Whenever people ask me about getting into the field and if they should learn Python or R or Scala or whatever else, I always respond with you need to get really good with excel/Google Sheets and SQL. Then worry about everything else. I can't tell you how many times I've done an analysis I'm really proud of in something like R Markdown only to have the end user say that's great now can I get it in an excel? I just deliver everything in excel as a default now.
Agreed that spreadsheets aren't great for that, but totally disagree about SQL. SQL is the best cleaning and wrangling data tool out there. There's a reason the trend in the industry is towards tools like DBT. There are certainly things for which you need to use Python or R, but for 95% of tasks some combination of SQL and a spreadsheet will get you where you need to go.
