The Joe Reis Show Data Contracts Are For Software Engineers, Not Just Data Teams w/ Mark Freeman and Chad Sanderson
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Dec 3, 2025 
Mark Freeman and Chad Sanderson, co-founders of Gable.ai, delve into their new book on data contracts, born from the chaos of balancing startup life and authorship. They discuss a crucial shift in focus from data engineers to software engineers, emphasizing the rampant technical debt threatening integration. With their insights on addressing software sprawl, they argue for a more strategic role for data teams in solving complex integration and migration challenges. Their conversation illuminates why understanding engineers' workflows is key to effective data management.
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Make Contracts Useful To Developers
- Data contracts become effective when they solve developers' problems, not when data teams beg for cooperation.
- Making contracts useful to software engineers produces high-quality data and visibility as a byproduct.
Book And Startup Were Built Together
- Mark and Chad wrote a 350-page O'Reilly book while building Gable and sponsored free digital copies to spread ideas.
- They used the book to educate the market and accelerate product adoption during early company stages.
Culture Problems Hide Tooling Gaps
- Cultural problems usually hide incentive or tooling gaps that technology can fix.
- If useful tools make the right behavior easy, people will adopt them without persuasion.
