[crispyambulance]

I sort of agree in that orgs can't simply create massive education programs to re-purpose skill-sets/talent. That might have been possible "back in the day" before project managers were breathing down people's necks, but not today.

But the brightside is that talented people will find a way to "upskill" themselves in whatever environment they find themselves in. It is then up to the candidates to sell themselves and for the potential employers to be flexible about considering different backgrounds and nurturing the development of cross-functional skills that are needed for so-called data-engineers.

The skills listed in the article are all fairly common but its hard to find enough of these skills within individuals. For example, its not hard to find folks who can do the care and feeding of sql-server databases, or skilled programmers, or analysts who understand the business domain intimately. The problem is getting all of these together in one individual in a "know-enough-to-be-dangerous" level.

[ThomPete]

Yeah if up-skilling means "I used to do front end development now I do back end development" the up-skilling is fairly easy to do.

But if you used to work as a plumber and want to up-skill to data analyst (or vice versa) it's not that simple.