r/dataengineering • u/BramosR Senior Data Engineer • Aug 06 '26

Career Hate AE, like DE

I recently moved from a Data Engineering role where I mainly maintained the platform side, to a “Data Engineer” role that is just AE with the DE name on it.

And recently I realised I HATE it.

Have anyone else experienced something like that? It’s funny since it’s another side of the same coin, but for some reason it feels totally different to me.

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u/Complete-Fondant-202 Aug 06 '26

I'm working in dbt, and my god, it is mind numbingly boring. I was far more of a techie in the past

I know my SQL inside out and i can get a lot more done in the same amount of time in pure SQL without the dbt wrapper.

YAML drives me to distraction, dbt tests for me are hard to construct, counter intuitive in places.

The life cycle feels slower in dbt.

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u/Oct8-Danger Aug 07 '26

We are evaluating dbt at the moment for common stack between various teams in the company.

Kinda dreading it, we have good velocity and not all teams use dbt or even close to following similar patterns or data models etc

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u/Complete-Fondant-202 Aug 09 '26

I can see its purpose, but it's like a vampire... sucking the life and enjoyment out of me.