This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Ahmad Muhammad
Camus's reading of The Myth of Sisyphus is not just about existentialism; it fits well in the world of engineering where the absence of an "ideal" solution is a constant reality.
Like in real life, suicide, as well as collapsing data infrastructure, is a rejection of the freedom we actually possess.
In Greek methodology, Sisyphus was tormented by the Gods, not by being shredded into pieces or by death, but by being forced to roll a boulder uphill just to watch it fall, eternally!
Albert Camus uses this simple story to describe the struggle with life in a chaotic world, with a lack of meaning, which Albert described as absurd.
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
Camus invited us to imagine Sisyphus happy with his eternal fate simply by lucidly embracing it.
Lack Of Meaning and the Engineering Curse
A company without a clear data vision—no direction like increasing revenue, expanding its user base, or solving real human problems—is going blindly. Engineering is a tool. It must serve business goals, which ultimately should serve humanity. It is not meant to serve itself.
Just as the gods condemned Sisyphus to an eternal, pointless task to punish him, many engineering teams find themselves trapped in cycles of building for the sake of building. Endless refactoring. New frameworks. New infra. But no impact. No purpose.
Engineers have become divorced from meaning. We obsess over technical novelty while ignoring whether what we build actually matters. We drown in abstraction and forget the people we’re supposed to serve.
Data work is so absurd: every schema will mutate, every dashboard request is a moving target, and every source of truth will eventually lie. Let's imagine Sisyphus happy and a revolution in this absurd world.
Sisyphus Being Happy
Camus's imagination of Sisyphus's happiness comes when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, because the struggle itself was enough to fill his heart. From Camus's perspective, the only reasonable response to the absurd is to revolt, admitting that everything will break, and we have the freedom to respond.
Camus's Happy Sisyphus as A Data Engineer
Camus’s Sisyphus finds meaning not in arrival, but in the ascent itself. In data engineering, each best practice becomes a revolt against chaos:
Sisyphus would build pipelines to fail
Instead of hoping it will just work, he would assume it won't. Sisyphus would revolt against schema drift, in addition to data quality issues, to see failures coming without illusion.
Sisyphus would use Git
The absurd man prefers the ambiguity of life; less knowledge is better than the full knowledge illusion.
Lucidity is the clarity and courage of mind which refuses all comforting illusions.
Git is a tool for Lucidity, it would provide a lucid history of the struggle, whenever the boulder fall, allowing Sisyphus to learn from every fall and to prove that he was in control of his response to it.
Sisyphus would document his struggle
Sisyphus would document his README.md revolution on data infrastructure absurdity for the sake of scorn of the fate he has been dealt.
The daily work of an engineer, the failing pipelines, the shifting requirements, the decaying sources of truth, can feel like a pointless, eternal task. It is our boulder.
We can be tormented by its weight, or we can follow Camus's Sisyphus and find liberation in the act of pushing.
Meaning is not found in a mythical "finished" state, but in the conscious and defiant struggle against chaos. It is in the resilient pipeline, the lucid commit history, and the clear documentation left for the next person to take up the climb. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill an engineer's heart.
One must imagine the data engineer happy.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Ahmad Muhammad
Ahmad Muhammad | Sciencx (2025-06-27T15:27:29+00:00) The Myth of Sisyphus in Data Engineering. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/06/27/the-myth-of-sisyphus-in-data-engineering/
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