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Will Hopkins

Links and essays

About Me — Will Hopkins

14 Jul 2024

I am a data and software engineer, photographer, and general nerd. I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My opinions here are my own, and are neither endorsed nor approved by my employer.

The point of data engineering — Will Hopkins

20 Apr 2026

https://willhopkins.dev/the-point-of-data-engineering/

The number one thing that keeps getting hammered home to me, by experience and the folks at work I'm responsible to, is that the point of data/analytics engineering is to generate value for the business. New pipelines and data sources don't inherently create any value. Usually, they'

Will Hopkins - Will Hopkins

https://willhopkins.dev/author/will/

data engineering - Will Hopkins

https://willhopkins.dev/tag/data-engineering/

Replicating Postgres — Will Hopkins

12 Apr 2026

https://willhopkins.dev/replicating-postgres/

I finally finished my albatross project: replicating all our Postgres shards to Databricks. This is great news. In broad strokes, we export our Postgres databases daily from the backup snapshot, then ingest those Parquet snapshots with Databricks. Previously, we had done a hacked-together variant of the same process using

spark - Will Hopkins

https://willhopkins.dev/tag/spark/

My highly effective habit for feeling better — Will Hopkins

30 Mar 2026

https://willhopkins.dev/my-highly-effective-habit-for-feeling-better/

Every morning I start the day by making coffee, feeding the cats, heating up a hot breakfast for myself, and then I sit with my coffee, a lap cat, and my happy light for 30-60 minutes. This trio of activities (coffee, food, light) happens as soon as I can