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These database-related podcasts offer technology and development career advice based on what job you have…and what kind of supervillain you are.
Do you work with databases? And are you just a little bit villainous? Well, think bigger. You’re not just some engineer, administrator, or analyst. You’re [insert name here]. You have the power of millions, nay, billions of inputs at your fingertips. You can conjure databases or statistics from thin air. When you give database commands, the database leaps to respond.
Your quest for ultimate power doesn’t have to be boring. Stop and treat yourself to a podcast. The ones recommended here act like a virtual henchperson, giving you insights to chew over with sharpened teeth and aiding you on your quest to become The Most Powerful Datamancer Of Them All.
Feast your ears on the six podcasts we recommend for database professionals…with varying degrees of supervillainy.
If you’re a database engineer who thinks that data is your personal plaything and chuckles softly while solving problems that have foiled lesser mortals, The Data Engineering Show is for you. “Data engineering? Hah!” you may say. “I can convert raw data in my sleep. I can even invade your puny user mind and convert it in your sleep.”
The Data Engineering Show seems to recognize megalomaniacal supervillainy in its listeners, too. In more than one podcast, hosts Eldad and Boaz Farkash recommend that engineers keep customers in mind when designing data-centric applications. Consider adding “Win the love of customers and other common people” to your villainous checklist. After all, if it weren’t for these lesser mortals, you wouldn’t have anyone to shower you with tribute.
Recommended episode: Database observability with millions of users
Recommended villain: Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom, The Fantastic Four
Supervillains, take note. The Data Engineering Podcast covers a wealth of topics, including working with real-time data, data lakes, and optimizing cloud costs. It also takes security seriously, devoting several episodes to the need to keep your data safe. The Data Engineering Podcast, hosted by Tobias Macey, has everything you need to implement your best-laid, possibly nefarious plans.
Any data engineer could learn from this podcast. But as The Data Engineer Podcast reveals solutions to thorny data problems, it’s of particular interest to supervillains who reveal their schemes to the hero while gloating. Of course, the hero couldn’t possibly foil your plot: You carefully craft your plans and you listen to the Data Engineering Podcast. Truly, you are invincible.
Recommended episode: Aligning data security with business productivity to deploy analytics safely and at speed
Recommended villain: Dr. Julius No, Dr. No
Drill to Detail focuses its efforts on database analytics and reporting. With episodes on real-time stream processing, data quality, metadata, and more, this podcast helps analysts glean all-important insights that make you your client’s, ahem, “hero.” Host Mark Rittman and his interviewees offer strategies to the data analyst who sees patterns that no one else sees because their tiny brains cannot grasp the data’s meaning.
Although it can take years for data to reveal trends, this podcast is for the best kind of supervillain: the mastermind whose far-reaching schemes take years to unfold. Think, “I created a clone army, then, years later, manipulated events for which I would need a clone army.” Thanks to Drill to Detail, future analysts will be able to analyze your morally questionable work.
Recommended episode: Oracle analytics, Luke Skywalker, and the remarkable return of enterprise analytics
Recommended villain: Sheev Palpatine, the Star Wars universe
Hosts Kostas Pardalis and Eric Dodd use The Data Stack Show to interview an impressive number of CEOs in the data industry. Databases aren’t the main thrust of this podcast, but the hosts recently carved out air time on the topic, so engineers who design storage engines are covered. In particular, database analysts who are also supervillains can grow their careers by casually peppering boardroom conversations–boardrooms they secretly plot to overthrow–with the many industry trends this podcast addresses.
The Data Stack Show isn’t just a podcast that covers business intelligence. It’s a siren call for the supervillainous strategist who plots to wrest a company from the hero. It’s especially true if you started out from nothing, applied yourself, and recognize the hero is too weak to run his company. No, your company.
Recommended episode: Materialize origins: a timely dataflow story
Recommended villain: Obidiah Stane/Ironmonger, Iron Man
Runs as Radio is dedicated to All Things Microsoft, and while databases aren’t quite the thrust of this show, this podcast has you, an “innocent” database administrator, covered. Maintaining a SQL database? Implementing a migration to Azure? Host Richard Campbell and his array of guests offer tips and tricks to keep your operations running smoothly, leaving you free to design your volcano lair.
Although Microsoft isn’t the Evil Empire it used to be, Microsoft is an industry-standard, and to paraphrase an old adage, nobody ever got fired for buying it. Because of this, it’s the perfect system of choice for a particular breed of supervillain: the one who hides in plain sight. Therefore, this podcast is for the supervillain who, when exposed to a mad cackle, has been there all along.
Recommended episode: Query performance tuning strategies
Recommended villain: Agatha Harkness, WandaVision
While the other podcasts recommended here are, at this time of writing, currently up and running, here’s a shout-out to the fabulous RedisPods, which ran from 2020 to 2021. And while you’re at it, check out Redis’ former podcast, The Data Economy. The advice is useful, though, even if the podcasts are not ongoing.
Trying to improve your database skills? We recommend video lessons about JSON, the best database conferences to attend, and how to use leaderboards in your applications even when they aren’t games.
