Did you find that experience true across centralized and distributed teams? I can see how functional teams behave like mini orgs, but why do you need a bunch of generalists on a centralized team?

This is a function of org size, right? Big orgs can afford specialists. Small orgs need generalists. The game changer with AE is that analysts were given an incentive to get more technical but keep their business chops. No need to run from the business to have a competitive salary to SWE DEs.

I've used dbt with other engines (BQ, Snowflake), and the new unit testing feature is pretty solid. I think SQLMesh is better here (CTE-level testing + local execution on DuckDB).