I’m Annie Xu. I’ve spent over a decade building data platforms — starting in data warehousing, data engineering and business intelligence, then moving into cloud architecture. Today my work spans system scaling, team leadership, driving cloud business outcomes, and applied AI.
This site is where I think out loud. I started it in 2017 because I don’t believe you understand something until you’ve written it down for someone else, and that’s still true.
Latest
- I Ignored My Blog for Four Years. An Afternoon with an AI Agent Fixed It.
- The Traditional Software Stack Is Being Turned Inside Out
- 4 Mindset Shifts to Stop Firefighting and Start Building Scale
Browse by topic
Here’s how the writing is organized.
AI & LLM Engineering
Building real applications with language models — agent architectures, LLM-powered workflows, and the gap between a prototype and something people actually use.
- Stop Prototyping, Start Shipping: The Real-World Guide to Building Full Apps with AI Assistants — the long one. Start here if you want to build something.
- The Traditional Software Stack Is Being Turned Inside Out
- I Ignored My Blog for Four Years. An Afternoon with an AI Agent Fixed It.
→ All AI & LLM Engineering posts
Google Cloud
BigQuery, Dataflow, and the data services underneath. Includes the two pieces I co-authored on the official Google Cloud blog.
- Running Claude Directly on Your BigQuery Data — Google Cloud blog
- Product Analytics for Generative AI and Media Companies with BigQuery — Google Cloud blog
- Resource Bank for Google Dataflow
Data Platform & Architecture
The infrastructure layer — choosing datastores, moving data between systems, and the trade-offs that only show up at scale.
→ All Data Platform & Architecture posts
Business Intelligence
The largest section, and the oldest. DAX, SSAS, MDX, Power BI and SQL Server, mostly written between 2017 and 2020.
Some of it is dated now. I’ve kept all of it deliberately — the arc from writing about filter context in 2017 to writing about agent architectures in 2026 is the actual story of this site, and I’d rather show the whole path than only the recent parts.
→ All Business Intelligence posts
Career & Community
Leadership, delegation, certifications, and how technical roles actually work from the inside.
- 4 Mindset Shifts to Stop Firefighting and Start Building Scale
- Different Roles in a Typical BI Project
→ All Career & Community posts
Beyond Work
Fitness, food, and the occasional recipe. Not everything has to be about data.
Elsewhere
- LinkedIn — where I post most often
- GitHub — the things I build
- About — the longer version
- Contact — speaking, questions, mentoring
Or just read everything in order.
Annie Xu 