The intent was to be a little hyperbolic and self-effacing. In terms of competent and capable developers, I think it’s hard to get a better return on your skill set than adding “data” stuff. And honestly I think it’s one of the most critical skill sets that is lacking across the board. So many bit companies have great data engineering teams, but generally other dev teams are left to design their own databases, which is a shit show. And even then, it’s amazing to me how difficult it is for data engineering teams to move from framework to framework without just mapping old solutions onto new technology.

My career has been primarily focused on something like “bringing modern data-driven solutions” to big companies. The one thing that is a constant challenge is that most teams (and leadership) aren’t prepared to handle responsibilities of data engineering and stewardship in transactional, operational systems. I feel like critical responsibility when I come on as a consultant is to impart knowledge about managing their data.

The folks I am referring to were actually hired as DevOps DBAs.

Distributed databases are pretty difficult to manage, they deserve every dollar.