but he’s also running the business development team and you can often find him jumping from one meeting to another. So, when we managed to catch him, we asked him to tell us something more about his work and his daily activities.
Tell us who you are and what you do in Digital Poirots?
I am Dario, a data scientist, data engineer, and data team lead.
What does your typical day look like?
Well, I don’t have a typical day. 🙂 Sometimes I spend more time on documents and business-related stuff (HR, marketing,…), but I try to invest as much time in team and technology.
When working on a project for a client my day starts with a quick status overview, and a sync with team members after which the actual work starts. The work is hard to explain in a few lines, as it can be everything from designing data pipelines, and data warehouses, or implementing machine learning or statistical models. In general, you inspect a lot of data sources (files, APIs, database tables), process them, combine them, calculate new metrics based on business rules, or use them for predictions.
Internal projects serve us to learn and upgrade our knowledge but require planning and management. That’s where I step in.
There is a lot of client communication involved in everyday work, especially when working on data projects with complex business logic in the background.
We are on a constant lookout for talent so part of my day (not every day) is preparing for interviews and interviewing them.
What drives you in your work?
There are several factors. I remember one situation when I started working as a data engineer and solved some issues in the database that unblocked the whole web development team. I felt great as my work had an effect in the real world, it is so much different than working on a university project that gets discarded the next minute after the submission.
Also, client satisfaction after consolidating their datasets, or visualizing data and insights in dashboards is important to me, as it reflects their everyday business greatly.
What’s the best part about your job?
To me, the best part is that the job is not repetitive. Principles stay the same, but data and the application of data changes.
What don’t you like about your work?
I dislike days with too many meetings.
Which project you’ve worked on is your favorite?
Regarding data engineering, definitely My Dairy Dashboard project. For data science, I pick Milk Forecasting and Bellabeat projects.
What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career or what ups moment you had?
The first day after a vacation in 2020 I messed up tables in the data warehouse in the test environment and it required a full historical load and some manual work to fix it.
What drives you crazy about your job or in your daily activities?
Probably multitasking too many totally different and opposite things.
Which technology/tech stack do you like the most?
SQL, Python and its ML stack (Pandas, Scikit-learn), and Apache Spark.
What advice would you give to someone entering this field?
Don’t focus too much on a specific technology, but learn concepts and get experience by working on real-world projects. Technology is just one aspect of everyday work in the data field. Get experience in presenting your data ideas to non-technical people. When things are unclear, propose a few solutions and present them to stakeholders, instead of just asking them what to do.
Your favorite person to work with?
Me, myself, and I! Haha
The most time I spend working with my brother Renato.
If you can compare your job to one movie or show, what would it be?
Most of us are fans of the show “The Office” so we like to joke around that we’re like that, especially when we say bad puns or jokes.
If you can choose one song to go along with your job or which makes you get in the zone while working, what would it be?
When I am in the zone I prefer light instrumental music. Back in the day, we had Radio Sljeme playing in the office on low volume.
Stay tuned for other interviews to meet all our other data detectives!
