Summary
Data engineering is a difficult job, requiring a large number of skills that often don’t overlap. Any effort to understand how to start a career in the role has required stitching together information from a multitude of resources that might not all agree with each other. In order to provide a single reference for anyone tasked with data engineering responsibilities Joe Reis and Matt Housley took it upon themselves to write the book "Fundamentals of Data Engineering". In this episode they share their experiences researching and distilling the lessons that will be useful to data engineers now and into the future, without being tied to any specific technologies that may fade from fashion.
Announcements
Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Joe Reis and Matt Housley about their new book on the Fundamentals of Data Engineering
Interview
Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you explain what possessed you to write such an ambitious book?
What are your goals with this book?
What was your process for determining what subject areas to include in the book?
How did you determine what level of granularity/detail to use for each subject area?
Closely linked to what subjects are necessary to be effective as a data engineer is the concept of what that title encompasses. How have the definitions shifted over the past few decades?
In your experiences working in industry and researching for the book, what is the prevailing view on what data engineers do?
In the book you focus on what you term the "data lifecycle engineer". What are the skills and background that are needed to be successful in that role?
Any discussion of technological concepts and how to build systems tends to drift toward specific tools. How did you balance the need to be agnostic to speci
