There’s this limitation with historical records on Airtable that I always come to when trying to create an operational setup, or something more continuous than your typical database. It is the problem with historical records. Historical records in the sense that, let’s say we have Daniel, who’s been working for the company for months now, or even years. Over time, Daniel has handled a certain number of projects. We want to look at the performance of those projects, but we have to set different tables or systems in place to be able to track how Daniel has performed across those projects over time.
This is something your normal work management software would be able to track, such as his velocity and other metrics. Another thing is, let’s say we want to track increases in his hourly rate and see how that has affected performance. We’re going to have to do a lot of formula work here, and oftentimes it won’t come out the way we want. Because with Airtable, let’s say Daniel was working at a rate of $60 an hour, and it’s increased to $80 an hour. It goes in and overrides all previous records that stated Daniel used to earn $60 an hour. Now, the records that showed he was working at $60 an hour are compromised. I won’t say they have no use, but they really do not tell us much at that point.
For me, Airtable is not one of the best tools to handle your day-to-day operations. It can, but you’ll face a lot of limitations similar to this. Maybe you’re able to do this. Maybe you meet someone who can create all of that. But they’re going to keep on using so many automations and scripting. At the end of the day, you are left with a beautiful pile of (I won’t say rubbish), but a beautiful pile of nonsense that you cannot understand or maintain. So you constantly have to keep paying this person to look at these things, things that you should be able to do on your own. It’s just not going to be a well-thought-out business decision as you go on.