Standard formatting, no dupes, no numbers stored as text, and one variable per column. The usual wishlist.

Early in my career I was recruited by a chemistry lab because they needed someone who could code. The work involved imaging lipids with an electron microscope, modeling them in PyMOL, simulating what would happen if you cut specific bonds and opened the molecule, then sending that model back to the lab so they could replicate it physically and image it again. If the opened lipid matched the model, you’d identified it correctly.

A lipid molecule model alongside food chemistry imagery

I built the dashboard that tracked the lab results. Things like markers, bond types, enzymes and molecule classifications. All of it in Python.

The science was exploratory and the data trailed behind it. Clean dimensions and standard formatting had nothing to do with it.

That’s where I began developing what I now consider one of the most underrated skills in this work: a zen attitude. I’ll fully admit I’m not a zen person. The attitude extends pretty much only to dashboards and fermenting stuff. Native integrations break. Stakeholders change requirements mid-build. You open a dashboard you cobbled together six months ago and have no idea what you were thinking (see also: how Gene Autry feels about cowboy coding).

I’ve built dashboards in Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau, Python, PHP, Looker Studio. For lab results, marketing KPIs, network health, server performance, enrollments, sales. The tools change but the data problems don’t.

I still want clean data. Disappointment just stopped being part of the process.

The other thing I began learning in that lab applies every time I open Looker Studio for a marketing client: ask the right questions before you build anything. Who is leadership in this context? A CFO and a program director need different views. Are they making decisions or showing value to a board? Do they want directional signals or granular detail? Do they want vanity metrics or does the dashboard need to do real work?

Build the wrong dashboard beautifully and nobody opens it twice.

Btw, while you can ferment foods like cheese or meats where lipids transform into complex flavor and aroma molecules, pure lipids won’t ferment.