[Sharlin]

SQL looks the way it does (rather than some much more succinct relational algebra notation) because it was intended to be used by non-technical management/executive personnel so they could create whatever reports they needed without somebody having to translate business-ese to relalg. That, uh, didn't quite happen.

[Swizec]

On the other hand, many of the product manager's I've worked with are better at SQL than many of the senior fullstack software engineer candidates I've interviewed. It's a strange world out there.

[Too]

Having a personal need is often the best motivator for learning. Compared to closing ticket no 471961. A PM knows the shape of the data and what he is looking for, the sql is just a way to get there, rather than the other way around, when the goal often get lost in translation.

On the other hand, sql is also dangerous in that it gives you a result, even if the aggregation is completely wrong! Forgetting empty groups in a group by, loosing rows in a join or ignoring null values is common to see. Many cases of non techies “knowing” sql often turn out to be some basic query that give seemingly good data out but actually is complete nonsense when put under deeper review, a bit like AI hallucinations.

[jimsparkman]

I think this is the exception, not the norm. My experience is business users (incl. PMs) are lost outside of Excel.

[Swizec]

In my biased sample of SFBA tech companies it’s pretty common for PMs to know at least enough SQL to be dangerous. In early stage startups there’s no analyst to lean on, so they need SQL. In late stage companies there are data lakes and analytics databases specifically designed to be easily queryable, so SQL offers the best flexibility.

But you’re right, many of them are wizards in <whatever query language our tool uses>. Like VizQL for Tableau.