Data Engineer Would Actually Be Able to Get Their Job Done if They Had One Last Piece of Automation

In the fast-paced world of data engineering, one brave soul named Samantha finds herself teetering on the precipice of productivity. Armed with an arsenal of tools, scripts, and queries, Samantha is almost fully equipped to conquer the world of data wrangling. Almost. Little does she know that her salvation lies in the form of one last, elusive piece of automation.

Samantha, the tireless data engineer, has spent countless hours perfecting her craft. She has meticulously crafted ETL pipelines, fine-tuned databases, and made data flow like the Salmon of Capistrano. Yet, despite her best efforts, she is haunted by an nagging feeling that something is missing. That missing piece, my friends, is none other than the ultimate panacea of data engineering: the...you know...the automation thing.

Imagine a world where Samantha's job is made easier. A world where she no longer has to spend countless hours tediously extracting, transforming, and loading data. A world where the repetitive tasks that once plagued her existence are now handled effortlessly by an automated companion. Oh, the wonders she could achieve!

But what exactly does this mythical automation tool look like, you ask? Is it a sophisticated robot that transforms raw data into pristine information? Is it an advanced AI capable of understanding complex data structures? Maybe. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly. But when Samantha reads all of the blog posts and listens to the webinars, she has been convinced that once she has "that one tool" then her life will be easier and fulfilled. She does not feel that way right now, therefore, she is missing something.

Picture it: Samantha wakes up one morning, logs into her workstation, and there it is—a sleek, intuitive interface displaying...something wonderful. She would just stare in amazement as the automation-thing does its job, filling her with a sense of job satisfaction that would make anyone want to write a positive review of their company on Glassdoor.

Samantha raised this concern in the last data team meeting. She talked about the current tool set that the team had which automated everything from ETL to Data Modeling to Data Lineage. But, as she talked about how she felt like there were still too many manual tasks, the others in the room nodded their heads in agreement. Soon, the entire data team had their laptops open, searching for automation tools on Google.

"What about automated documentation?!" shouted one eager data architect.

"Ooooo, there's this automated AI model builder. That could be really useful." said a data scientist.

"Wait, wait, wait....why not ask ChatGPT?" asked the data manager.

The end of the meeting resulted in more questions than answers. There were arguments over which solution would be better for data cleansing based solely on the blog posts of competing vendors. And ChatGPT only helped in listing made-up automation ideas (although a laundry folding robot does sound amazing).

Samantha walked away from the meeting reinvigorated with purpose and meaning. She may not know what automation solution needs to be implemented, or what area of responsibility needs to be automated, but she will find it.

What she could really use is an Automatic Thought Generator. That would help immensely in her thinking about this topic.