Thank you for sharing your thoughts on that article. I completely agree: All those data-related skills are not independent, so cherry picking doesn't make sense here.

Unfortunately, I've seen quite a few articles on Medium which suggest exactly that: To focus on one aspect, for instance machine learning, and ignore everything else. I think this problematic approach is encouraged by some companies who try too hard to draw lines between the different data job roles (data engineer, data scientist, machine learning engineer, etc.). Many people buy into that scheme and think it's enough to focus on just one niche.