Statist: Collecting Events Is Only Half the Job
Episode participants
What we discussed on the recording
Andrey Tsybin explains how he grew from engineer to lead Statist, an internal product analytics platform. It replaces external tools and serves engineers, analysts, and other teams. Collecting events is not enough: the data must remain trustworthy and useful for decisions.
The platform begins with Android, iOS, and web SDKs; internal contributors support extra languages under core-team contracts. An event catalog records schema and meaning, helps others discover analytics, and feeds code generation. Versioning exposes incompatible changes during the application build.
A collector receives user actions and state changes. One path converts telemetry into observability metrics; another enriches events with device, location, and profile context. A hot store supports funnels, segments, and journeys, while cold storage enables deeper analysis. Cassandra holds user profiles and device links.
Teams own SDKs, ingestion, processing, analytics scenarios, and the interface. Major changes go through RFCs, ADRs, and architecture review. Delegating decisions to technical leads removes dependence on one keeper of knowledge. For growth, Tsybin recommends learning the business domain, finding the right numbers, and preserving curiosity.