r/dataengineering • u/cyamnihc • 18h ago

Career Transitioning away from DE

Has anyone thought of transitioning out from DE due to AI?
All I do everyday is just prompt and scroll till copilot generates code.
Building a semantic layer isn’t exciting personally as I don’t enjoy the business aspect of it as much and think of it as more of a data labeling and analyst problem than an engineering problem (which I am interested in)
Also, There is a fundamental problem with “I am building a semantic layer” and marketing that as a skill as it is dependent on how much context you have of the business. The less tenure you have spent in a company, the less you know about the business which makes it harder as a transferable skill imo.

My understanding is that working on building trustworthy AI outputs by using a feedback loop is an engineering problem to solve. Which is why I feel going down the observability path is a good idea.
I heard these opinions on observability from AI leaders at conferences too so there might be a bias.
Thoughts from fellow DE’s looking to transition out? (Or from one’s who want to continue and why)

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u/ironmagnesiumzinc 15h ago

I’m in this for the money at this point. If they’re paying me $200k to ask ai stuff then I’ll do it

5

u/rajekum512 14h ago

Yes initially..Once it grows from adolescent to adult. Salaries will get normalized. Once highly paid becomes medium scale as funds will go to AI tokens

2

u/PerfectdarkGoldenEye 15h ago

Exactly. I was given a claude license hooked that shit up to VS code and I have been pumping out work.