Afaque Ahmad’s Post

I got this Databricks Shirt as a gift from one of my student I keep receiving a lot of gifts from my students, But During the Student Award ceremony at Taj Bangalore, I got a very unusual gift from one of my student who joined Databricks recently. He gifted me a Databricks shirt, and said.. If all of your students gift you a shirt of a company where they got placed then you will have a huge collection. I also the liked the idea of gifting a shirt as its a very memorable thing! Happy to have such hardworking students who are able to make it into top companies and make me feel proud of them! #bigdata #dataengineering

Interesting analysis Jason Saltzman! Clearly the one that stands out is Figma... and that makes sense given the roller coaster of emotions their shareholders probably felt when the $20B Adobe acquisition was blocked last year. Generally, we consider tenders more of a slow trickle of liquidity vs. a binary on/off switch. Companies often set limits on the amount of vested equity shareholders can sell in a tender. 10-15% is common. It would be rare for an existing employee to cash out 100% and walk out post-tender. I've also seen companies use recurring tenders as an effective recruitment tool, derisking an employee's expected holding period (especially if poaching from big Tech). So a bit of an offsetting force to the tenders->attrition take.

🎉 Celebrating 5 Amazing Years at Databricks! Five years ago, I started this amazing journey at Databricks—a community that values innovation, encourages learning, and brings together brilliant minds. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to: Giri R Varatharajan, thank you for recognizing my potential, giving me the opportunity to join this fantastic organization, and continually pushing me beyond my limits to help me grow. Pradeep Ravi is a super helpful and truly cool guy. You have always been supportive whenever I needed assistance. It's been a great pleasure working with you. Arunachalam Sivananthan Your mentorship has been truly transformative, guiding me to achieve greater heights. The Backline Team: Every day brings a chance to learn and grow with talented individuals. Harikrishnan Kunhumveettil You are not only a remarkable human being but also an exceptional mentor and technical expert. I have learned so much from you, especially how to approach problems from different angles. Your insights and guidance have been invaluable to my journey. Ram Prasad Annapragada: I am truly amazed by your incredible speed and efficiency in getting things done. Thank you to Rohit Menon, Matt Blair, and the broader leadership team for cultivating a thriving environment. When I joined the company, it was a $6.2 billion organization, and today, it has grown into a $45 billion powerhouse. Back then, Databricks wasn't widely recognized, but now it has become the dream company for data engineers and holds a special place in the AI space. #Databricks #5Years #Gratitude #Teamwork #Innovation

Age Is Just a Number: My Journey to Becoming the Youngest Databricks MVP I’ve noticed many people expressing interest in becoming a Databricks MVP and reaching out to ask about my journey. While I can’t reply to every message individually, I hope this post serves as a guide for all of you aspiring MVPs. Achieving something big doesn’t depend on age; it’s all about consistency and discipline. This milestone reflects countless hours of hard work and passion for the field. Here’s how I got here: 1-Open-Source Contributions: I actively contributed to Databricks’ open-source projects, engaging with the community to drive innovation. 2-Community Champion: I’m honored to have become a Databricks Community Champion, advocating for knowledge sharing and collaboration. 3-Thought Leadership: I regularly post valuable content on big data and Databricks, sparking discussions and gathering insights from multiple stakeholders. 4-Recognition: I’ve received appreciation from various tech leaders and stakeholders for my contributions and content. 5-Mentorship: I’ve had the privilege of mentoring over 100 candidates in Databricks, helping them become job-ready and confident in their skills. 6-Certifications: I’m proud to be a 19x Databricks certified professional. 7-Technical Discussions: I participate in tech discussions, providing solutions and suggestions for enhancing the Databricks platform and lakehouse architecture. These efforts have not only shaped my career but also fueled my passion for big data. I’m excited about what lies ahead and look forward to continuing this journey in the ever-evolving tech landscape! If you have a passion for something, you can achieve anything with dedication and effort. These efforts have not only shaped my career but also fueled my love for databricks. I’m excited about what lies ahead and look forward to continuing this journey in the ever-evolving tech landscape! #Databricks #MVP #BigData #Community #Mentorship #TechLeadership #OpenSource Celebal Technologies

*Obligatory Career Update* In 2017, I started my journey at Databricks when it was a small startup with 150 employees. As the company expanded and grew, I was lucky to experience a wealth of meaningful professional opportunities that greatly enriched both my personal and professional life. Yet, at the heart of any company are its people, and at Databricks, they are truly exceptional. The relationships I've developed with my colleagues there are the most valuable takeaway from my experience. In no particular order I'd like to shoutout the following folks for making my time at Databricks truly meaningful: Brian Clapper, Jen Aman, Jody Soeiro de Faria, Astrid Nicole Ng, Mylene Biddle, Kori O'Brien, Sabina Shaikh, Rochana Golani, Jason McIntyre, Chelsea Weintraub, Debra Broberg, Bobby Alvarez, Zach Relli, Bo Zhang, Frieda Y., Sebastian Furtal, Samantha Menot, Juliet W., Conor B. Murphy, Brooke Wenig, Ambareesh Kulkarni, Jason Martin, Venkat Krishnan, Louis Frolio, John Young, Scott Smith So, where am I now? Anyscale, ya’ll 🚀 ! I'm leading all of Enablement - both internal and external. The opportunity here is immense, and the shared DNA with Databricks is striking: both originated from UC Berkeley's AMPLab (#GoBears!), both were founded by the creators of open-source projects, both were co-founded by Ion Stoica, both have backing from Andreessen Horowitz, and both offer a managed service built on their open-source foundations. I am incredibly excited about the possibilities at Anyscale and am impressed by the substantial investment we're making in senior leadership as we lay the groundwork for future success 🚀 There are far too many amazing people at Databricks to mention, so if I've missed anyone, don't hesitate to reach out and say hello!

It was five years ago today that I started as Retail employee #1 at Databricks. It's been an insane ride in the five years since. Then? We had very little name recognition in Retail & Consumer Goods. Now? We have the strongest portfolio of retail and consumer goods customers of any data platform in the industry, backed by over 2,500 partners who are building successful businesses on the Lakehouse, including many Retail-native "built-on solutions." We created programs such as Solution Accelerators to highlight how you could use Databricks to solve problems in the industry. We now have over 40 for things such as Behavioral Segmentation, LLM Product Search and Entity Resolution. Then? At our first summit, I had two panel participants drop out quite literally 12 hours before the panel. I had to call industry friends and call in old favors to have three people on the panel! Now? We have the very top-tier brands asking us months in advance to speak. Beyond the company growth, I've made friends with top-tier talent and seen (and hopefully helped) young talent grow and develop here. It's been immensely rewarding. Would I make the same choice to join Databricks today? Absolutely. And you can come and join me. If you want to be with the best, check out our careers page. We're hiring for critical roles.

Finally Started Learning about Databricks, This was long pending. Thanks Nikhil Garg srikumar Menon Prateek Thakar and Kun Zhu, Ph.D. for your support and Motivation... This is just a beginning have a long way to go.

time to celebrate 🎉 😎 Presidents Club came in a special time of my life, personally and professionally. It has been a great and exciting journey at Databricks for the last 2 years. In essence, 2 things makes this excitement at higher levels: 1/ the people around me (all willing to teach, to help, to support). Special thanks, kudos, love and gratitude for the leader, mentor and partner Flavio Generoso Valiati ❤️ . He and Thiago Abbruzzese setting the right tone for the team and ecosystem. Also thanks for Leandro Lima, Thiago Silveira, Leonel Silva, Marcelo Sales, Marcio Arbex, Marcos Grilanda for all the interactions and tips/suggestions along the journey to set the #Latam way. 2/ learning curve which was phenomenal. Accessing different people in the organization, working in different ways to touch customers and partners and the platform, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the platform, or as we call it now "THE DATA INTELLINGENCE PLATFORM", just come and see to feel what I feel. The Databricks founders impersonate what I like in a tech company. They play, joke, while innovating a lot!! Excited for the years ahead!! 💪 Databricks Databricks Brasil #lakehouse #data #genai

What I really really like about Databricks as a company and their people: They very proactively listen to community feedback! This week, Maria Vechtomova and I had a great chat with the Databricks Workflows product team, following our LinkedIn posts about the newly released For Each activity. Maria and I work for different companies, but we are both on the forefront of making sure the stack we work with doesn't build up unnecessary technical debt and is always up to date with the latest Databricks features and best practices. Many stacks I worked with in the past never listened to anything I had to say. Even for billion dollar companies growing at lightning speed, actively listening to customers is crucial to sustaining longterm success and innovation. They really understand this very well at Databricks. Thanks Gabor, Anthony, Theresa, Denys and Saad for the great chat! I'm sure the community will be very happy with all enhancements that are on the roadmap for Databricks Workflows. I know I am! 😊

I am so grateful for my time at Tabular (now part of Databricks). After years spent focusing on real-time data streaming, it was enlightening to learn so much about the batch data world, and even more interesting was the intersection of the two, something that was highlighted throughout the industry by Confluent's recent announcement of #Tableflow. I was also blessed to work with such an amazing team and to watch and learn as they worked together to build a powerful product and solve customer problems. I don't want to mention individuals for fear that I'd surely leave someone out, but I want to highlight a moment from a company all-hands meeting where Bill Hussain was talking about how to handle a certain situation with customers and prospects. He said, "Just be helpful," and then repeated it as if to say that's it. That's the focus. Just be helpful is probably the best phrase that I can think of to describe the attitude of the whole team at Tabular. Towards customers, people in the community, and each other. Sure, they are all talented, focused, and hard-working, but this attitude of helpfulness was constantly on display and something we don't see enough of these days. It truly was an honor to work with this team. And, of course, I am thrilled with the successful outcome of the company and the new adventure that many of my colleagues are embarking on with Databricks, but unfortunately, the #DevRel team is not among those joining DB, so I am currently looking for a new role. I love being a developer advocate, but I'd be open to exploring other positions in the data or broader technology space. Any tips, suggestions, or intros would be appreciated. Thank you! 😊