Much ink has been spilled on AI disruption in the data space. But the truth is that even before AI, data practitioners, including data engineers, analytics engineers and data scientists, have been facing pressure to move up the value chain, from spending their time in SQL to spending their time solving and considering business problems and contradictions.
The advent of coding tools like Claude Code has accelerated this already existing process. Tools like Fivetran have displaced the need for the vast majority of data engineering work, and that was becoming mainstream well before Claude came around.
Organizations still need data practitioners who can engage with business leaders on how to think about and organize business problems and business analysis. That won’t change anytime soon. Data practitioners who insist that their job is merely to write SQL or Python will struggle in the years to come.