Global Talent
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This is the dream, living where you want, working for companies that are anywhere in the world. It's one of the great possibilities of being a worker in the online world. I know I appreciate it, being a US based employee of a UK firm. as much as the UK is a nice place, I wouldn't want to live there.
This is also one of the great complaints of many workers in countries with high standards of living: their jobs are being outsourced to cheaper locales.
In some sense, that's the way of the world. Many countries have seen various standardized jobs moved overseas, primarily in manufacturing. It's almost inevitable that some jobs will move as the cost becomes low.
In the tech world, in some ways it's more likely to happen since we deal with products whose cost of transport is very close to zero. Same for the delays in moving "goods" from the other side of the world to the other. With low costs like those, it's no wonder that some jobs will move overseas.
However in many other ways, it's hard to move jobs. Many of our problems are not well defined, face time is valuable as is coordination. Then there's the security and privacy aspects for many of us as DBAs. In my travels, I've rarely met someone that would outsource a DBA. Or even consider a remote DBA.
Times may be changing and I'd expect that more companies will consider outsources DBAs. At least I know my buddy Chris hopes so since he's in the remote DBA business. For developers, it's easier to outsource projects that aren't in production and may not have as many security or real-time work concerns.
It's going to happen to some people. But good employees are still in demand and proving yourself one is the best job security.
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I am a DBA. I sit at a desk, and connect to my database thru a variety of tools. All remotely.
I don't physically go into the server room. So, technically, I could do this anywhere? From home, from another location in the world?
I would love the opportunity to work remotely on occasion, and not have to be in the office. Maybe not 100% of the time, since face time is important. Meetings can be important. Coordination is definitely important. But some of the work could be done remotely. While at home...
I wish more DBA positions were allowed this latitude.
My two cents.
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Please do not mention about off shore or remote developers / DBA. I used to work with them in my former company.
For offshore developers, the biggest problems is language and time difference. I am sure you all experience sometimes when you call customer service, you spend an hour talking to someone and get no where because we both do not understand what each other is talking about. We had the same problem in offshore developers. Sometimes instead of explaining to them, I went ahead and did it myself, also I did not want to wait for 12 hours. The company saved a lot of money but I had double my workload. I had to write the specification to send it to the off shore developer and ended up I had to check their work and did all their work !!!!!
The DBA group had DBA working at home a couple days but usually the oncall DBA would be on site. But one time the whole group had a 'OFFSITE' meeting. It happened there was a big production problem. We paged and called every DBA including the oncall DBA the whole day. No one responded. The problem did not get resolved. The next day the implementation manager and I went to complain, the DBA manager said we did not follow standard emergency procedure, otherwise someone would answer the phone. We did not argue because there was no use.
Sometimes even I called the oncall DBA, that person did not answer back in hours. I could not look at the production job and could not do anything except waiting. So it is ok if DBA works remotely for regular maintanence, but what happens if the system goes down, can someone assure the DBA will be there to answer the call?
Just another one of my 'unusual' experience. I don't know why bad things always happened to me !!!!!!!!
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Wow, sounds like you had some pretty bad experiences. I can definitely see how these problems could come about, however I would like to believe that the quality of the employees would affect whether these problems were an issue.
Personally I would love to be able to work from home occasionally. I don't know if I could do it all the time, but a day or two a week would be nice.
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I'm in the middle of reading "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. He talks about globalization, not just in the tech world, but in any area of business. He really opened my eyes to how much outsourcing is going on. Even things like tax returns and x-ray diagnosis are being sent overseas. It is a big book, but has been well worth the time so far.
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The problem with global talent pool is that it places people who made financial commitments with the expectation of first world income in precarious situations when they are forced to compete with individuals from third world countries who do not have first world expenses. If the person from the third world country was paid the same as one in the US then I would have no problem with globalization. The problem is that we are being asked to drop our standard of living and possibly lose all the assets that we have worked for our entire lives so that corporate executives and stockholders can reap the benefits of our losses.
This is very bad for engineering in the the first world. Who will invest in an education in a science field when they know that their expected salary will not provide a decent income? Anyone who has the brains for engineering can do the math and figure out that there is not sufficient ROI if one has to work for third world pay but bear first world costs.
Karen Gayda
MCP, MCSD, MCDBA
gaydaware.com -
Interesting idea Steve, what are some possible examples of a “Remote” DBA that you or any one out there has seen in the real world?
I would think of the DBA as a kind of time share? Say a given DBA has 4 clients, each day he wakes up and logs into 4 different networks to check logs, jobs and backups. Then he works on a task for one of the 4 clients in what I guess is a round robin affair to ensure clients aren’t ignored? Like a lawyer he bills for hours worked.
My perfect job, sign me up! I can work from home and get 4 paychecks!
If I want to play the antagonist I would say something like this, the down side I could see would be for things like vacations time or sick days. I would have to coordinate 4 commitments instead of one and get them all to overlap on the same days! One hopes all the different companies deadlines correlate! Another problem is sleep if you’re on call for 4 clients 24 hrs a day at the same time, what are the chances you’re going to be called at any given time of day. Another issue is what happens when more then one client has a disaster at the same time? Which one first? Another problem that comes to mind is mentoring. Much of my role as a DBA is in being a resource to others who have questions or need some sort of training based on the code they submit me. Quite often I find myself locked in hour long conversations on the white board explaining a concept like a derived table or ER relationships or whatever. I think the quality of any db will only go down when the DBA isn’t also a database developer & trainer/mentor. Maybe for a big company this not an issue because skill sets abound, but in my shop I only know of 5 “good” database developers out of a department of 50. I would say 20- 50% of my work in a day is correcting others t-sql or db design work. Tuning and isolating poor running SQL can be found and fixed remotely but training really happens face to face. Maybe coming in and offering developer training once or twice a month and peer code reviews would help resolve the issue and still allow for remote living?
So I don’t need time off or sleep, and I’m ready to make the leap were do I start!
Well nowhere yet I haven’t really seen such offers or companies attempting this type of position. Steve mentioned he has a buddy Chris that is making an attempt to start a business offering this service. I wonder what he has come up against? I myself have seen the following types of jobs that try to “outsource” a DBA and I listed them below. They aren’t true examples of your idea but they are the closest examples I can find from the real world.
I have worked for a third party company that utilized databases for there application. My job was helpdesk as much as you could call me a DBA. I did the rollouts and some disaster recovery but mostly fixed common issues and routine maintenance like service packs and testing disaster recovery systems. I had around 100 clients with about 20 active ones and most of my day was using webex to connect to others servers to make some adjustment.
I have seen companies offer to take the administration off your hands and host your db for you remotely and they will resolve any disaster recovery needed. I think it would work for small implantations but for things where tuning and scrutiny of code are required they most likely will not work.
I have seen road warrior positions come up from time to time. These are more like a project management position with a bit of a salesman slant tied in to your commission. Your job is to travel from client to client and work with them to set up an implantation road map for what ever product your company is trying to sell them. Then you come back in 2 months install the thing sit around for a week to make sure it works then on to the next client.
I have seen contracts come up from time to time for database migration projects. I even worked on one for Microsoft. It goes like this they have an old DB or DB’s and they went to transform the schema of one database(s) into the new schema of another. You create change scripts that go through and format the data then copy it across. You also have to handle things like nulls and weird keying scenarios to account for relationships that were not in the old schema. These are generally one time 3- 6 months of work affairs where you spend 2 month’s to familiarize yourself with the schema and companies “tribal” knowledge. One month to write the code and 1-3 months to implement the migration and any Mocks required. After that you do a brief write up of what you did on the project and you’re out the door.
In all of my examples you are working still for one company. What I haven’t seen is an ongoing open ended contract that supports the paying for the day to day functions relating to a DBA and allows you to support multiple clients. My core question I guess is can the DBA position be specked out in such a way where you could sell those piece to others and build a career, or is the real value in a DBA having a specialist onsite who acts as a gate keeper to the databases to control quality and builds relationships while mentoring others.
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I've got a few examples actually.
First there was a company here in Denver, just down the road from me when I was at JD Edwards. They were outsourced DBAs for various companies and they worked by taking on clients and handling all DBA related management of the database servers. They documented quite a bit and then they would have a team of DBAs at their site. The DBAs would respond to help desk tickets, check servers, apply patches, etc. Since they documented stuff, it was possible for whoever was free to handle most items. Obviously some people became experts on certain clients. I never saw the other side, so I'm not sure how well end users thought things worked. This company mainly had Oracle clients and were just getting into SQL Server last I heard.
My buddy has a similar idea, but he's looking to fill slots when DBAs go on vacation at smaller shops. He's looking to have a few employees that rotate among clients when their DBA is gone.
Both ways require that there be a good amount of documentation as well as talented DBAs that can handle a variety of situations quickly.
Being a remote DBA would probably work for many companies since they don't have a lot of DBA needs, thus they have a network admin or developer fill the role. However usually that person gets out of their area and causes problems or just builds a poor database environment. If there was a good place for people to come to find DBAs, then maybe smaller companies would be able to hire 1/5 DBA to work on their stuff one day a week and be available for emergencies.
Working at home once in awhile is easy. Once or twice a week requires you to really do some set up to be prepared to do your job. Full time is hard. I've been doing it for 3 years and I miss the office at times. Makes it hard to concentrate.
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I am curious about
'as much as the UK is a nice place, I wouldn't want to live there'
Why not? Why do some people think that living in one place is better than living in another? Different, yes, but not necessarily better.
Madame Artois
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for the same reason I live in London. I like it here. I have worked for a software house in North Carolina (the only place I have worked in the US). It's a lovely place. I also have family there, but I would not want to live there. It's not me.
neil.
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suppose I was wondering why certain places or locations are deemed 'better' than others. 'neilchandler' likes living in London; I hail from North West England and think London is awful. Hopefully its all subjective not pejorative.
The same thing applies to working remotely; you either love it or loath it. You can make any scenario work so long as you're prepared to put in the effort. It depends on what is motiving you personally in the first place.
Madame Artois
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well - they do say that "home is where the heart is"....it took me about 10 years to stop yearning to be anyplace else but where I was, and even now I have to kick myself periodically to stop dreaming about the impossible....
I teleworked for 5 long years and enjoyed it thoroughly - now I have an "almost" regular job where I have to commute to work and I find that I love getting away from home and separating the two environments..
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
The main problem with teleworking is that a large part of your social interaction is with work colleagues. I like interacting with the other peoplse in my department. I like my 45 minute commute as I lose myself in a book with my ipod on. It's real luxury "me" time, with neither my employer not my wife and kids have a call on my time. I really miss that time when I work from home (1 day per month usually)
Also, in the UK (and big cities in general), having a dedicated office at home is a luxury that few people can afford given the price of houses here (for Americans and other aliens, my 3 bedroom semi-detatched house in North London is worth about $800,000. It's quite small. 80 foot garden (this is big by London standards). Room to park 2 cars. no garage.
neil.
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Given that just yesterday I was reading about a 77 sq.ft "closet" selling for 335K in (Knightsbridge ???), I'm not surprised at all at those numbers...appears that your garden alone will sell for that much...
As for not being able to have a "dedicated office at home", that's the catch 22 right there...to be able to live in an "affordable" home you live far, far away from the city which means your entire day is swallowed up between commuting and working - or you live within jogging distance and call a cubby hole your home...
Now if only employers assured employees of a fixed percentage of teleworking, people could live where they wanted (within reason)....combine the best of both worlds...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Hi,
As far as hiring offshore people for DBA or developer jobs, I must say that it is very difficult to find the right people and keep them. You have a 50-50 chance to waste your time and money. Some people will lack communications skills, some people will lack technical expertise and no wonder, the right guys are on high demand, therefore, you get what you pay for.
For the remote or telecommuting DBA, this is happening anyways since you are never working on the server itself so 300 feets or 300 miles should not make any difference.
My personal experience with telecommuting 1 or 2 days a weeks is that it is beneficial to both employer and employees.
You have got plenty of time to be in the office to interact with people and attend meetings, however when you telecommute, there are a couple things that worth mentioning:
- You can focus hours on a row on highly difficult projects without the distraction of people stopping by to ask for your help. The only calls you get are for really important situations. You can set aside a time devoted to read emails and pick-up voice mails for the rest
- You can work odds hours, go to a doctor at 11AM and work after dinner from 9 to 11 PM
- Average is that you work more and with better quality, however you get the schedule flexibility, the satisfaction and you save commute time, gas, pollution, risk and stress.
I guess it does not really matter to management whether you work home or office as long as you come-up with results and are on site a reasonable amount of time or whenever your presence is required. As long as management is able to appreciate the results of course.
So my plan is that I try to telecommute 2 days a week, in a very flexible way. I change or cancel the days according to meeting requirements and what is going on in the business. I.E. if there is a large number of people coming over for meetings or if a large project goes life, I do not telecommute, I have to be there just in case.
Telecommuting is really a win-win way of doing business, it benefits everyone. To me, it means that I may work on Saturdays or late at night but it also mean that I have more satisfaction in my job and can better manage my personal life and in turn my employer will get more timely productivity out of me.
I did not get there overnight, it took me a long time to go through the process of making myself known as accountable and serious about it, then overcoming logistical issues like a high-speed dependable connection. Also, old school way of thinking of what is a job was also a problem to overcome. it took long time to slowly build confidence and show that it really does not matter.
Hopefully, I work with people who really do not care about having you here from 8 to 5, they only care about results.
If it takes me the week-end or if it takes only 1 hour Friday night, no worries, they get it, they are happy. It is a lottery, you may get it done in 1 hour or you may need more time, do it by the deadline and you will get all the telecommuting you want.
There is something I miss though when telecommuting. I have only a laptop to control multiple servers using software that has plenty of toolbars here and there. At work, I can use 3-4 big screens simultaneously, depending what I have to do, the number of screens is really making a difference on the productivity. Working on a piece of code from home is perfect but keeping an eye on multiple servers at once is not. So again, according to the specific task I am up to, I telecommute or not.
Lastly, as far as location (is everything) is concerned, i went from a place where you could buy a shoe box house for 700K to a place where you could buy a 2000 sq feet 1/2 half acres house for less than 200K, salary was cut by almost 40% but who cares, you cannot have everything. I Offshored myself along with my job in some way, going from a developed overgrown expensive country to a developed growing affordable country, 20% chance/opportunity and 80% hard work. May be something could be done here. In a global economy where jobs get offshored why would not you also offshore skilled trained workers, this sounds to be just fair global economic mix and would sooner or later level the costs. I hope you love Rice and Curry, Tamales and Tajin 🙂
Philippe
BI Guy
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