Back to Blog
AI|21 June 2025

Data Engineering: Utter Bullshit (and Why Solid Fundamentals Still Matter More Than Any Framework

In an age overflowing with buzzwords and flashy slide decks, it’s easy to believe that

199 views
Data Engineering: Utter Bullshit (and Why Solid Fundamentals Still Matter More Than Any Framework

Data Engineering: Utter Bullshit (and Why Solid Fundamentals Still Matter More Than Any Framework Name)

In an age overflowing with buzzwords and flashy slide decks, it’s easy to believe that

  • Data Fabric magically stitches every system together,
  • Zero ETL means you’ll never write another pipeline, and
  • the Modern Data Stack™ is a one-size-fits-all solution for every organization.

The reality? Data engineering still demands rolling up your sleeves. You still have to clean and transform data, wrestle with schema drift and late-arriving events, orchestrate DAGs, monitor jobs, tune performance, and answer business questions that seem to change every week.

Data Fabric – essentially metadata + virtualization + sync. Sounds great, but you still need to configure connectors, enforce security, and handle dirty data yourself.

Zero ETL – marketed as “just query data in place,” yet the data still must be normalized, aggregated, and deduplicated before it’s useful.

Medallion Architecture (Bronze → Silver → Gold) – really just classic data warehousing with a new label; inter-layer dependencies still create headaches.

Modern Data Stack™ (Snowflake + dbt + Looker) – powerful, but for a five-person team with 10 GB of data it may be costly overkill.

What data engineers should actually focus on

  • Designing pipelines that are maintainable and observable
  • Understanding the business use case behind every dataset
  • Balancing cost and performance instead of chasing hype
  • Picking tools because they solve your problem, not because they’re trending
  • Communicating clearly in an increasingly complex landscape

We’re not anti-tool—just realistic: tools aren’t magic. Frameworks evolve, but sound engineering fundamentals never go out of style.

Inspired by Kirill Bobrov’s article “Data Engineering: Now with 30% More Bullshit.”

Share: