The Joe Reis Show Freestyle Fridays - The State of Data Engineering in 2026, Book Writing, and More
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Feb 13, 2026 A deep dive into the 2026 State of Data Engineering survey and what 1,100+ responses reveal about tools and trends. Discussion of infrastructure realities like warehouses versus lakehouses and gaps in orchestration. Exploration of AI usage patterns, training demand for semantics and ontologies, and plans for community pulses and a hackathon. Reflections on book-writing progress and lessons learned.
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Legacy Data Infrastructure Dominates
- Despite AI hype, most companies still run centralized data warehouses and traditional workloads.
- Technical debt, poor leadership, and legacy issues remain the industry's core problems.
Widespread AI Use, Uncertain Adoption
- AI tools are widely used daily, but meaningful production adoption is still limited.
- Public sector daily AI usage rivals tech, showing broad exploratory usage across industries.
Orchestration Is Missing At Scale
- A surprising share of organizations, including large enterprises, operate with no orchestration.
- This gap reveals basic operational fragility even at scale.