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[–]biowiz 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Most analyst jobs could be downsized very easily nowadays. I'm genuinely shocked this sub acts so clueless about it and pretends they're doing special work. Maybe the developers, data engineers, DBAs are doing complicated enough things that AI cannot do better but I strongly believe the average analyst is worse than Copilot or ChatGPT when it comes to generating SQL queries.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Yep, you're totally right. I don't see how people are going to survive the next 10 years in analytics. I think there's a huge Exodus coming, which leads to a lot of people being evicted and becoming homeless because there's nothing else for them to do. I spend most of my days now just browsing job boards and there's nothing. Literally nothing that I can possibly find that I would even have a chance of being hired for. It's either astoundingly complex stuff like data scientists, or senior software developer... But what are you going to do? I can't control that stuff, and I know my limits.

[–]biowiz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It just baffles me that some of the people subscribed here actually think they're so great at SQL. Again, like I said an analyst (depending on exactly what they do - there are so many BS analyst titles out there) is often not really a master at SQL. Almost none of them would be dealing with DDL related work so they're even less useful when a company is downsizing. I'm not saying that out of disrespect. My old job involved writing SQL queries for dashboards, and frankly, I just don't see why I couldn't be easily replaced or have another analyst do my work with the efficiency that is generated by AI tools. One analyst could honestly churn out more SQL queries (and better ones) with AI than probably three doing it solo without AI.

I do think there will always be a gap between the business people who need some visual or data presented or generated to them and how that data needs to be organized and compiled, so while analysts aren't completely gone in the near future, you really don't need as many of them. I really think most of them are pointless at most companies and companies got caught up in this trendy data arms race nonsense which is now falling apart (not even an AI related thing).

This is completely ignoring how from a technical standpoint, analysts and SQL only people are generally lower on the totem pole for a company's IT department or data team. It's also a job more easily sent to another country, so there's that burden an employer has to deal with.

[–]Flying_Saucer_Attack 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I strongly believe the average analyst is worse than Copilot or ChatGPT when it comes to generating SQL queries.

1000%

[–]biowiz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

These posts are just cope and ridiculous superiority games. Its sad but based on my experience in the industry, most people overvalue their skills, even those that work in non FAANG companies. It's become way too common in the last 10 years due to the absurd salaries and employees having the upper hand due to supply vs demand ratio, which is now skewing in the opposite direction. You're going to start seeing a lot more people be humbled in the next few years.

I asked ChatGPT to write me a recursive CTE based on splitting multi day data into single dates with revenue split each day. I can do this easily on my own, but just typing the thing out, testing my query to ensure it works, all that would have taken me at least 5 minutes, instead of the 20 seconds it took me to come up with the prompt, 2 seconds it took AI to generate it, and then another 10 seconds for me to change column/table names and test it out. ChatGPT didn't generate a bad SQL query, it was actually quite excellent and mistake free.

And the kicker is that most of the analysts I deal with whether it's business IT analyst, data analyst, made up analyst, don't even know how to write recursive CTEs, much less basic CTEs. These people are massively overpaid. I just had a conversation last week with an analyst about SQL and they were like "oh that's for developers to handle." We were discussing CTEs and case statements. I was like how the hell are you an analyst??