Data Warehouse of Horrors: 20 Years of Watching Smart People Build Stupid Things

Mar 06, 2026 9:16 pm

In 1999, five people could build a production data warehouse in twelve months. Today, the same company needs 120 people and 3 years to achieve the same outcome.


I started writing about how we got here. This post looks back at a time when small teams with broad skills delivered entire systems — no escalation paths, no governance layers, no sprint boards.


It worked. Then we spent twenty years making simple things complicated.


Read here: [link]


Roland

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