It's frustrating how the data discipline is split up into so many different job titles. I regularly have to work with data engineers, data analysts, analytics engineers, data scientists, machine learning scientists, and machine learning engineers. Each view their role really narrowly, so you need to pull in a lot of people to get something done. It's often easier to just do the work yourself.
I get that some specialisation is useful, but I would like to see more T-shaped data folks.
It used to be the case that a "data engineer" was just a software engineer that was good at data-related things (maybe they were good at Kafka, airflow, DBT, knew why you'd pick postgres for one job and Clickhouse for another, etc).
Then the BI people (who had never written a line of code except maybe some SQL) got jealous, started calling themselves "data engineers", broke everything ("what do you mean 'we need tests???'"), and ruined the title.
The best quote I've seen about AI and work: "If your job can be done from a laptop, you should be seriously considering what you'll be doing in 5 years".
Depending on the field, five years is generous. 6-12 months (if not already gone) for many things.
I made my 20 year career as a person who could do stuff with computers, software engineer etc. Every time I hear someone say, "my non tech friend who vibe coded an app got a bug he couldn't fix" etc, my response is they are using the wrong model and give it a few months. And I say this with great pain, I am in no way an AI booster, just a realist.
I get that some specialisation is useful, but I would like to see more T-shaped data folks.
Then the BI people (who had never written a line of code except maybe some SQL) got jealous, started calling themselves "data engineers", broke everything ("what do you mean 'we need tests???'"), and ruined the title.
I made my 20 year career as a person who could do stuff with computers, software engineer etc. Every time I hear someone say, "my non tech friend who vibe coded an app got a bug he couldn't fix" etc, my response is they are using the wrong model and give it a few months. And I say this with great pain, I am in no way an AI booster, just a realist.
What makes that quote so special that it is worth pointing out as "the best" in 11/2026?