Pod dedicated to the one and only, Mikhail Berylant

People, Process, and Tools

For any company to be successful, it takes these three things. Rarely is there a person that embodies all 3, Mikhail Berlyant is one of the greats that does.

I wanted to take a moment to honor Mikhail for the #contribution he has had in my professional career. It was through Mikhail creating Potens.io, a software that sits on top of Google BigQuery, that makes it easy for someone like myself, a non-engineer who knows the business but otherwise no way to bring data to life, to automate & create solutions that empower internal employees to do their jobs and make the lives of our clients a bit easier. This Tool has been used across Viant for the last decade plus, not just Product and Engineering, but nearly every other department across the org, including Operations, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, and Sales. This same tool is the underpinning of Viant's Data Platform, which nobody in our industry can come even come close to competing with. Mikhail is on my shortlist of unsung heroes from which Viant would not exist today without. Without him, I assuredly would have attempted taking on a full-time blogging career a long time ago.

Let's continue...

When I first started reading Google BigQuery books around 2014-2015, the very first one I purchased was co-authored by Mikhail to my surprise. I’ve never met anyone so PASSIONATE about what they do and so DRIVEN towards excellence. His unrelenting enthusiasm on every call or meeting is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and I believe that’s a big part of his success.

Mikhail is one of the top contributors on Stack Overflow, with a reputation score of 173,230 (no idea what this means, but for comparison, my reputation is 29). He is one of the top contributors in the world in his field which speaks volumes to his expertise.

But more than anything, the only thing that gets him more excited than his work is his family, especially when he talks about his grandchildren. And that is a beautiful thing. While we work in different offices and don’t get to see each other all that often, he’s one of the few people that requires a bear hug every time I do. Thank you, Mikhail, for everything you do. I am forever indebted to your life's work.

CALL TO ACTION: For anyone else that was impacted my Mikhail, whether a colleague, friend, or one of the 14.9 million people he's helped on Stack Overflow, share your gratitude in the comments and we'll memorialize this post with an AdTech AI Files pod cast a week from today.

Mikhail's Stack Overflow link for the record: https://lnkd.in/gS_sZQDC

#AdTech #BigData #DataEngineering #AI #Innovation #TechVisionary #GoogleBigQuery #Viant #Passion #Gratitude