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Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

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Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#91

Post by frabcus »

mjburgess wrote: post #37
jawns wrote: post #20

The problem is that you never really know whether the chat bot gets it right or terrifically wrong unless you already know how to do the task yourself. And in some cases, paying an analyst $50/hr. for a higher degree of confidence than you can get from a $1 chat bot is still very much worth it. The stakes are higher, too. If the chat bot gets it wrong, what are you going to do, fire it? There goes a small trickle of…

In my experience, in many cases, the so-called "first draft" (of code, content, etc.) is more just helpful for a mental warm-up. It isn't actually suitable. The time it takes to write/code/etc. isnt in the typing, that's trivial. It's in modelling the problem (, audience) and solving it. ChatGPT isnt in the game of modelling problems and solving them, it possesses only superficial semantic characteristics of the ques…

You can get it to ask more questions…

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#92

Post by matsemann »

The premise of the article, about being the "oncall" having to answer all kind of queries sounds sooo boring.

But instead of using gpt, isn't something like Looker or similar tools the solution? Make some common views over tables, allow people to filter and make the reports they want.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#93

Post by lelandfe »

themodelplumber wrote: post #84
jawns wrote: post #20

The problem is that you never really know whether the chat bot gets it right or terrifically wrong unless you already know how to do the task yourself. And in some cases, paying an analyst $50/hr. for a higher degree of confidence than you can get from a $1 chat bot is still very much worth it. The stakes are higher, too. If the chat bot gets it wrong, what are you going to do, fire it? There goes a small trickle of…

> $50/hr Is this somewhere's going rate for a good data analyst?

That's about $100k salary. You can hire a rock solid data analyst at that price probably anywhere in the US. I know a couple talented analysts making ~$110k in NYC.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#95

Post by quickthrower2 »

It sounds dysfunctional to me that you need an oncall query writer. It sounds like this encourages business side to not plan ahead and book tech time but just last minute call up and say “er.. I need last quarters sales aggregated by region stat”.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#96

Post by ebiester »

jeltz wrote: post #24
berkle4455 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described most SQL analysts I've worked with

Yeah, that is an issue a friend of mine has right now with his team. He randomly ended up as the manger of the data analytics team despite no analytics background (or really much programming background either). And one of his main frustrations is that the analysts do not understand the data model or the business. Before he became their manager his team just took report requests and then wrote some SQL and delivered s…

This is a key learning I had to learn as a manager: people learn what they need to turn their inputs to outputs well enough not to be fired. It's management's job to internalize the business and its needs and make sure that the individual contributors have an accurate mental model of the world.

I wonder what it would look like if we had people across the business working on the same problem together rather than a game of telephone, which is how these data requests end up.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#97

Post by LeftHandPath »

Eji1700 wrote: post #71
g051051 wrote: post #52

> this is shockingly close to replacing an entire role at companies with only a couple hours of effort. and > It seems like there’s almost no limit to how good GPT could get at this. I don't see how that's a valid conclusion given the results. 2 simple things right, moderate to difficult things wrong? Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Glad i'm not the only one who saw this. Feels extremely overblown. Very impressive, don't get me wrong, and is yet another bridge closer to letting business side do plain text queries. But that said, stuff like this has existed for awhile, and it's certainly not replacing analysts. For a start, this assumes a VERY clean model, which is of course what you strive for, but the moment you step out of FAANG you'll find th…

Still, while it might not be useful yet, can’t it stand its own as an intriguing proof of concept?

The first car was hardly ready to replace the horse. But look where we are now.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#98

Post by efitz »

ethbr0 wrote: post #86
ryanjshaw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 5% of the business/operations people I've worked with would even want to do this. The rest prefer a smart human to walk them through building a report - most of the time this is because they don't actually know what they need, and they actually need an expert to sit down and figure it out with them.

The longer I'm in the business, the more I feel like my value as a software developer is identifying and asking clarifying questions.

You nailed it. At the beginning of my career I thought that success and value to the organization was all about technical skills.

30 years later I now understand that most successful projects need people with modest or average technical skills and outstanding communication skills.

It doesn't matter if you have super-genius engineers; if the business people don't really understand the problem that they're trying to solve then you're going to end up with a crap solution (may shiny, fast, and beautiful, but still crap).

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#99

Post by renewiltord »

This is great, of course. And I think the people who will get the most out of the new AI tools are those who can treat them as iterative assistants. The fact that not everyone can use tools this way has become apparent to me recently. e.g. people who use car driving assistants as if they're fully autonomous; or people who use Copilot and are upset the code is incorrect.

The point isn't for it to be correct, but for it to be so fast that it can be mostly correct and you can fix the last bit.

I use Copilot extensively for my Python glue code and it is positively fantastic. I also use it at my shell with copilot.vim with a quick C-x C-e and write a comment and let it write the code.

The iterative improvement nature of the tool means that I make faster progress. It doesn't have to get things right. It only has to make progress and be obvious how to make improvements.

For instance, I just bought some Reserved Instances (c6i) on AWS and I want to make sure that I don't have any c5 instances in there that I won't be covering. I hit C-x C-e and type in `# list all aws instances in tokyo that are c5` and then hit Enter and type `aws` and it completes the rest for me.

I can then run the query and edit it, or I can validate that it looks okay, etc. The point is that I'm a human capable of understanding what this machine is making. That makes me way faster. I don't need to check Stack Overflow, and the machine teaches me syntax etc. and puts it in my history.

It's the closest thing to the Primer from Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and I love it.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#100

Post by ResearchCode »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #83
mjburgess wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, in many cases, the so-called "first draft" (of code, content, etc.) is more just helpful for a mental warm-up. It isn't actually suitable. The time it takes to write/code/etc. isnt in the typing, that's trivial. It's in modelling the problem (, audience) and solving it. ChatGPT isnt in the game of modelling problems and solving them, it possesses only superficial semantic characteristics of the ques…

> ChatGPT isnt in the game of modelling problems and solving them, it possesses only superficial semantic characteristics of the questions posed You can give it the datamodel and a semantic description and it will do a pretty good job of reprojecting your data. People talk about chatgpt as being a fixed thing, it isn't. ChatGPT is the Apple II of LLMs. 3-4 moore units from now every issue that people think is a "gotc…

Still waiting for those autonomous cars.
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