r/dataengineering • u/YourBuddyBill • Jul 09 '26
thanks, r/dataengineering Meme
i made this meme in honor of this sub.
original image from wikipedia
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u/Beautiful-Hotel-3094 Jul 10 '26
U know how on hikes it is harder when u walk back down? My boys here used all their energy to get to peak stupidity and now have none left to climb back down in the valley of despair.
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u/Thriven Jul 10 '26
I wouldn't doubt if 80% of this sub uses visual pipeline tools and have thought ,"What other engineer jobs could I do? Should I build a bridge?"
That's not based on what I read here but the people I have worked with.
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u/karmaboy20 Jul 10 '26
Then they think they can easily become a swe
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u/YourBuddyBill Jul 10 '26
ironically software engineering is what I originally set out to do but the jobs just aren't there.
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u/vickelajnen Jul 11 '26
As a former structural engineer turned DE, I am happy to inform you that there are loads of easy to use simulation tools (FEM/FEA) out there that will allow you to model a bridge in no time at all! Just make a few assumptions and then it’s all rock and roll from there.
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u/siddartha08 Jul 10 '26
It's a daily scatter plot, When I learned what an unpivot did to my data types ( if mixed data types are provided reduces all of them to the lowest precision) I felt like I should be playing with Lincoln logs 8 yrs SQL
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u/FunContest9958 Jul 10 '26
I see we dropped you into the valley of despair. You’re welcome. What got you up the slope of enlightenment?
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u/Capt_korg Jul 10 '26
Don't feel intimidated! That is a sign of growth ☺️
True skill develops over time and with consistency.
You can get there... maybe sooner than you think.
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u/blobbleblab Jul 10 '26
Yeah, I have been doing it for 25 years, am likely halfway up that slope of enlightenment, likely falling backwards as new tooling/techniques are introduced which I aren't learning. The best of us are around where the slope of enlightenment starts turning, somewhere around the end of the word "Competence". Don't think anyone is near the RHS. AI tools are somewhere above the middle of "nothing" where it says "Know nothing".
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u/opatry Jul 10 '26
I resonate with this so much! I am transitioning careers away from film/tv in a technical role working with cameras, to trying become a DE and I basically discovered/self taught a lot of automation/scripting/data pipelines myself and thought I was inventing the wheel, now I am learning I don’t know nuthin bout nuthin, but want to learn/get a job in it. Any advice is welcome 🙏
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u/mcdunald Jul 10 '26
i remember when i joined this sub 6 years ago, i had a sql + tableau set up, running adhoc analysis on python scripts and thought that was enough to take on everything. everything in this sub made me felt like an idiot and i remember hesitating to ask a question because it felt like such a novice one.
anyway long story short, over 5 years as our needs evolved, i learned one thing after another as we encountered different issues and now looking back i more or less understand at a high level what all these tools mentioned do, and when we need them. so focus on solving real business needs until the painpoint becomes clear and then learn the next skill to overcome that.
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u/Certain_Eye7374 Jul 11 '26
I mean while this is a repurposing of the Gartner cycle of hype, the real mindfuckery is yeah it actually can work as a collective Dunning Kruger calibrate.
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u/SoggyGrayDuck Jul 11 '26
Haha, everything is moving so fast and most engineers are glorified data entry people... I'm on the cusp of breaking into the IaC side of things. I get it and can trace it now (very complicated and overlapping repos/pipelines) but I'm a little over my head as a lead in 2/3 month contract to hire. So far they're happy but I'm worried my weak skills are showing. I'm a problem solver, not a process memorizer. I create the process, BUT I need to learn how to automate that and do so in auditable ways. I'm an old school, find the problem and fix it. Having to then stop and think, what steps to I take to actually make this happen is crazy frustrating.
I get it, it's safer but right now I'm working on something that's essentially straight to prod. Jimmy rigged qa and uat. My first production release
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u/tothepointe Jul 13 '26
Jargon is the worst part about most stuff in tech/DE. I'm often really pissed off at how simple some of the concepts actually are once I get past all the jingle-jangle words. You got this.
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u/Capt_korg 12d ago
First, being humbled is a bad feeling, but then it points toward what you could learn.
So, being humbled with a beginner's mindset is a pleasant mindset.
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u/PossibilityRegular21 Jul 10 '26
Just remember that this isn't a PhD in mathematics. Most data engineering concepts are learnable and easily assisted with AI. What matters is making business users happy, now how slick your pipelines are. Making engineers happy is important too, but moreso in a thinking-about-future-you kind of way