Who is Nick Caldwell?

Nick Caldwell is vice president of engineering at Twitter. He has also worked with a number of other major tech companies before joining Twitter in June 2020.

Nick holds a degree in computer science and electrical engineering from MIT, and an MBA in entrepreneurial and small business operations from U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business. He currently resides in San Francisco.

What is Nick Caldwell known for?

As Twitter’s VP of engineering, Nick Caldwell is responsible for consumer-facing products and runs a team of 700 engineers.

Prior to working at Twitter, Nick was senior director of product and engineering at Google.

Nick’s stint at Google was preceded by his two-year role as VP engineering at Reddit, Inc., and 15 years at Microsoft. He was appointed to various roles during his time with Microsoft, including general manager for the power BI business intelligence suite, director of engineering, principal engineering manager, and senior software development engineer.

Nick also holds an incredible 10 patents related to natural language processing, and serves as a board member for the non-profit organization "/dev/color". He also founded Color Code, a scholarship fund for future leaders of color within tech fields. 

Outside of his professional and philanthropic duties, Nick is also a talented writer. He has authored multiple pieces for Medium, providing insights into business intelligence, software engineering, and more.

What are Nick Caldwell’s views on business intelligence?

Nick has explored his views on business intelligence (BI) in a number of his articles, including "Will the last BI vendor please turn out the lights?".

As a strong believer in “the potential for business intelligence to empower people and transform organizations”, Nick has nevertheless advised that the “future of BI doesn’t look much like a BI application at all...you don’t need everyone to become familiar with analyst tools to have an insight-driven business.”

But Nick also suggests that the "analyst is still the hero", and that "their knowledge and passion for data" will bring businesses the deepest insights. He calls for a "fundamentally different approach to BI", in which purpose-built data experiences deliver actionable insights when and where they’re really required.

Where can I learn more about Nick Caldwell?

You can learn more about Nick Caldwell by checking out his website, reading some more of his Medium posts, and by following him on Twitter.