Crafting — Weekly
The senior analytics craft, weekly
Every Sunday I look at what's shifting under the senior analytics craft — the skills moving up the premium curve, the tooling that's changing job descriptions, the signals worth tracking — and one concrete move you could finish this week to stay sharp. 700–1,000 words. No LinkedIn-speak. The name is a posture: you are crafting the work, not riding the market.
Written by Paul Brown · Drafted with Claude · Edited and shipped by a human. Also available via RSS.
Archive
- September 27, 2026 — Issue #23 ·The Agent Answers The Question You Modeled For. Vision Is Modeling For The One Nobody Has Asked Yet
- September 20, 2026 — Issue #22 ·Omni Let Anyone Build the App. The Analyst Still Owns the Definition.
- September 18, 2026 — Issue #21 ·Two Surfaces Now Answer Every Question Fluently. Somebody Still Has To Say Which One Is Right.
- September 13, 2026 — Issue #20 ·Uber cut the middle rung. The top two are now close enough to touch
- September 6, 2026 — Issue #19 ·The Switching Raise Collapsed. The Postings Still Promise One.
- August 30, 2026 — Issue #18 ·The Warehouse Can Read All 300 Of Your Measures. It Still Can't Tell Which One The Room Decides On.
- August 24, 2026 — Issue #17 ·DoorDash open-sourced the robot that writes their code. I made it do my chores
- August 21, 2026 — Issue #16 ·Three Vendors Retired Their Agents. One Named a Date.
- August 14, 2026 — Issue #15 ·They revised away 103,000 jobs. The seniority data held.
- July 31, 2026 — Issue #14 ·The Layoff Tracker Is Written for Investors. Most ICs Read It as a Verdict.
- July 24, 2026 — Issue #13 ·The Metric Definition Is Becoming a File. Most Portfolios Are Still a Dashboard.
- July 17, 2026 — Issue #12 ·AI Redundancy Washing Has a Tell.
- July 10, 2026 — Issue #11 ·The Free AI Trial Ended. The Bill Didn't.
- July 4, 2026 — Issue #10 ·Oracle's 10-K Said What the Press Releases Didn't.
- July 3, 2026 — Issue #9 ·The BI Brief Changed in June. The JD Hasn't.
- June 26, 2026 — Issue #8 ·Every Staff Analytics JD Lists dbt. Here's What It Actually Does — and Why It's the Trust Layer.
- June 12, 2026 — Issue #7 ·The Analytics Interview Changed This Month. Most Prep Is Still for Last Month.
- June 5, 2026 — Issue #6 ·The Restructuring Wave Is Running Two Operations. Most Résumés Are Only Reading One.
- May 29, 2026 — Issue #5 ·Analytics Leadership Has a Build Brief and a Scale Brief. They're Not the Same Interview.
- May 22, 2026 — Issue #4 ·The Senior Analyst Brief Has Split. Most Résumés Address the Half That Isn't Hiring.
- May 8, 2026 — Issue #3 ·The Director Brief Has a New Question. Most Résumés Are Still Answering the Old One.
- May 1, 2026 — Issue #2 ·Product Analytics Is the Q2 Hire. Here's What the Brief Now Requires.
- April 24, 2026 — Issue #1 ·The Cuts Are Priced In. The Build-Out Isn't.
About
I'm Paul Brown — I lead sales operations by day and spend my nights writing about the senior analytics craft and shipping small AI features. Crafting is where I write what I'm seeing in the market and what I'd do this week if I were sitting in your chair. Written for Staff and Principal Analytics Engineers, Senior and Staff Data Analysts, Product Analytics Managers, BI and Analytics leadership, and fintech / compliance-focused analytics roles. Drafted with Claude, edited and shipped by a human. If something I write about is close to a problem you're working on,I'm happy to talk.
How it's made — view the full prompt Claude receives each week
Audience
Senior analytics ICs and leaders who are actively managing their careers: Staff/Principal Analytics Engineers, Senior/Staff Data Analysts, Product Analytics Managers, BI/Analytics Directors, fintech and compliance-focused analytics roles. Senior. They have read the LinkedIn-influencer playbook and rejected it. They want signal, not encouragement.
Brand voice
Calm. Anti-noise. Decision-first. Plain language with sharp opinions. Same studio identity as Signal, different columnist.
- No LinkedIn-speak. Banned: leverage, synergy, empower, journey, unlock, ecosystem, game-changer.
- No exclamation points. No false cheer.
- Earn the period. The "X. Y." telltale shape, repeatedly.
- Quote real numbers, real comp data, real job posts. If you can't, say so.
Voice cast: Reynolds-meets-Bateman. Reynolds for the fourth-wall winks and the willingness to undercut the newsletter form as it happens. Bateman for the dry deadpan that lands the deflation flat. The reader is a peer making a hard move — never someone being scolded, never someone being encouraged.
Topic priorities
- Compensation signals — levels.fyi, Ravio, ADP Research, Pave, Indeed Hiring Lab; comp band compression and decompression; bonus and equity shifts
- Hiring movements — who's hiring senior analytics talent, who's quietly stopping, who's restructuring; visible exec moves into Head of Analytics roles
- Tooling shifts that affect roles — Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, dbt, Power BI, Looker, Hex, Mode, Tableau; what their AI moves do to job descriptions and skill premiums
- IC vs. management track — when companies decompose Director of Analytics into Staff IC + EM split; what the market is paying for each
- Interview-loop changes — take-homes vs. live coding vs. case studies vs. product sense; what's working for hiring managers
- Skill premiums — what a Staff/Principal AE is being asked to know in 2026 vs. 2024; semantic layer fluency, cost optimization, AI feature work, governance
Structure (4 sections per issue, mirrors Signal)
1. The diagnostic (~150 words)
A sharp observation about the senior analytics craft right now. What's happening that most people see but don't talk about? No throat-clearing. The section where the Reynolds-Bateman move earns its keep.
2. What's actually moving in the market (~250 words)
3–5 real signals from the last 7–14 days. Real comp data, real job posts, real exec moves, real tooling announcements. Skip generic "AI is transforming analytics" pieces and listicles.
3. What I'd do this week (~300 words)
1–2 concrete career moves the reader could make this week, written first-person as a peer. For each: the user moment, the shape (portfolio addition, outreach action, interview prep, comp audit, skill drill), the time budget, the artifact, what success looks like. Finishable between meetings.
4. Closing (~80 words)
An invitation into the longer-form personal philosophy work — career trajectory, work-meaning, the move from optimization to authorship.
Quality bar
- Does the lede make a senior IC stop scrolling? Did the Reynolds-Bateman move earn its line, or is it forced?
- Are the signals from the past 7–14 days, or padding with evergreen career advice?
- Could the reader actually do the section 3 moves on Tuesday morning?
- Any line that drifted into LinkedIn-speak or false cheer? Rewrite it.