This Dashboard Reveals My Crushing Debt & A Simpler Way To Visualize Data

Prioritizing clearer visualizations with a project that delivers a very personal, very real ROI.

Zach Quinn

— 6 min read
Share

**Note: To protect my personal information, figures in any screenshot are randomized integers. I have some debt, but I promise it’s not that bad.**

I’m on record as being staunchly anti-spreadsheet. Next to my preference for Mac over PC, it is probably my strongest technical belief.

Recently, however, I built out a dashboard for my most sensitive financial data, my investment and credit accounts, using nothing but a spreadsheet and Looker.

For a data engineer who takes pride in performance-optimized tables with meticulous partitioning and clustering specs, I was a bit uncomfortable in doing this.

And, frankly, I could have spent the time to build out the perfect backend; I already have a pipeline that ingests my credit card statements.

This effort was about something more than the sum of its technical parts. It was about, simply, getting something out of my head and onto the screen.

While I’ll showcase the (very basic) dash, my main goal is to highlight the importance of shipping over tweaking. This is especially true when doing work that is a) unpaid and b) tethered to an unlimited time budget.

Below, we’ll dive into the architecture of the "Dashed Off Dashboard" and discuss why a Senior DE should occasionally embrace the low-fidelity route to achieve high-velocity results.

Build Your Pipeline To A Data Engineering Career

You’ve reached the limit of the public preview. The full version of this post includes the implementation details: The code, the edge cases, and the "why" behind the architecture.

When you join PipelineToDE, you get:

  • The DA → DE Pathway Course: A structured roadmap to bridge the gap between analysis and engineering.
  • Weekly Senior Deep Dives: Fresh, tactical insights on Python, Cloud (GCP/AWS), and modern orchestration delivered every week.
  • Production-Ready Blueprints: Access to 80+ protected stories and code repos from my time in the trenches as a Senior DE
  • The DE Job Board (Coming Soon): Exclusive access to a curated board of high-agency Data Engineering roles.

Read more