Another model release.
Astra. Another Anthropic update. Another agent that writes SQL, cleans data, builds dashboards, and explains why revenue dropped.
The vibe is obvious: analysts are done. Data teams are next.
And if you are an analyst, you can already hear HR preparing the “AI transformation” deck.
Except Joe Reis’ research points in the opposite direction.
- In his survey of 1,101 data practitioners, 42% expect their teams to grow in 2026. Only 7% expect cuts.
- dbt Labs reports more companies increasing analytics budgets than cutting them.
- Data engineering is still one of the major hiring bottlenecks.
So data teams are not disappearing.
That is exactly why this is scary.
Companies will keep senior data architects. They will give them better models, more compute, and bigger systems to run.
What disappears first is the work junior analysts used to learn on.
Baseline SQL. Cleaning tables. Boilerplate transformations. Drafting schemas. Routine dashboard work.
The boring stuff.
The apprenticeship.
A model can now do a decent first pass on much of it in seconds.
Which means HR does not need to announce: “We are cutting the data team.”
They can just avoid backfilling the junior analyst who leaves.
They can ask one senior person with AI tools to cover more work.
They can decide the next hire needs five years of experience, because there is no longer time or budget to teach someone the basics.
And suddenly you are competing with an agent for the part of your job that used to get you into the profession.
AI will not erase data teams.
It may erase the ladder that got you onto one.
And yes: it might fire you before it fires the team.
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