4. The Modern Data Stack Is Modular

The authors highlight a shift from monolithic platforms (like traditional data warehouses) to modular and composable cloud-native stacks. This includes tools like Fivetran (ingestion), dbt (transformation), Snowflake/BigQuery (storage), and Looker/Mode (analytics). Each tool excels at a specific stage of the data lifecycle, and teams must architect systems that connect these tools seamlessly. The insight is clear: modern data engineering is more about orchestration than brute-force coding. It requires understanding of APIs, integration, and tool interoperability to build scalable.