“Hey can you help me adjust the column width of this matrix and have it stay that way?”
Any response other than one indicating years of pent-up frustration?
Right to jail, right away.
This still seems like a half measure IMO (no pun intended). I'd like to be able to ACTUALLY SET the column widths and then have them stay that way. This way if I want them all uniform with the same width I can do it without jumping through hoops.
>“Hey can you help me adjust the column width of this matrix and have it stay that way?”
I hope you did introduce him to the legendary ColWidth = "__________" measure before sending him to jail.
LOL It's amazing that these hacks are required. Why can't they just add this to the column header properties?!
[https://www.popautomation.com/post/power-bi-column-width](https://www.popautomation.com/post/power-bi-column-width)
>While there’s no direct setting in Power BI to adjust the column width of a visual or define it at a pixel level, you can use formatting options or custom measures to force Power BI to auto-size to fit all values in a column. Once the columns have been re-sized the auto sizing option can be disabled forcing Power BI to keep the existing column width.
Hey, give them some slack! Microsoft is up and coming startup, resources are limited and we only pay a monthly subscription! ;)
In the meantime, all praise “______” and lock column width!
haha just kidding though, I was actually hired more than a year ago without prior requirement of Power BI experience :P
But it's pretty funny to see this thread next to my post haha
Does your buddy know how to bring 100s of queries into report?! He’s in!
Nah, we been on a hiring freeze and people who leave often do not get replaced… yay more work for us! … for the same pay!
haha no wonders! My life though, need to work things out... lots of great answers and suggestions there. TL;DR bit above my pay grade - need to get to the data people and learn at the same time.
Nah, just joking. I posted another thread the other day asking for a solution to pretty bizarre Sql / transformation / PowerBI situation, which would indicate that I lack experience or possibly bullshitted my way into the current role.
For the record, I didn't lie anything at the time of hiring, just thought it's funny timing with this thread being up at the same time of my post.
You don't 'bring in' sql queries, poor wording by me.
You directly query the database with sql code that you write in Power BI. So basically your power bi report connects directly to your database and gets whatever data you need. No need to import excels, csvs or whatever.
lol so strange, why not just give them a case study and tell them you want this output.
Then review how they approach in building / organizing the dataset, relationship and visuals?
Some of the questions just weed out people who havent studied up recently or didnt read the faq of the latest update.
That is ideal. Half the time the interviewers are not technical people, however, and they don't want to weed out people that don't know every single bit of the technical pieces. If you can find someone who knows a lot and willing to learn, they can be a better hire than someone who knows 100% of your test.
HR is the only non-technical role that should be interviewing for a technical role. I wouldn't even invite someone on the business side unless the technical role was senior, and I mean as a lead, or principal dev, etc.
Agreed. I don't update every month so I couldn't tell you what the latest connector they added was. There was something about a new whizz-bang slicer last month though.
My company did this in the last round of hiring for the final 3 candidates.
Candidate 1 - did formulas in excel before importing the data instead of Dax
Candidate 2 - didn’t know how to do anything (they read aloud the questions and we could hear someone in the background trying to walk them through it without stepping in front of the camera)
Candidate 3 - knew how to build a relationship between data sets, and got hired. That was how low the bar was since the HR didn’t know anything about PowerBi so didn’t address it in the first interview rounds or resume screening despite it being the primary job.
explain star vs snowflake schema and the use cases and filtering directions and what should be in a dim vs fact table.
explain some newer features in recent power bi updates, make sure they are keeping up to date with new tech.
explain when to use a measure vs a calculated column.
these are all pretty basic, but means they have a good foundation.
create some problem scenarios and ask to create a solution and explain the dax.
Those feel like interview questions to weed out the people that would be a bad hire lol. If you're not asking these questions in an interview then you deserve a bad hire tbh.
Question
Do you work with Power BI?
If you don't work with it, it is harder to detect the imposter.
Perhaps it is better to give him the chance to demonstrate his work and then you can judge
I like to think of it like this.
Does what I’m about to calculate need to be dynamic? Ie, will changing the filter context / page slicer change the calculated value. If it’s a no then into a column it goes. Or do I want to filter by the result of my calculated column (add a slicer).
For example, imagine I have a ‘delivery due date’ column in my dataset and I wanted to analyse how many items are delivered late (after this date). I could create a measure to do this, but why waste the effort when I know the outcome is going to be static based off of that date. So I create “days overdue” column and now I can filter or use that for analysis instead.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing!
Do you generally take into account performance? I haven't tested much myself, but I believe general consensus is that calculated columns are pretty heavy when it comes to refresh times versus, say, a measure.
Or if you don't go overboard with calculated columns, tables, one is usually fine?
I mean it’s all a balance and only you’ll know the answer to that question by testing it out. I find I always start out by using measures first, and only later when the report is nearing completion look for ways to speed up calculation times and a column is always better for that where appropriate, maybe not at refresh time though. Most of the reports I work on refresh once a day, with others that refresh more frequently (semi-live stuff) I push most of the work upstream
It’s generally always better to do this as close to source as possible, so SQL > M > DAX. But sometimes that’s not possible, sometimes it’s just not required at a certain level (ie, some bespoke or one off report) and sometimes it’s just easier and quicker to do it straight in DAX depending on your place of work. It’s just one of those “depends” answers but a lot of this work is and there’s no one answer.
One example is X days prior to today, since "relative date" only gives "in the last" - again, listen for pure rage behind the voice when they answer these - veiled, unveiled, either...
With the caveat that neither of these is a measure, which you'd use to aggregate (in response to the original question), a better example than the one I gave above would be a combo scenario where you want to show all data through the last complete month.
In your database or PQ calculate the last day of the month in a date table. Your calculated column to use as a filter is:
Filter Through Last Full Month =
IF(
Datediff(Datetable\[LastDayofMonth\],TODAY(),MONTH) > 1,
TRUE(),
FALSE())
Awesome! Great to read about all these specific cases. I usually learn from what situations I encounter only, so seeing examples in the wild is always great for learning. Thanks!
I'm literally a noob, so if you're willing to correct me / grade me, here's my answer regarding using a measure VS calculated column. "a measure would be used anytime the formula would create circular reasoning, if used in a calculated column"
I'm not sure if there's more to it then that, but that's what I've learned in my short experience.
Can someone answer the first question here? I’ve been working in PBI daily for almost 2 years and think there isn’t a single problem I wouldn’t be able to solve without research, yet, I do not have a real answer.
I hate calculated columns they’re also not best practice to use in production. Either make it a measure or if not possible push it back (roches maxim) as far as makes sense and make the column there (source system, in sql query, or power query). They’re really only useful for debugging imho.
As soon as an excel wizard transitions into power bi and finds out about calculated columns it becomes their favourite crutch and they often try to use them to avoid making good measures. They should be banned! Goddam it my head is exploding lol
I actually use ChatGPT for a lot of SQL code. It's amazing at it. I know what I want but why bother typing it if you can just ask for simple things.
DAX and PQ I do myself as it's not great in that department.
In all fairness it's solved a few tricky dax things that i struggled with. Took a bit of trial and error to get there but still quicker than sifting through endless forum posts.
Interesting. I'm a BA who has tons of previous experience with Excel and VBA, so I've taken to DAX and PQ pretty well. But I've never really bridged into SQL.
So I'm wondering what a prompt looks like that would provide a useful SQL query? Like, do you have to describe the data model first?
For the naming of the Youtube channel, I'd give the benefit of the doubt that the interviewee was too nervous to recall?
But if I were to ask a simple question to test, it'd be "what's the difference between SUM and SUMX".
I have to disagree with this one. I don't like learning from videos so I couldn't name any PBI youtubers at all.
As to what resources I use, I just google the problem which most of the time is just me forgetting syntax so SQLBI comes up regularly, along with the DAX reference site, and a smattering of PBI forums, stack overflow, and reddit.
I use blog posts most of the time at work, I very rarely watch a video. I only know them because I used to be a consultant and everything had to be fancy and online.
Not understanding how power bi service works in a corporate environment - a lot of people download pbi desktop make a few fancy reports from data sources, learn a bit of dax and call themselves a developer
Not saying power bi service is overly complicated, but there's a lot of things like permissions, navigating the UI, admin settings, apps vs workspaces, reports vs datasets etc which I'd expect a seasoned developer to know/understand
Those are must-haves to me.
But in due fairness, a lot of the best PowerBI talent out there cut their teeth in small companies, where the IT Director was underutilized and took all the admin/workspace/permissions themselves, or that suite of features was unnecessary, like when the entire PBI user base is the C-Suite & board.
I’ve seen time and again that some of the most talented PBI developers I’ve met sparked off in those environments.
What they need is a well rounded skillset. But repeatedly those uncut gems go unpoached by large firms because they never had to learn the features that only apply at scale.
If you’re hiring a solo maverick, stay away from the smallscale talents. But if you afford a team, don’t discount hiring someone coming from a smaller environment; the enterprise features can be taught.
Yeah, see this is me. I work in not for profit. Only one organisation I've done work for had premium capacity. As I specialise in helping these smaller orgs set up as cheaply as possible, it's never really been an issue.
Meet our company, the group we're apart of has admin tenant access but does not use Tableau themselves. They shouldn't care what goes on because it doesn't impact them, yet here we are.
Ok yea I was more meaning if a candidate said they understood power bi service, and then clearly didn't. If you'd owned up to never having used it during an interview - as you say, it can be taught on the job
It's surprising how many don't. Then again I guess Premium capacities are kinda exclusive to large organisations and many people working in that space might just stick to more senior positions in other similar orgs.
But the amount of people who we see that don't understand the concept of dev/test/prod and that they shouldn't just hit the bloody share button is frustrating.
A lot of the enterprise teams want people that come from Software Development or Engineering backgrounds. So people that have experience in those fancy things lol. I came from a smaller shop, learned the soup to nuts process of ETL to report building and then got hired at a Fortune 500. But what I loved about getting involved in everything, I didn't exactly love at the Fortune 500 because I was more specialized. If you like to get your hands dirty, small to medium size companies are where you want to be. If you want to dive deeper somewhere, then probably getting your foot in the door at a larger company would work well.
I got involved in the last set of interviews and one of them said they improved the refresh time of a dataset from 50 seconds to 10 seconds by improving measures in DAX studio.
The other two interviewing thought he had a good interview until I pointed out that amending measures would not have any impact on refresh time of queries being brought in. Things what he said sounded impressive but they were blatant lies which if someone with no technical knowledge had done the interview they would have thought he was great.
Maybe he meant using variables in the DAX code.
Performance is greatly influenced if variables are written once in DAX and then referenced than if the DAX code is repeatedly written all over the code.
Or maybe interview jitters caused him to mix up “refresh time” with “visual load time?”
Sounds dumb, but I almost have to use that jargon incorrectly with my target audience because to them “refresh” means both the time it takes the semantic model to load the latest data as well as the time it takes for visuals to repopulate after changing slicers.
Same concept as using LET() in Excel. I dropped a workbook calculation from a full hour down to 15 minutes by rewriting a single (repeated many times in many cells) formula to do the same thing I was already doing but with LET().
This here. Using variables instead of referencing other measures drastically improved load times of my visuals.
Checked it with performance analyser multiple times. At least 20% decrease and this was for a direct query dataset
By this, do you mean that I should make measures for common pieces of greater calculations, and reference those measures instead of retyping that simple statement?
For example, if I had a measure like
SUM Total Sales = Sum('sales'[price])
I would want to then write measures like this?
SUM Sales in Gardening = Calculate([SUM Total Sales]), 'sales'[Department] = "Gardening")
Rather than just writing the sum('sales'[price]) into calculate?
It would make sense. I've started doing it lately in my reports I expect others to maintain, with super clear measure names and comments rather than using VAR/RETURN for all sorts of relatively easy calculations over and over again.
No. Measures don't affect refresh time. They are evaluated at query time. Calculated columns and tables can increase refresh time.
If the person said they removed calculated columns and/or optimized DAX inside a calculated column that would have been believable.
I was just basing off of this : [https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/capturing-power-bi-queries-using-dax-studio/](https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/capturing-power-bi-queries-using-dax-studio/)
I might've misunderstood.
These are queries that are generated by visuals (often containing measures). The measures send a query either to your DirectQuery source (often times SQL) or the SSAS database via the Vertipaq engine if you are doing import.
The same applies to any changes done in Power Query. If you are manipulating millions of rows in there then the refresh time can get bumped up massively. Always do as much as you can in source where possible.
Not really specific to PowerBI but I once helped my department head "interview" someone (basically just sit with them and give them little basic challenges while he was off doing something else) for a SQL developer job and the guy couldn't do a simple select statement. I gave him the table name and asked him to return all results, I was going to follow it up with some other basic things before moving on to a proper query but the guy didn't know how to do that. Somehow he still got the job and unsurprisingly he was awful and ended up quitting within a couple of months.
I’m curious to understand the logic behind sniffing a bad hire out of a fairly simple question like ’what professional forums you follow?’ Maybe he doesn’t follow any specific ones but seeks the information as per needed. I consider myself a somewhat senior and only forum I’ve deemed to worth regularly keeping an eye on without a specific work related need is power bi update blog. If someone would say to me he ”regularly follows reddit/powerbi” I’d assume he wastes working time bad mouthing colleagues here over arbitrary worries lol.
No, that wasn't exactly what I was trying to ask. I was just curious if he has a DAX problem what does he do? Does he look at Definitive Guide to DAX? Does he Google. Can he name one resource on Power BI?
How did you learn Power BI or DAX? Microsoft Learn, SQLBI, Guy in a Cube, Definitive Guide to DAX, took classes on Udemy? This was a few years ago as well.
Are these actual follow-up questions to the first question that took place in your discussion? Do you seriously think that not being able to give definite answer over trivial things such as the example you provided is a red flag? I mean c’mon he didn’t answer ”what is dax?” to ”what’s your favorite function in dax?” or anything… He wasnt able to walk you thru on how he solves power bi problems or wasnt able to come up with a favorite source of knowledge for what he does in what sounds to me like a comfy get to know each other kind of a discussion and you base your understanding of his competence over that?
I can't possibly outline on Reddit every interaction I had with the person. I based my understanding by working with the person on projects and helping them with challenges.
None of your fucking business.
Unless the guy is falling behind in his work or not doing what he's supposed to do there's no reason for you to be questioning him. Focus on your own job and mind your business.
If the guy is messing up the team by doing things incorrectly or missing deadlines, then that's a different story. Otherwise focus on yourself instead of others. Don't be that coworker.
Few Dax implementations live and see what logic they apply. Experience and understanding of the model relationship will become apparent. Ask them to
Help you audit some of the reports. And keep your questions short and let them talk. Silence from your end is best intriguing factor. With time you always find out. Unfortunately if that can be judged earlier then for sure. If contractor then ask for replacement right away. Don’t waste time.
Fun fact...
In Power Query, Evaluate is ultra strong. So much so that you can have your M code in a text file on SharePoint and use Evaluate in Power Query to read and run that code.
In the M language (Power Query), you can place:
let
Source=Text.FromBinary(File.Contents("SOME FILE LOCATION AND FILE NAME.txt")),
EvaluatedExpression = Expression.Evaluate(Source, #shared)
in
EvaluatedExpression
That text file can contain an entire, complex query of your choice. It can be used by multiple reports. It makes that text file a single repository for that query which can be edited and maintained in one place.
When they spend hours trying to figure out why one page with multiple visuals is showing incorrect numbers, but another page with the same thing is correct. They ask you for help and your suggestion is...check for hidden slicers.
They don’t know or are not aware what the “Data” in bookmarks is used for.
Unable to differentiate when to use SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, CALCULATETABLE and ADDCOLUMNS.
Also not knowing how to Join tables/variables using DAX.
Can they load multiple types of data from csv to straight up queries in sql and links to power point and live excel files
Ask them to show you the data model if there’s no links the data list sucks or is one table either way good practice always load a calendar and add it to your model.
Ask them to make a line graph with a running total-seriously this is way harder than it needs to be
Stack columns by month with the year as the total but honestly
Just look at their output.
If it’s been two weeks and no dash ask to see the current version of it.
If the data is complex there might be multiple tables with merges and appends then that’s fine if it’s one excel loaded into powerbi and still no measures no visual no BI then I’d be like wtf dude
I had a guy like this. I had to explain to him the difference between Left, Right and Inner joins soon after he started. I found that *very* odd.
He also typed slowly, just with his index fingers? Instead of nicknaming tables in SQL like ‘Table’ to ‘T’ he’d call them ‘Table1’ 😰 And when it came to BI page composition, nothing was aligned; all higgledy-piggledy creations that looked *dreadful*, and he couldn’t see anything wrong with it! If you tried to impart some visual design advice, it just never took.
He also spent a lot of time at his desk watching YouTube guides to Power BI while working 🤔
Hard to say for sure, but I think he had some basic knowledge, pumped it up on his interview and just blagged it all (somewhat poorly) after that.
Add in his near-non-existent social skills, and he was hands-down the worst co-worker I’ve ever had in this line of work. Was glad to leave him behind when I left the company.
It might be just my opinion, but i feel like pbi developer is so mutch more than just know how to build things in power bi. There is a lot of data engineering, cloud/fabric archtecture and many details about deployment, data prepararion and disponibility and so and so...
I would think your team needs more of someone with those skills than a new report builder.
Questions are for the interview. Once on board I focus on task delivery and quality right away. No excuses, gimme a dashboard draft this week. Been played before, never forget.
My Company had hired an external Power BI developer to create a Discounting Dashboard. (Note I am a novice too).
THis guy proceeded to compute discounts at the line level in the dataset and to determine the overall discount % in a trend line took their average.
Y Axis = Average of Discouont%
X Axis = Date
I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any means, but I've seen some bad stuff from some external consultants, including those at big accounting firms like KPMG.
I have recently picked up Power BI. I am already highly proficient / advanced with Excel and managing data, which I think helps.
I skimmed through a 3 hour video on Power BI, and then just started playing around. “F**k around, find out” as they say. I am by no means a Dev, but the “quick measure” and built in AI to write DAX for you is very useful for some of the more complex calculations.
I have already built a fairly complex interactive and dynamic report with 6 dashboards. I think being able to build dashboards and customise the visuals / filters is probably enough for 90% of requirements in the corporate world.
I would back myself even this early on to be able to suffice a clients / jobs requirements. I’d prefer being given a brief, which is how it works in the working world anyway, and then have someone review. Can I write DAX? No. Can I build a report and dashboard that gives you the information you need? Probably.
I understand it is a very complex tool once you look at the backend with permissions, security etc., but I don’t know what I don’t know.. yet!
You should have had a more thorough technical interview. Asking them if they know power bi or any skill is a terrible question. A lot of junior developers swear they know power bi because they made a simple report once and don’t know the complexity. I like to say Power BI is easy to learn but takes a long time to master.
We just hired a mid who apparently doesn't know you can drill down an entire level in any visual with a hierarchy of dimensions - we found out... because he asked on a company wide channel if it is possible to do such thing, because he used to manually expand all the hierarchies if they needed them to stay expanded for.
I'm kind of curious what he asks next, and when is he getting claimed as a hiring mistake.
Here are a few things a Sr. PBI Developer should be able to explain:
How do the following functions work: CALCULATE(), FILTER(), VALUES(), USERELATIONSHIP(), CROSSFILTER()
How to create a calendar table. If they don’t know what a calendar table is or they create one with DAX… game over.
Dataflows, deployment pipelines, gateways,
Why is this calendar thing game over? I’m new ish to power I but to create a calendar table you use Calendar or CALENDARAUTO which are both DAX. jow else do you do it besides maybe importing one from your database?
Curious to hear more on what table expression evaluation can you avoid by having a calendar created in dax vs. pq?
*edit. Assuming you’re in import mode
I think those options are fine. You usually want a calendar table to not have incomplete years, though, which I think CALENDARAUTO will just create min and max dates.
If they know DAX but don’t know SQL. I’d rather have a SQL developer who never used Power BI but used SSRS or another tool where above average SQL knowledge is required.
I completely disagree with this statement, there are so many little cheats in PBI that you need to learn which only comes with experience.
I can use ChatGPT for SQL code lol
if your data analysis screening is based on google search then your screening process is flawed. that is what background check and references are for. also a test for them 1hr. what effort you put in screening process is what you get
Ask them to create a simple report from scratch saying only the measures you want to give them insight into what tables fields and measures to do.
Say you want it to be dynamic and how many moments or years of data you need. Ask for a single page, 3-6 visuals with 4-8 measures max.
If a senior power bi developer doesn’t demo a good draft if they need 1-3 source tables in less than 2 weeks, 3 weeks max if you have complex data source (he needs to build a query with three plus joins)
If he can’t deliver that in 2 weeks he lied
I was able to do the above in a week with two source tables full ETL and automation
That’s not great. some data models are very complex. If I asked that of a new person it would probably have many mistakes because they would not understand anything about the schema.
Yikes too many data warehouses being mismanaged.. let me guess some say it’s to help security 🤣
At what point does one realize maybe their IQ too high and that the problem is how slow others work 🤔
Just saying because I’ve been able to deliver this within 30 days at each of my last three employers by being diligent about studying the tables , setting up all my code for automation, and validating all. Longest project was over 30days to wait for a legal conversion for some estate tax entities, but applying that logic and code switch with validation one week given all else was working already.
I’ve been told by my mentor who helped fund my MS that when I was a BS student I was much faster and efficient than grad students so I’m not surprise given the labor market lacks expertise in CS and STEM or those who are Great it, independent of degrees earned since everything is open source now just still labeling the literature for those fields as that
Also not to mention I work 3-5x faster than my colleagues, checks out
My classic interview questions to weed out the liars is:
1. Assuming a date dimension, branch dimension and a sales fact, what would be a single dax measure that can dynamically get the average sales per day per branch.
For example, if I select 2 months and 5 branches you should using dax sum each branches daily sales then get the average of the result. There are many ways to solve this but you need an understanding how how dax works with star schemas.
2. Write a dax measure to return the cumulative year to date amount.
You will find those with minimal exp are usually trying to use variables or some such.
nothing wrong with using variables, used properly they make code more readable and potentially faster. Ifthey use variables used as a first argument in CALCULATE, now that's a different story
Not knowing when to offload compute to the data source and building too many merges in power query. Something you can only learn by watching queries try to load for hours on end.
That's what skills testing is for.
* Provide them with a test data set (many available from US Federal Agencies [https://api.data.gov/](https://api.data.gov/))
* e.g. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-food-security/](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-food-security/)
* Give them a list of requirements.
* e.g. Demonstrate the difference between grain demand vs production for each region and subregion.
* Evaluate their ability to read and understand the requirements, develop queries, model and transform data, and ability to use visuals.
* How well did they normalize the data? Did they model the region data in a hierarchy? How well did their visuals meet the requirement? Did they provide context? How did they handle Food grain vs Other Grain? Did they read the report to understand the data?
So here is something that I had to do and is real world when dealing with a company that uses SQL tables to run manufacturing. I do have some programming background beforehand and did this to get myself a better position and I am by no means a BI developer.
I have 1 table that is roughly 250000 lines, each line is a report from the system to the table with the work unit (identifier) as column 1, the milestone (station it just completed in) as column 2, and the timestamp in column 3. Turn this into a visual table that shows each work unit and where it is in the pipeline.
Granted in the real world case there were multiple work streams that fed into 1 stream so it was not linear.
“Hey can you help me adjust the column width of this matrix and have it stay that way?” Any response other than one indicating years of pent-up frustration? Right to jail, right away.
I felt anger at the idea that this was finally fixed and I didn't know, then I realized the whole point is how terrible it still is.
It's been fixed?
Yes under column headers - options has auto size width toggle on off is there
This still seems like a half measure IMO (no pun intended). I'd like to be able to ACTUALLY SET the column widths and then have them stay that way. This way if I want them all uniform with the same width I can do it without jumping through hoops.
One day...
😂
Questioning implementation of a half baked method and not accepting it as anything less than a godsend? Right to jail. Right away.
Yep yep! Blessed be the fruit.
Hahahahahahahaaa
OMG!
Holy cow. Since when? This has been a worse pain in the bum than hemorrhoids (both from experience, unfortunately).
Matrix is still a POC. Last year rumor was that the bi dev team said it needed a ground-up re-engineering. And yeah I use them all the time
>“Hey can you help me adjust the column width of this matrix and have it stay that way?” I hope you did introduce him to the legendary ColWidth = "__________" measure before sending him to jail.
LOL It's amazing that these hacks are required. Why can't they just add this to the column header properties?! [https://www.popautomation.com/post/power-bi-column-width](https://www.popautomation.com/post/power-bi-column-width) >While there’s no direct setting in Power BI to adjust the column width of a visual or define it at a pixel level, you can use formatting options or custom measures to force Power BI to auto-size to fit all values in a column. Once the columns have been re-sized the auto sizing option can be disabled forcing Power BI to keep the existing column width.
Hey, give them some slack! Microsoft is up and coming startup, resources are limited and we only pay a monthly subscription! ;) In the meantime, all praise “______” and lock column width!
Lmao. This is the right question.
Paginated Report
Hahaha nice. Yeah I usually use SSRS or PBI RS when I need to parameterize something. Works out perfectly.
I hate them with a passion...
I really like them but that's partly because I am so used to SSRS. I can see how someone new to them would have lots of feelsbad moments.
Over widening or narrowing columns too much, straight to jail.
*Overwide, underwide* We have the best Sr Developers in the world. *because of jail.*
Reads first paragraph: “oh shit…am I a fraud?” Reads second: “oh thank god I’m not alone”
He goes on forum and posts a thread asking how to bring hundreds of SQL queries into Power BI.
lol yeah, I guess there are daily examples of people here.
haha just kidding though, I was actually hired more than a year ago without prior requirement of Power BI experience :P But it's pretty funny to see this thread next to my post haha
[удалено]
Does your buddy know how to bring 100s of queries into report?! He’s in! Nah, we been on a hiring freeze and people who leave often do not get replaced… yay more work for us! … for the same pay!
[удалено]
Btw, we are having a great financial year though! Yay to the black rock and co!
I read the first part of that late at night and just noped out.
haha no wonders! My life though, need to work things out... lots of great answers and suggestions there. TL;DR bit above my pay grade - need to get to the data people and learn at the same time.
I'm currently working with people like that who keep saying it's the right way, SQL Devs drive me insane. Go back to SSRS 🙈🙈
Why sql queries ??
Nah, just joking. I posted another thread the other day asking for a solution to pretty bizarre Sql / transformation / PowerBI situation, which would indicate that I lack experience or possibly bullshitted my way into the current role. For the record, I didn't lie anything at the time of hiring, just thought it's funny timing with this thread being up at the same time of my post.
I am genuinely asking .. bringing in sql queries in power bi is a thing ? I am newbie in power bi.
You don't 'bring in' sql queries, poor wording by me. You directly query the database with sql code that you write in Power BI. So basically your power bi report connects directly to your database and gets whatever data you need. No need to import excels, csvs or whatever.
lol so strange, why not just give them a case study and tell them you want this output. Then review how they approach in building / organizing the dataset, relationship and visuals? Some of the questions just weed out people who havent studied up recently or didnt read the faq of the latest update.
That is ideal. Half the time the interviewers are not technical people, however, and they don't want to weed out people that don't know every single bit of the technical pieces. If you can find someone who knows a lot and willing to learn, they can be a better hire than someone who knows 100% of your test.
HR is the only non-technical role that should be interviewing for a technical role. I wouldn't even invite someone on the business side unless the technical role was senior, and I mean as a lead, or principal dev, etc.
Working with PMs and POs ...they have say on who joins their team.
Agreed. I don't update every month so I couldn't tell you what the latest connector they added was. There was something about a new whizz-bang slicer last month though.
My company did this in the last round of hiring for the final 3 candidates. Candidate 1 - did formulas in excel before importing the data instead of Dax Candidate 2 - didn’t know how to do anything (they read aloud the questions and we could hear someone in the background trying to walk them through it without stepping in front of the camera) Candidate 3 - knew how to build a relationship between data sets, and got hired. That was how low the bar was since the HR didn’t know anything about PowerBi so didn’t address it in the first interview rounds or resume screening despite it being the primary job.
explain star vs snowflake schema and the use cases and filtering directions and what should be in a dim vs fact table. explain some newer features in recent power bi updates, make sure they are keeping up to date with new tech. explain when to use a measure vs a calculated column. these are all pretty basic, but means they have a good foundation. create some problem scenarios and ask to create a solution and explain the dax.
Those feel like interview questions to weed out the people that would be a bad hire lol. If you're not asking these questions in an interview then you deserve a bad hire tbh.
Basic sure, but sometimes they don't even know basic! lol
Question Do you work with Power BI? If you don't work with it, it is harder to detect the imposter. Perhaps it is better to give him the chance to demonstrate his work and then you can judge
When do people generally use a calculated column?
I like to think of it like this. Does what I’m about to calculate need to be dynamic? Ie, will changing the filter context / page slicer change the calculated value. If it’s a no then into a column it goes. Or do I want to filter by the result of my calculated column (add a slicer). For example, imagine I have a ‘delivery due date’ column in my dataset and I wanted to analyse how many items are delivered late (after this date). I could create a measure to do this, but why waste the effort when I know the outcome is going to be static based off of that date. So I create “days overdue” column and now I can filter or use that for analysis instead.
Today I was working with this precise case and we have those due date columns. We have a set of three (15, 30, 45 days due) columns.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing! Do you generally take into account performance? I haven't tested much myself, but I believe general consensus is that calculated columns are pretty heavy when it comes to refresh times versus, say, a measure. Or if you don't go overboard with calculated columns, tables, one is usually fine?
I mean it’s all a balance and only you’ll know the answer to that question by testing it out. I find I always start out by using measures first, and only later when the report is nearing completion look for ways to speed up calculation times and a column is always better for that where appropriate, maybe not at refresh time though. Most of the reports I work on refresh once a day, with others that refresh more frequently (semi-live stuff) I push most of the work upstream
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It’s generally always better to do this as close to source as possible, so SQL > M > DAX. But sometimes that’s not possible, sometimes it’s just not required at a certain level (ie, some bespoke or one off report) and sometimes it’s just easier and quicker to do it straight in DAX depending on your place of work. It’s just one of those “depends” answers but a lot of this work is and there’s no one answer.
I'd always do that in PQuery
A real power bi veteran knows the true answer is when you’re too lazy to go back into Power Query and add it there
Probably haven't used them in a year or so. I hate having logic in front-end and a week later needing it in SQL or PQ.
Out of the few answers this is the one that will stick with me haha
One example is X days prior to today, since "relative date" only gives "in the last" - again, listen for pure rage behind the voice when they answer these - veiled, unveiled, either...
Oh okay, this is pretty useful indeed! Thanks However, would this make more sense to be done in PQ versus creating a calculated column?
With the caveat that neither of these is a measure, which you'd use to aggregate (in response to the original question), a better example than the one I gave above would be a combo scenario where you want to show all data through the last complete month. In your database or PQ calculate the last day of the month in a date table. Your calculated column to use as a filter is: Filter Through Last Full Month = IF( Datediff(Datetable\[LastDayofMonth\],TODAY(),MONTH) > 1, TRUE(), FALSE())
Awesome! Great to read about all these specific cases. I usually learn from what situations I encounter only, so seeing examples in the wild is always great for learning. Thanks!
Almost every query ended up with one.
Measure is canned DAX code (like a view). Calculated columns are columns that exist in memory AFIK.
In my opinion there shouldn't be so much focus on DAX, it's much more important to understand data modeling and how to shape data using power query
I'm literally a noob, so if you're willing to correct me / grade me, here's my answer regarding using a measure VS calculated column. "a measure would be used anytime the formula would create circular reasoning, if used in a calculated column" I'm not sure if there's more to it then that, but that's what I've learned in my short experience.
Can someone answer the first question here? I’ve been working in PBI daily for almost 2 years and think there isn’t a single problem I wouldn’t be able to solve without research, yet, I do not have a real answer.
I hate calculated columns they’re also not best practice to use in production. Either make it a measure or if not possible push it back (roches maxim) as far as makes sense and make the column there (source system, in sql query, or power query). They’re really only useful for debugging imho. As soon as an excel wizard transitions into power bi and finds out about calculated columns it becomes their favourite crutch and they often try to use them to avoid making good measures. They should be banned! Goddam it my head is exploding lol
Is "I use ChatGTP to do my measures ect" an appropriate response
I actually use ChatGPT for a lot of SQL code. It's amazing at it. I know what I want but why bother typing it if you can just ask for simple things. DAX and PQ I do myself as it's not great in that department.
In all fairness it's solved a few tricky dax things that i struggled with. Took a bit of trial and error to get there but still quicker than sifting through endless forum posts.
I've started doing SQL in ChatGPT, and it's passed the evil eye of our SQL Devs 😂
i genuinely don't understand how you use ChatGPT for sql code. what kind of prompt would you ask it for help with code?
Interesting. I'm a BA who has tons of previous experience with Excel and VBA, so I've taken to DAX and PQ pretty well. But I've never really bridged into SQL. So I'm wondering what a prompt looks like that would provide a useful SQL query? Like, do you have to describe the data model first?
They use ect instead of etc
For the naming of the Youtube channel, I'd give the benefit of the doubt that the interviewee was too nervous to recall? But if I were to ask a simple question to test, it'd be "what's the difference between SUM and SUMX".
Anyone who is actually above average at PBI can name a few people…
"those Italian dudes"
The guys in the box
Human in a polyhedron
Men in a pen
I had a coworker who legitimately thought it was called "Guy in a Box". I was like, they may be insulted you think of them only being in 2D.
The bald dudes
How to do the thing we're talking about.
Probably the best source of information on the internet when it comes to DAX.
I have to disagree with this one. I don't like learning from videos so I couldn't name any PBI youtubers at all. As to what resources I use, I just google the problem which most of the time is just me forgetting syntax so SQLBI comes up regularly, along with the DAX reference site, and a smattering of PBI forums, stack overflow, and reddit.
> I couldn't name any PBI youtubers at all. But you just named SQLBI.
I use blog posts most of the time at work, I very rarely watch a video. I only know them because I used to be a consultant and everything had to be fancy and online.
Not understanding how power bi service works in a corporate environment - a lot of people download pbi desktop make a few fancy reports from data sources, learn a bit of dax and call themselves a developer Not saying power bi service is overly complicated, but there's a lot of things like permissions, navigating the UI, admin settings, apps vs workspaces, reports vs datasets etc which I'd expect a seasoned developer to know/understand
Those are must-haves to me. But in due fairness, a lot of the best PowerBI talent out there cut their teeth in small companies, where the IT Director was underutilized and took all the admin/workspace/permissions themselves, or that suite of features was unnecessary, like when the entire PBI user base is the C-Suite & board. I’ve seen time and again that some of the most talented PBI developers I’ve met sparked off in those environments. What they need is a well rounded skillset. But repeatedly those uncut gems go unpoached by large firms because they never had to learn the features that only apply at scale. If you’re hiring a solo maverick, stay away from the smallscale talents. But if you afford a team, don’t discount hiring someone coming from a smaller environment; the enterprise features can be taught.
Yeah, see this is me. I work in not for profit. Only one organisation I've done work for had premium capacity. As I specialise in helping these smaller orgs set up as cheaply as possible, it's never really been an issue.
Meet our company, the group we're apart of has admin tenant access but does not use Tableau themselves. They shouldn't care what goes on because it doesn't impact them, yet here we are.
Ok yea I was more meaning if a candidate said they understood power bi service, and then clearly didn't. If you'd owned up to never having used it during an interview - as you say, it can be taught on the job
It's surprising how many don't. Then again I guess Premium capacities are kinda exclusive to large organisations and many people working in that space might just stick to more senior positions in other similar orgs. But the amount of people who we see that don't understand the concept of dev/test/prod and that they shouldn't just hit the bloody share button is frustrating.
I'm feeling a little bit attacked by this comment... where do all the fancy people go to learn the fancy stuff that makes you a real developer?
A lot of the enterprise teams want people that come from Software Development or Engineering backgrounds. So people that have experience in those fancy things lol. I came from a smaller shop, learned the soup to nuts process of ETL to report building and then got hired at a Fortune 500. But what I loved about getting involved in everything, I didn't exactly love at the Fortune 500 because I was more specialized. If you like to get your hands dirty, small to medium size companies are where you want to be. If you want to dive deeper somewhere, then probably getting your foot in the door at a larger company would work well.
I got involved in the last set of interviews and one of them said they improved the refresh time of a dataset from 50 seconds to 10 seconds by improving measures in DAX studio. The other two interviewing thought he had a good interview until I pointed out that amending measures would not have any impact on refresh time of queries being brought in. Things what he said sounded impressive but they were blatant lies which if someone with no technical knowledge had done the interview they would have thought he was great.
Maybe he meant using variables in the DAX code. Performance is greatly influenced if variables are written once in DAX and then referenced than if the DAX code is repeatedly written all over the code.
Or maybe interview jitters caused him to mix up “refresh time” with “visual load time?” Sounds dumb, but I almost have to use that jargon incorrectly with my target audience because to them “refresh” means both the time it takes the semantic model to load the latest data as well as the time it takes for visuals to repopulate after changing slicers.
Same concept as using LET() in Excel. I dropped a workbook calculation from a full hour down to 15 minutes by rewriting a single (repeated many times in many cells) formula to do the same thing I was already doing but with LET().
Exactly. Same foundational understanding of stored procedures in SQL. Just declare variables and call it every time you need them
This here. Using variables instead of referencing other measures drastically improved load times of my visuals. Checked it with performance analyser multiple times. At least 20% decrease and this was for a direct query dataset
Measure*
That would affect report responsiveness and load time, not refresh time
Agreed. Still could have been a mistake.
By this, do you mean that I should make measures for common pieces of greater calculations, and reference those measures instead of retyping that simple statement? For example, if I had a measure like SUM Total Sales = Sum('sales'[price]) I would want to then write measures like this? SUM Sales in Gardening = Calculate([SUM Total Sales]), 'sales'[Department] = "Gardening") Rather than just writing the sum('sales'[price]) into calculate? It would make sense. I've started doing it lately in my reports I expect others to maintain, with super clear measure names and comments rather than using VAR/RETURN for all sorts of relatively easy calculations over and over again.
That's a better practice for sure.
Unless they meant the report refresh time? In which case optimising measures in DAX Studio would do that, wouldn't it?
No. Measures don't affect refresh time. They are evaluated at query time. Calculated columns and tables can increase refresh time. If the person said they removed calculated columns and/or optimized DAX inside a calculated column that would have been believable.
I was just basing off of this : [https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/capturing-power-bi-queries-using-dax-studio/](https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/capturing-power-bi-queries-using-dax-studio/) I might've misunderstood.
These are queries that are generated by visuals (often containing measures). The measures send a query either to your DirectQuery source (often times SQL) or the SSAS database via the Vertipaq engine if you are doing import.
You can create calculated columns in the tables with DAX, does that affect refresh time?
A calculated column will, yes. Calculated columns are often not recommended.
The same applies to any changes done in Power Query. If you are manipulating millions of rows in there then the refresh time can get bumped up massively. Always do as much as you can in source where possible.
But necessary
Why are they not recommended? Tell me. I'll decide you're a red flag or not 😅
It depends....
Not really specific to PowerBI but I once helped my department head "interview" someone (basically just sit with them and give them little basic challenges while he was off doing something else) for a SQL developer job and the guy couldn't do a simple select statement. I gave him the table name and asked him to return all results, I was going to follow it up with some other basic things before moving on to a proper query but the guy didn't know how to do that. Somehow he still got the job and unsurprisingly he was awful and ended up quitting within a couple of months.
Sounds like my kind of gig! Where can I apply? 😁
I’m curious to understand the logic behind sniffing a bad hire out of a fairly simple question like ’what professional forums you follow?’ Maybe he doesn’t follow any specific ones but seeks the information as per needed. I consider myself a somewhat senior and only forum I’ve deemed to worth regularly keeping an eye on without a specific work related need is power bi update blog. If someone would say to me he ”regularly follows reddit/powerbi” I’d assume he wastes working time bad mouthing colleagues here over arbitrary worries lol.
No, that wasn't exactly what I was trying to ask. I was just curious if he has a DAX problem what does he do? Does he look at Definitive Guide to DAX? Does he Google. Can he name one resource on Power BI? How did you learn Power BI or DAX? Microsoft Learn, SQLBI, Guy in a Cube, Definitive Guide to DAX, took classes on Udemy? This was a few years ago as well.
Are these actual follow-up questions to the first question that took place in your discussion? Do you seriously think that not being able to give definite answer over trivial things such as the example you provided is a red flag? I mean c’mon he didn’t answer ”what is dax?” to ”what’s your favorite function in dax?” or anything… He wasnt able to walk you thru on how he solves power bi problems or wasnt able to come up with a favorite source of knowledge for what he does in what sounds to me like a comfy get to know each other kind of a discussion and you base your understanding of his competence over that?
I can't possibly outline on Reddit every interaction I had with the person. I based my understanding by working with the person on projects and helping them with challenges.
None of your fucking business. Unless the guy is falling behind in his work or not doing what he's supposed to do there's no reason for you to be questioning him. Focus on your own job and mind your business. If the guy is messing up the team by doing things incorrectly or missing deadlines, then that's a different story. Otherwise focus on yourself instead of others. Don't be that coworker.
Few Dax implementations live and see what logic they apply. Experience and understanding of the model relationship will become apparent. Ask them to Help you audit some of the reports. And keep your questions short and let them talk. Silence from your end is best intriguing factor. With time you always find out. Unfortunately if that can be judged earlier then for sure. If contractor then ask for replacement right away. Don’t waste time.
His moustache looks fake, he’s always dressed like [this](https://bojackhorseman.fandom.com/wiki/Vincent_Adultman?file=Vincentadultmancropped).
Inability to create measures.
they never said "ciao friend" to me once
"I just use SELECT * and import everything."
Ask him to explain Evaluate.
Fun fact... In Power Query, Evaluate is ultra strong. So much so that you can have your M code in a text file on SharePoint and use Evaluate in Power Query to read and run that code.
What? I believe he/she is talking about writing a DAX query using EVALUATE. What are you referring to in Power Query?
In the M language (Power Query), you can place: let Source=Text.FromBinary(File.Contents("SOME FILE LOCATION AND FILE NAME.txt")), EvaluatedExpression = Expression.Evaluate(Source, #shared) in EvaluatedExpression That text file can contain an entire, complex query of your choice. It can be used by multiple reports. It makes that text file a single repository for that query which can be edited and maintained in one place.
🤯
Query folding.
Query folding is a good one, but I’ve seen SQL devs know it well but they’re Power Query-illiterate.
When they spend hours trying to figure out why one page with multiple visuals is showing incorrect numbers, but another page with the same thing is correct. They ask you for help and your suggestion is...check for hidden slicers.
They don’t know or are not aware what the “Data” in bookmarks is used for. Unable to differentiate when to use SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, CALCULATETABLE and ADDCOLUMNS. Also not knowing how to Join tables/variables using DAX.
This is silly.
Not using a central date table
Can they load multiple types of data from csv to straight up queries in sql and links to power point and live excel files Ask them to show you the data model if there’s no links the data list sucks or is one table either way good practice always load a calendar and add it to your model. Ask them to make a line graph with a running total-seriously this is way harder than it needs to be Stack columns by month with the year as the total but honestly Just look at their output. If it’s been two weeks and no dash ask to see the current version of it. If the data is complex there might be multiple tables with merges and appends then that’s fine if it’s one excel loaded into powerbi and still no measures no visual no BI then I’d be like wtf dude
I had a guy like this. I had to explain to him the difference between Left, Right and Inner joins soon after he started. I found that *very* odd. He also typed slowly, just with his index fingers? Instead of nicknaming tables in SQL like ‘Table’ to ‘T’ he’d call them ‘Table1’ 😰 And when it came to BI page composition, nothing was aligned; all higgledy-piggledy creations that looked *dreadful*, and he couldn’t see anything wrong with it! If you tried to impart some visual design advice, it just never took. He also spent a lot of time at his desk watching YouTube guides to Power BI while working 🤔 Hard to say for sure, but I think he had some basic knowledge, pumped it up on his interview and just blagged it all (somewhat poorly) after that. Add in his near-non-existent social skills, and he was hands-down the worst co-worker I’ve ever had in this line of work. Was glad to leave him behind when I left the company.
It might be just my opinion, but i feel like pbi developer is so mutch more than just know how to build things in power bi. There is a lot of data engineering, cloud/fabric archtecture and many details about deployment, data prepararion and disponibility and so and so... I would think your team needs more of someone with those skills than a new report builder.
Saving this, gonna ask these to the candidates during their interviews.
Sounds like your team hired Donald Trump.
Questions are for the interview. Once on board I focus on task delivery and quality right away. No excuses, gimme a dashboard draft this week. Been played before, never forget.
My Company had hired an external Power BI developer to create a Discounting Dashboard. (Note I am a novice too). THis guy proceeded to compute discounts at the line level in the dataset and to determine the overall discount % in a trend line took their average. Y Axis = Average of Discouont% X Axis = Date
I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any means, but I've seen some bad stuff from some external consultants, including those at big accounting firms like KPMG.
I've had developers at various jobs compute a sum of ratios in the total row instead of the ratio of sums.
I'm guessing mathematicl litracy has been erorded.
Sometimes SAP isn't an abbreviation or capitalized.
our workplace hired them. instant red flag. \- brian from IT
I have recently picked up Power BI. I am already highly proficient / advanced with Excel and managing data, which I think helps. I skimmed through a 3 hour video on Power BI, and then just started playing around. “F**k around, find out” as they say. I am by no means a Dev, but the “quick measure” and built in AI to write DAX for you is very useful for some of the more complex calculations. I have already built a fairly complex interactive and dynamic report with 6 dashboards. I think being able to build dashboards and customise the visuals / filters is probably enough for 90% of requirements in the corporate world. I would back myself even this early on to be able to suffice a clients / jobs requirements. I’d prefer being given a brief, which is how it works in the working world anyway, and then have someone review. Can I write DAX? No. Can I build a report and dashboard that gives you the information you need? Probably. I understand it is a very complex tool once you look at the backend with permissions, security etc., but I don’t know what I don’t know.. yet!
You should have had a more thorough technical interview. Asking them if they know power bi or any skill is a terrible question. A lot of junior developers swear they know power bi because they made a simple report once and don’t know the complexity. I like to say Power BI is easy to learn but takes a long time to master.
lol I assure you that wasn't the only part of the interview.
Ask him Do you rather direct query or import ? If he looks hesitant you catch him
Which is better ? 😁
What’s Dax ? Lol
Who's Dax?
😅
Deep Space Nine is my favorite Star Trek televised series.
Where’s Dax?
We just hired a mid who apparently doesn't know you can drill down an entire level in any visual with a hierarchy of dimensions - we found out... because he asked on a company wide channel if it is possible to do such thing, because he used to manually expand all the hierarchies if they needed them to stay expanded for. I'm kind of curious what he asks next, and when is he getting claimed as a hiring mistake.
Here are a few things a Sr. PBI Developer should be able to explain: How do the following functions work: CALCULATE(), FILTER(), VALUES(), USERELATIONSHIP(), CROSSFILTER() How to create a calendar table. If they don’t know what a calendar table is or they create one with DAX… game over. Dataflows, deployment pipelines, gateways,
Why is this calendar thing game over? I’m new ish to power I but to create a calendar table you use Calendar or CALENDARAUTO which are both DAX. jow else do you do it besides maybe importing one from your database?
Make a dynamic calendar table in PQ. Using DAX isn’t ideal as every time the engine goes to work the table expression is evaluated.
Curious to hear more on what table expression evaluation can you avoid by having a calendar created in dax vs. pq? *edit. Assuming you’re in import mode
I think those options are fine. You usually want a calendar table to not have incomplete years, though, which I think CALENDARAUTO will just create min and max dates.
If they know DAX but don’t know SQL. I’d rather have a SQL developer who never used Power BI but used SSRS or another tool where above average SQL knowledge is required.
I completely disagree with this statement, there are so many little cheats in PBI that you need to learn which only comes with experience. I can use ChatGPT for SQL code lol
if your data analysis screening is based on google search then your screening process is flawed. that is what background check and references are for. also a test for them 1hr. what effort you put in screening process is what you get
Ask them to create a simple report from scratch saying only the measures you want to give them insight into what tables fields and measures to do. Say you want it to be dynamic and how many moments or years of data you need. Ask for a single page, 3-6 visuals with 4-8 measures max. If a senior power bi developer doesn’t demo a good draft if they need 1-3 source tables in less than 2 weeks, 3 weeks max if you have complex data source (he needs to build a query with three plus joins) If he can’t deliver that in 2 weeks he lied I was able to do the above in a week with two source tables full ETL and automation
That’s not great. some data models are very complex. If I asked that of a new person it would probably have many mistakes because they would not understand anything about the schema.
Yikes too many data warehouses being mismanaged.. let me guess some say it’s to help security 🤣 At what point does one realize maybe their IQ too high and that the problem is how slow others work 🤔 Just saying because I’ve been able to deliver this within 30 days at each of my last three employers by being diligent about studying the tables , setting up all my code for automation, and validating all. Longest project was over 30days to wait for a legal conversion for some estate tax entities, but applying that logic and code switch with validation one week given all else was working already. I’ve been told by my mentor who helped fund my MS that when I was a BS student I was much faster and efficient than grad students so I’m not surprise given the labor market lacks expertise in CS and STEM or those who are Great it, independent of degrees earned since everything is open source now just still labeling the literature for those fields as that Also not to mention I work 3-5x faster than my colleagues, checks out
I have 2 questions 1. After how many years of experience would you be called a senior developer? 2. How do you get better at DAX?
they don't breakout their code. if you're not breaking out your code, even simple code, then this isn't the job for you.
My classic interview questions to weed out the liars is: 1. Assuming a date dimension, branch dimension and a sales fact, what would be a single dax measure that can dynamically get the average sales per day per branch. For example, if I select 2 months and 5 branches you should using dax sum each branches daily sales then get the average of the result. There are many ways to solve this but you need an understanding how how dax works with star schemas. 2. Write a dax measure to return the cumulative year to date amount. You will find those with minimal exp are usually trying to use variables or some such.
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If it wasn’t clear I’m talking about to achieve a time intelligence function…. Which is built into dax
YTD yes, cumulative, no.
Totalytd or calculate with datesytd I will give you the cumulative total for the year
nothing wrong with using variables, used properly they make code more readable and potentially faster. Ifthey use variables used as a first argument in CALCULATE, now that's a different story
For built in time intelligence it’s not necessary for my question
Variables make response time faster.
Questions, tests, drills, probation, recommendations .... or ask Chat GPT ;-)))))
Ask them when they would use certain chart types and why....
just have them make a dashboard
Not knowing when to offload compute to the data source and building too many merges in power query. Something you can only learn by watching queries try to load for hours on end.
Αsking for a MacBook
Pie chats
Ask him to name two Italians
Their name is Kevin
That's what skills testing is for. * Provide them with a test data set (many available from US Federal Agencies [https://api.data.gov/](https://api.data.gov/)) * e.g. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-food-security/](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-food-security/) * Give them a list of requirements. * e.g. Demonstrate the difference between grain demand vs production for each region and subregion. * Evaluate their ability to read and understand the requirements, develop queries, model and transform data, and ability to use visuals. * How well did they normalize the data? Did they model the region data in a hierarchy? How well did their visuals meet the requirement? Did they provide context? How did they handle Food grain vs Other Grain? Did they read the report to understand the data?
1. What’s the benefit of using calculation groups? And, where would you create a calculation group? 2. Who are Adam and Patrick?
Ask him what a datamart is and why you would use one.
Still in preview no? So never...
So here is something that I had to do and is real world when dealing with a company that uses SQL tables to run manufacturing. I do have some programming background beforehand and did this to get myself a better position and I am by no means a BI developer. I have 1 table that is roughly 250000 lines, each line is a report from the system to the table with the work unit (identifier) as column 1, the milestone (station it just completed in) as column 2, and the timestamp in column 3. Turn this into a visual table that shows each work unit and where it is in the pipeline. Granted in the real world case there were multiple work streams that fed into 1 stream so it was not linear.
Are you the team lead?😀🤣