Why Analytics Engineering Is Changing Forever w/ Tristan Handy (dbt/Fivetran)

Tristan Handy (dbt/fivetran) joins me to discuss the tectonic shifts reshaping data teams, analytics engineering, and business intelligence in the age of agentic AI. Tristan opens up about stepping back into "builder mode" after years as CEO, the parallels between the dot-com era and today's AI wave, and why data teams need to stop clinging to yesterday's work, such as dashboard maintenance and SQL ticket queues. We also chat about the reality of context engineering, why traditional BI and point-and-click tools face an existential reckoning, how dbt charts approaches agentic abstractions, and why data practitioners must become deeply embedded business partners rather than pure pipeline mechanics.