Someone posted a note recently about there being more companies or departments, having a lack of DBAs, or even DBA skills. There is often a group consisting of developers or system administrations acting as DBA-by-committee. This group may do a good job, but it seems that so often I hear consultants or DBAs hired later finding any number of issues in the way that SQL Server is being managed.
I think the definition of the DBA role is a challenge and it is hard sometimes for managers to justify the hiring of a DBA, or even understanding that a DBA is needed. That makes it hard for this profession to grow, though it seems that many surveys seem to shows tremendous job growth for data professionals.
So for a Friday poll, I wanted to see what you think about the DBA profession. Using your experiences, or observations, what do you think about this question:
Are more companies or departments forgoing the need for a dedicated DBA?
Or even are they forgoing dedicated SQL developers, ETL developers, etc. In other words, do you think there are more or less opportunities for professionals working full time on SQL Server.
I tend to think that in absolute numbers there are more jobs, more opportunities available for DBAs today. They might not be in your town, or at your company, but I think that more and more companies do realize that their data is important and it makes sense to have someone dedicated to watching over it.
However I think that there are more and more companies that are using SQL Server, and it's growth does outpace the hiring of DBAs. So as a percentage of total SQL Server installations, there are less places using DBAs. In many of these places we have the Accidental DBA managing server instances.
Give us your opinion today. Is being a SQL Server DBA still a good career move?
Steve Jones
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