Thought 007 · Comic · 2 min · July 27, 2026
Easier feels easier.
The depth didn’t get harder. There are just fewer people down there.
A note on SQL, and on what you find on the way to the answer.
The most important hard skill for a data analyst is still SQL.
Not because AI can’t query. It can, and it’s good at it. But it meets the system where the system is already legible — the modeled table, the documented column, the question someone already thought to ask.
That’s the surface. Surface tools answer surface questions.
Go a little further and you find a table nobody pointed you to. It’s a mess. It’s also useful: feedback, reference data, a record of how customers actually behaved. None of it was baked into the model.
Not hidden. It just wasn’t needed when the model was built.
The model was right for its moment — but questions should deepen with time, and models don’t deepen on their own.
The surface has gotten easier with AI, and the depth has gotten harder.
Except it hasn’t. Nothing was taken away. The database is right where it was.
It just feels harder, because easier feels easier.
SQL gets treated as less important, and the reps go with it. The joins, the window functions, not only lost but maybe never learned. So the depth isn’t harder. There are just fewer people down there, and the gap is widening.
I’m all for pointing AI at the surface. And if fewer people are going deep, that’s an opening for the ones who do. Analysts, keep refining your SQL, and keep looking around on the way to the answer.
Am I over indexing on SQL?
