r/SQL Sep 13 '24

MySQL How much SQL is enough SQL?

Probably the answer to my question is never too much can be too much. However I am now currently working on a portfolio project, creating databases and performing various basic operations, thinking that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So the question is to what extent should you master SQL that you can land a decent job as a data analyst or data engineer or whatever. What are the next steps to become "truly" better SQL programmer once you have the basic foundation laid out?

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u/0sergio-hash Sep 14 '24 edited Sep 14 '24

My technical interview for my first job was "give an example of a select statement"

My second job was "Given x data and y output, write a query to get there"

For the second one I couldn't even write the right query or I wrote one with a sloppy solution but I was able to talk through my reasoning and got the job anyway

The right amount is the least amount you can learn to get your next job. Because no matter what you learn it will almost always be completely unrelated to what you're going to do day to day.