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MIT Lab Sparked A Career Shift To Data Tools
- Kevin Hu pivoted from physics after MIT junior lab, where data analysis bottleneck inspired him toward tooling.
- He realized the second-week data analysis friction drove him to build tools to make analysts more effective.
Data Engineers Are Transporters And Translators
- Data engineers move raw data from point A to B and transform it into usable form for end users.
- Kevin Hu highlights that modern tools (Snowflake, BigQuery, Fivetran) reduced infra work but shifted effort to context and trust.
Trust And Context Drive Data Team Priorities
- Trust and context are now the biggest parts of data engineering work, beyond storage and connectors.
- Kevin Hu says CFOs must believe dashboard numbers, so teams spend time explaining meaning, provenance, and assumptions.