“What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.”
   Isaac Newton

Data engineering is one of the disciplines where you just know a drop. Some companies are saying it’s easy, and you just need to know a drop. My experience in the field and teaching tells me otherwise. A data engineer needs to learn many different technologies and possess in-depth knowledge of big data.

To help you sort it out, I want to help you imagine the skills as a technology tree. You might have played the Civilization series at some point and maybe even spent way too much time (just one more turn). If you aren’t familiar with it, here is Civilization 6’s technology tree.

You’ll notice that you start with the most basic technologies in the world, such as pottery or animal husbandry. As you begin to research those technologies, you unlock more technologies. Each of these technologies takes a certain amount of turns to research, and the number of turns is based on the science your civilization produces.

If you didn’t know, you can try to skip researching technologies. Instead of gaining all of the foundational knowledge, the player can try to skip ahead. Skipping technologies causes all kinds of problems in-game, just like we’re about to see in our real-life example.

Let’s imagine data engineering as a technology tree. I think it all starts with a specialization in technology and branches out from there. These branches are systems, programming, and architecture. Looking at the diagram below, you can see various relationships.

                                                                                                                         Continued to read…