Imgur is a data-driven company, and our community is our most important signal. But you can't perfectly plot humans neatly into a chart. It takes someone with instincts and empathy to truly understand the community and represent them in all of the company decisions.
We need a new generation of executives who understand how to manage and lead through data. And we also need a new generation of employees who are able to help us organize and structure our businesses around that data.
There's been the emergence of a philosophy that big data is all you need. We would suggest that, actually, numbers don't speak for themselves.
Amazon is famously run by studying and responding to its own data; yet when it comes to promotions, decisions are often subjective and guided by human emotions and petty political dynamics.
It is very challenging to have a kind of data-driven, performance-oriented culture and to do progressive pedagogy. These things don't naturally, or easily, go together.
Every company today is a data company whether they realize it or not.
As our society tips toward one based on data, our collective decisions around how that data can be used will determine what kind of a culture we live in.
'Data scientist,' as a profession, is largely a fad.
The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.
