"'The Way We've Always Done Things' = Complacency," says Dan Voyce

"Don't pay much attention to 'This is the way we have always done things' - it comes from a place of complacency and poor performance," is our favourite quote from this 2020 Noonies interview with Daniel Voyce (Australia), who’s been nominated for contributions to Hacker Noon's Big Data thought log. In this interview, Dan not only illuminates a big data professional perspective from down-under, but also concerns around the normalization of idiocy as well as some serious excitement around GPU Datascience. Read on!

Shoutout to the people who made the 2020 Noonies possible: Sustany Capital, .TECH Domains, Grant for the Web, Skillsoft, Flipside Crypto, Udacity, and Beyondskills.

1. Which 2020 Noonie/s have you been nominated for?

Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - Big Data

2. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Currently The Director of Technology Solutions at DemystData, I have worked over the past 20 years in Technology mostly in the start up sector, helping companies develop web based solutions, over the past 8 years I have been working heavily in the data space focusing on squeezing every last drop of performance out of big data platforms.

3. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build.

I enjoy designing big data pipelines that push the limits of imagination of how much data can be processed in a given amount of time. Recently we designed a pipeline that processed 200 Billion Geospatial records per day across 140 Million polygons - we achieved this in under 20 minutes.

Other than that my day to day is leading the design and delivery of solutions for Tier 1 banks here in Australia.

Including an innovative online application form for business lending that interfaces directly with the customers financial data in Xero, Quickbooks, MYOB to automate all of the tedious parts of applying for a loan.

4. What are you most excited about right now?

GPU Datascience - it will completely disrupt the current Cluster based workflows everyone is using.

5. What are you worried about right now?

Global Political landscape and normalising idiocy - this will have far reaching consequences for tech.

6. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody?

Don't pay much attention to "This is the way we have always done things" - it comes from a place of complacency and poor performance.

7. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career?

In terms of Career, it hasn't made much of a difference, I have worked at home for the past 10 years, in this line of work it doesn't so much matter whether I am face to face or on Zoom.

In terms of life, I miss pubs, I miss sitting by the river drinking, I miss eating out in Melbourne weekly as our food scene here is incredible.

8. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?

I would probably start an incubator and invest in a number of different startups! There is some amazing talent and a huge startup community in Australia. I would love to help drive this.

9. What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with?

Change is good and should be embraced

10. Which apps can't you live without?

Zoom (unfortunately), Jetbrains suite of products (being a Polyglot manager), Postman

11. What are you currently learning?

Rapids RMM and the new BigQuery features

VOTE for Dan as Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - Big Data before voting closes on 12 October, 2020! 🚀

With gratitude to Hacker Noon's 2020 Noonies Partners: Sustany Capital, .TECH Domains, Grant for the Web, Skillsoft, Flipside Crypto, Udacity, and Beyondskills.