[cedricd]

I'm glad the author also points out how customer (mis)use can blow up data warehouse costs too. No matter how efficient Snowflake could get, using the warehouse too much or with unnecessary queries will ultimately have a larger impact.

The trend in the data space currently is for usage to increase -- as more companies adopt dbt they're running more and more prebuilt (materialized views) queries on a scheduled basis, rather than on demand. This is overall a good thing in that data is becoming easier to manage and use, but it does come at an increase in warehousing costs.

I think eventually the pendulum will swing back to tools that help optimize warehouse usage, as long as they allow for the same increase in productivity as dbt (disclosure - I work for one such company)