How I went from Oracle to Postgres (with a big NoSQL detour) with Gwen Shapira

It’s rare for developers to genuinely love their database, so why does Postgres earn that kind of loyalty? In Episode 38 of Talking Postgres, Gwen Shapira, co‑founder of Nile, joins Claire to trace her path from operating Oracle at scale, through a long NoSQL chapter, to co‑founding a Postgres company that wasn’t originally meant to be one—after discovering how much Postgres quietly gets right. Gwen shares how she spun up on Postgres after years with other databases (shout-out to the Happiness Hints and a strong sense of curiosity), and why Postgres has made her appreciate Codd. We also touch on blogging as a career catalyst, the upcoming PGConf.dev conference (where a lot of PG20 work gets discussed, and where we’ll celebrate 30 years of Postgres)—and the #1 rule of consulting: it’s always the consultant’s fault.

Previously on Talking Postgres:

• Talking Postgres Ep15: My Journey to Explaining Explain with Michael Christofides
• Talking Postgres Ep24: Why mentor Postgres developers with Robert Haas
• Talking Postgres Ep30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Gwen’s company: Nile
• Ardent Performance Computing blog: PostgreSQL Happiness Hints
• Book: Just Use Postgres! by Denis Magda
• GitHub repo: HypoPG
• Wikipedia page: Codd’s 12 rules
• Blog post: Transaction Isolation in Postgres, by Gwen Shapira
• Podcast: Postgres.FM
• Discord server: PostgreSQL Hacking 

Upcoming conferences & talks mentioned:

• Conference: PGConf.dev 2026 on May 19-22 in Vancouver Canada
• Conference Schedule: PGConf.dev 2026 schedule
• CFP deadline: PGConf.dev Community Discussion Sessions deadline on 14 Apr 2026
• Conference: PGConf EU 2026 in Valencia Spain
• LinkedIn post: PGConf.dev 2026 conference t-shirt, celebrating 30 years of Postgres
• POSETTE 2026 talk: The Rise of PostgreSQL as the Everything Database, by Varun Dhawan
• PGConf.dev 2026 Panel: Real-Time Patch Idea Evaluation
• PGConf.dev 2026 Roundtable: Unexpected Successes & Epic Failures by PostgreSQL committers
• Calendar invite: LIVE recording of Ep39 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed May 06, 2026