...using a timestamp as the first element of a row key can cause a variety of problems.
In brief, when a row key for a time series includes a timestamp, all of your writes will target a single node; fill that node; and then move onto the next node in the cluster, resulting in hotspotting.
Suppose your system assigns a numeric ID to each of your application's users. You might be tempted to use the user's numeric ID as the row key for your table. However, since new users are more likely to be active users, this approach is likely to push most of your traffic to a small number of nodes. [https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs/schema-design]