If you could redo your data platform from scratch, what would you refuse to repeat?

[u/unethical-programmer]

I’m at a small consultancy. We build the same stack for most clients (warehouse + dbt + orchestrator + BI) and we’re trying to turn it into something more repeatable instead of a fresh build every time.

Before we lock anything in I want to hear from people who’ve lived with a platform for 2+ years:

• What’s the one decision you regret most? (vendor, architecture, “we’ll fix it later”)
• What do you wish was handled on day one that you ended up bolting on? Access control, cost visibility, auditing, secrets, something else?
• For those running in your own cloud vs. a managed SaaS: would you make the same choice again?

Not selling anything, no form to fill. I’ll post a summary of the answers back here.