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Companies must stop using Google Analytics

imy.se

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Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#371

Post by thatwasunusual »

dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

> she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant

Skills are very seldom tied to a specific product these days, so she will be good.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#372

Post by dijit »

totallywrong wrote: post #363
dijit wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are engineers who specialise on systems that have been in industry long enough to be called senior that have never touched anything non-cloud. Most people who are “devops” with There are so many bootcamps for this too, and they mainly focus on AWS skills. Here's a few bootcamps that people might decide to take to break into "DevOps" of which none are assuming prior knowledge, though techworld with Nana does tea…

I know where you're coming from but the reality is that a lot of those things are increasingly less relevant. I'm not sure what real advantage I get today from having done racking and cabling of physical servers back in the day. In a managed Kubernetes world, I haven't leveraged my ability to run a massive pool of Linux servers in a long time (I kind of miss that btw). For all intents and purposes you can be a great…

I think we're in agreement which is the entire point of the thread we're in.

You don't need certain skills today; instead you can use higher order systems instead. That doesn't mean there's no value in understanding (to use a programmer example) a linked list.

Equally knowing how a queue system works from the OS to bytes on a wire can make a world of difference in some contexts.

You can live in the higher order world and use the tools that make life simple (google analytics, in the case of this thread) but you are jailed to not understanding the systems that they are made from and while you are exposed to some concepts not everything transfers cleanly. "What is the PostgreSQL equivalent of a ML.PREDICT in Google Spanner!".

To give another contrived example; a huge reason people learn Latin or complete computer science courses is not because they will be speaking Latin or using Comp Sci concepts; it is because it sets a foundation for learning other systems, a sort of proto-field that permits you to see the relationship building blocks on which other systems exist.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#373

Post by hakfoo »

TheCapn wrote: post #244
ori_prior wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not because of skill issues, but maybe forced because they work for a dealership that sells a particular make exclusively or, less often, a specialty shop; most “car repair guys” outside of those environments have to be generalists. Yes, I'd expect any car guy to be able to change your tires. Or change your oil. But even resetting the oil-change alarm or tire-pressure sensor can be a hurdle here: Manufacturers also…

Perhaps you're using a broad/generic example to try and make the point but I'll say this: If a seasoned mechanic is unable to figure out how to reset the Maintenance Reminder or look up how to sync Tire Pressure sensors, run away. In the same way that one can use knowledge of one programming language as a means to leapfrog into other languages, other skilled trades are similar. Perhaps there's something that could be…

I know mechanics in particular can be quite chauvinistic.

In the US, for a very long time, you had to find an "import specialist" mechanic, even long past the point where Japanese brands had gone mainstream. Part of this might have been because of the availability of metric tools at the time; my family had a set of metric wrenches specifically because they had to do occasional light maintenance on their early Datsuns and Toyotas.

I can recall that the mechanic in my neighbourhood was decidedly unwilling to service a new Hyundai in the late '90s. He complained they were 'disposable'.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#374

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

delecti wrote: post #364
firstplacelast wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says more about you than them, though. You’re projecting your own inability to translate knowledge into new systems and assume the same of others.

I'm not projecting my inability, I'm assuming incompetence. I'm a cynic, not insecure. I wouldn't blanket block a resume that said "cloud engineer", I'd just make sure to probe that they aren't just an "AWS engineer" or "Azure engineer".

That is entirely reasonable.

A title I have frequently worked under is “Cloud Engineer”.

I’m strongest in AWS, secondly Azure. But I also am extensively using Linode’s platform and Kubernetes too.

My best friend’s title has also been “Cloud Engineer” and he is exclusively in AWS. He doesn’t really know more about Azure than he needs to get things connected to AAD.

How anyone could know that without asking eludes me. If you’re hiring for a position, you have a responsibility to know.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#375

Post by broast »

Shorel wrote: post #349
di456 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, citing off topic ChatGTP woes and reducing Americans to a broad generalization is not a sign of intelligence either.

Statistically speaking, assuming a normal distribution of intelligence, there is a specific percent where this generalization will start to apply. Now, I don't know what is this percent, but let's give it a name: the ChatGPT percentile cut line. My intuition says this line sits to the left of the median, so in a sense you are right, meaning that fewer than 50% of people have a measurable intelligence lower than this…

I find it hard to believe that the intelligence you assume is required to do a person's job is an accurate indication of that person's intelligence.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#376

Post by nielsbot »

dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

No snark intended--sounds like it may not have been a well designed course. Hopefully it was at least explicit about being GA-based.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#377

Post by mschuster91 »

yesco wrote: post #344
totallywrong wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and IT "assholes" think the run of the mill business drones are "assholes" as well. Their inability to be effective at their jobs tend to make IT lives worse because they can't understand what IT workers Have you ever dealt with an average IT department in a non-tech company? This attitude doesn't help anyone and I really want to believe that only a small minority of tech people think of any other worker anywhere a…

I'm a Sr. SE at a large medical device company and can confirm that our IT dept is filled with assholes. We do everything we can to keep systems out of their hands because they are so difficult to work with compared to every other part of the company. I get they have to deal with a bunch of technical inepts constantly falling for phishing attacks and occasionally teams will make outrageous requests to them that simpl…

> and it bothers me how much they seem to clearly exaggerate the difficulty of things.

Scotty Engineering principle at work. I'm no stranger to that, it's often enough the only strategy keeping higher management from completely swamping you with work.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#378

Post by tony_fr »

Well, it was only a mouse and cat game here.(with local exemption for France for example that provide an exit pass but render the tools without much interest after)

The focus on Google Analytics is really funny because plenty other company use similar tech to track users (pardot pixel, hubspot etc...) And both parent company are us bases so similar 'transfer to us' is being made with much more PII than google analytics.

(Noyb is probably coming to you as well as Facebook).

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#379

Post by deathanatos »

dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

> That said; we also have "Cloud Engineer" as a job title, so I'm not sure we will learn this lesson.

I don't bill myself as such, but I am basically a "Cloud Engineer". My expertise is in no way dependent on a particular cloud, and I've done work in GCP, AWS, Azure, Rackspace, and even a private cloud or two. A VM is a VM, Postgres is still (more or less) PG regardless of who is hosting it. Sure, there are specifics, but even cloud-specific stuff really doesn't differ too much, and it's pretty easy to find the common memes between the two. I can assign a role to VM in AWS, an IAM service account to a VM in GCP, and an "identity" in Azure. All 3 then permit the VM to make API calls to the respective cloud. All 3 fetch their access token in basically the same (but incompatible, of course) ways: HTTP request to a magic link-local IP.

A lot of the concerns I deal with, such as "can we survive an outage? what types?" depend on concepts like failure domains that apply equally to a cloud or to a datacenter.

But at some point, I had to dip my toe into a new cloud. I started a new job, and they used this thing called "Azure", and at that point, I'd never heard of it before. But you approach it with an open mind and the right balance of "some of my old knowledge might be relevant, but this new thing might also work differently and I should be prepared to build a separate mental model around it if the old knowledge is leading me astray."

… and I'd expect the same from someone doing "data analytics"; I'd expect something like "math is math, how I collect the data might change, what APIs I use to process it might change but the math is the same."

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#380

Post by Pxtl »

ori_prior wrote: post #89
dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

This level of dependence on certain tools is neither rare nor unprecedented. Your run-of-the-mill business drone will be trained on Word/Excel/Outlook and be hard to impossible to retrain on anything else (either because of actual stupidity or resistance to change). This already starts at school where "Informatik" is often just learning where to click in Microsoft products. Similarly, tradespeople often specialize in…

I'm old enough to remember when every young self-taught sysadmin was getting their MCSE or A+ certs.
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