Totally agree with Redshift sentiments. It's been lovely seeing BigQuery and Redshift step their game up over the past 1.5yrs, because they really should have been doing certain things for many years prior.
Re: Firebolt, I don't consider it to be in the same class as Snowflake whatsoever (even though their advertising seems to indicate otherwise). Snowflake is like a very powerful swiss army knife. Firebolt is good for a very specific (dare I say niche?) workload but falls all over itself for the vast majority of data org needs.
Ah yes, the common misconception that trades are simplistic!
Most trades (!including plumbing!) have VASTLY more stringent requirements than tech, are often more mentally stimulating, and yes, quite rewarding.
Disclaimer: I've worked in software for ~9 years and worked in trades before that. ASE master certified auto technician, father is a master electrician, uncles are contractors. I'll probably become a plumber.
PipelineDB was awesome - built some v. neat things with it 4-5 years ago. Wouldn't use it now since the team went to Confluent. https://ksqldb.io/ functionality is getting close.
Flink is a solid option. Materialize shows a ton of promise.
Inefficient sql? Crank the virtual warehouse.