(Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash)

I've been reflecting on Monday's post on data engineers as I lay the groundwork for this weekend's data fun.

The minus side: "Last weekend's project took too long!"

The plus side: "Oh hey I was able to complete this on my own!"

I see this as a lesson for ML/AI practitioners who, like me, came from a software dev background: you have super powers! You can be your own data engineer and ML Ops crew.

Your fun AI side-projects will feel like they're taking longer than they should (because you're doing all of the work yourself) … but remember that you can do that work yourself. You don't have to wait for someone to manage data, or deploy your models to an endpoint, or wire that model up to a (in my case: rudimentary!) web UI.

As a bonus, this also carries over to professional spaces. You'll have an easier time coordinating with developers, the ops team, and others, because you've been in their shoes.

So just remember: that weekend project that runs over doubles as a sign that you can accomplish quite a bit.