Astronomer Fail
Seems like a good time to share my Astronomer story—and fair warning, it ends with questions, not spicy takes.
A few years ago, my team was maintaining a critical ETL process. An exec got excited about Astronomer and asked me to evaluate it. After a couple of hours with a trial account, I concluded our needs were too complex, explained my reasoning, and moved on. Case closed—or so I thought.
Some time after I’d left, the idea resurfaced—same exec, same goal. This time, the team spent six months trying to make it work. They failed. My successor was shocked to discover I’d previously told the exec it wouldn’t succeed. In a moment of ironic vindication, I later saw the then-CEO of Astronomer (not Andy Byron) publicly cite our failed project as an example of SaaS trying to do too much.
This isn’t a knock against Astronomer—the current version might easily handle the job. The real issue wasn’t technical; it was human. And no LLM can paper over that.
So here’s what I’m still pondering:
- How can leaders differentiate negativity from foresight when someone resists a “new” idea?
- How could I have communicated differently—since, clearly, we weren’t on the same page?
P.S.—I’ve been doing this long enough that some new ideas feel like I’m Merlin remembering the future.
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