Jamie’s original post argued that SQL didn’t meet a number of standards that other modern languages do; consequently, according to Jamie, the entire analytics edifice built on top of SQL is irreparably flawed. (View Highlight)
Pedram’s bigger gripe was with the post’s overall posture, which he saw as contributing to the general perception that analytics is the underdeveloped sidekick to software engineering. Diminishing SQL, particularly its obscure technical quirks, “perpetuates that myth that data analysis is a second-class skill.” (View Highlight)
This may not look like traditional software engineering, he argues, but it’s engineering, it’s hard, and it’s not to be dismissed.
This is true enough, but it sidesteps the more fundamental point: Analytics isn’t primarily technical. While technical skills are useful, they’re not what separate average analysts from great ones (View Highlight)
Down one path, analytics engineering becomes the barrier between engineering and analytics. Rather than needing to be an impossible combination of statistician, developer, and business expert, analysts can simply be great critical thinkers. Rather than looking for people with an advanced degree in a quantitative field, 5 years of experience with Python, familiarity with AWS, and a passion for optimizing the conversion rates of white paper download forms, data teams can enthusiastically hire creative historians, sociologists, and political scientists who are exceptional communicators rather than mathematicians who are passable coders. (View Highlight)
Down the other path, analytics engineering is the bleed. It’s the conjunction that puts analysts and engineers in the same sentence, creating a continuous spectrum from each role to the next. Analysts, once they become technical enough, “graduate” to becoming analytics engineers. Senior analysts aren’t analytical specialists, but data generalists who can be both analyst and engineer. Though analytics engineering widens what we consider to be technical, technical skills are still the ruler by which we measure ourselves. (View Highlight)
