SQL is easy, Data is hard
I've been kicking around this thought for a year or so now - to the outsider a career in data looks like a technical path. The data practitioner learns SQL, how to query data stored in a database somewhere using SQL, and if you know enough SQL you can answer any question whose artifacts are stored in that database somewhere.
The reality is that SQL is the very last mile. SQL is code, and so it looks to the non-practitioner like the act of creation, like code written in any imperative...