August 14, 2008 at 9:27 am
I had an interesting talk with my manager about future DBA career. He said he believe that in future DBA skills may become a commodity and thus to enhance my professional value, I should be involved in business side as much as possible.
My argument is that there are enough areas/knowledge that a DBA needs to explore / learn , and to involve too much in business knowledge, I may lag far behind in terms of keeping up my DBA skills, and as a result, from a long term perspective, I may lose my status as a professional DBA, esp, if I need to change my job and my so-called business knowledge most likely will not be transferrable between different industries.
Any thoughts to share?
August 14, 2008 at 12:23 pm
the way MS is doing things with powershell i think there are two paths. one where all you know how to do is click the gui and solve simple things and the other is where you know how to script and do the job of 3-4 gui clickers.
the second provides value to any employer
August 14, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I think that your manager is right. S/he does not want you to be a IT worker only. IT worker with no much business sense is just a IT "worker".
I quote the following message from this link:
http://www.energizeit.ca/Pages/Content.aspx?Track=0&Session=3&Content=All
Next Generation of IT Workers:
* Expertise covering a broad range of specialized skills
* In-depth project management, vendor management, and business process analysis
* Strong non-technical skills, e.g. communications, leadership, contextual orientation
* Deep insight into drivers of business value
* "Versatilists“ with numerous roles, assignments and experiences, creating synthesized knowledge and business value
slide 11: The Quest for IT Talent – What has Changed?1990s2010
slide 32: Future of the IT Profession
worth a read.
August 15, 2008 at 12:52 am
To be honest with you, Vivien, whenever I see requirements like
Vivien Xing (8/14/2008)
* Expertise covering a broad range of specialized skills* In-depth project management, vendor management, and business process analysis
* Strong non-technical skills, e.g. communications, leadership, contextual orientation
* Deep insight into drivers of business value
* "Versatilists“ with numerous roles, assignments and experiences, creating synthesized knowledge and business value
I feel it is "ridiculous and funny" for the author to come up with such requirements, can majority of people (say 75% of people) meet this requirement? IMO, to know as much as possible is something nice to have, but it is optional, and we should never sacrifice our "core values" as a professional in a specific field to dive deep into some other areas. After all, we are human beings, not superman, and I swear in my decade long professional life, I have never, ever known or heard of a person who has met any two of the requirements listed above. 😛
Back to my original question, i.e. whether DBA skill can be a commodity, personally I do not think so because db administration has a longer learning curve than programming. So if DBA skill becomes a commodity, then programming skills should be commodity much earlier;)
August 15, 2008 at 6:57 am
i'm having to deal with vendors now and no matter how much i don't really like it, it's useful
our management wanted to go all disk backups. i did some math and found tape is a lot cheaper over 3 years. now once all the quotes are in i have finalize these numbers
August 19, 2008 at 11:21 am
A lot of DBA job description these days includes T-SQL, SSIS and Business Intelligence experiences.
As a matter of facts, a lot of companies hire DBA/Developer instead of just DBA.
August 20, 2008 at 5:47 am
Think of this scenario. A company purchases a 3rd party product and the vendor installs the software, IIS, and database server onto one server. They add an NT group containing many people and grant that group sysadmin in SQL Server. Who would you rather have, a good DBA or a person with good business knowledge?
🙂
August 20, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Loner (8/19/2008)
A lot of DBA job description these days includes T-SQL, SSIS and Business Intelligence experiences.As a matter of facts, a lot of companies hire DBA/Developer instead of just DBA.
Which, imnsho, is a Big Mistake. I spend hours each week continuing to advance and hone my development skills. All the DBAs I know, the good ones anyway, are doing the same thing for their DBA skills. There is simply not enough time to reach a high level of proficiency in both areas. In fact, we must also narrow our expertise to SQL Server or Oracle (or other dbms) but not both. That is not to say I can't be familiar with Oracle or MySQL and be able to get some work done in either. But it is a full time job remaining at Expert level as SQL Server Developer.
The best that companies can end up with when they hire a DBA/Developer is someone who is moderately competent at both. Maybe that's all they need. But if they need someone really proficient at either, they're looking for two different people.
Tomm Carr
--
Version Normal Form -- http://groups.google.com/group/vrdbms
August 20, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Linda Johanning (8/20/2008)
Think of this scenario. A company purchases a 3rd party product and the vendor installs the software, IIS, and database server onto one server. They add an NT group containing many people and grant that group sysadmin in SQL Server. Who would you rather have, a good DBA or a person with good business knowledge?🙂
I guess it is quicker / easier for a good DBA to get business knowledge than for a good business person to get DBA skills / knowledge. What do you think?
August 20, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Tomm Carr (8/20/2008)
... it is a full time job remaining at Expert level as SQL Server Developer.The best that companies can end up with when they hire a DBA/Developer is someone who is moderately competent at both. Maybe that's all they need. But if they need someone really proficient at either, they're looking for two different people.
Cannot agree more, Tomm !
August 20, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Loner (8/19/2008)
A lot of DBA job description these days includes T-SQL, SSIS and Business Intelligence experiences.As a matter of facts, a lot of companies hire DBA/Developer instead of just DBA.
one time one of our most experienced devs sent us a table script to create a table. we said OK, but we should also put some indexes on there.
she said OK, give her a few minutes. 20 minutes later she said she created the index like we asked. we looked at it and she created one nonclustered index with every column in the table.
August 21, 2008 at 11:05 am
You looked just at the "create table" script and decided that the table needed indexes? That is impressive. I generally have to look at the queries to make that determination.
And "all the columns"? How many columns? Three? Thirty? Was, perhaps, this covering index precisely what was needed?
OK, perhaps not and this is an actual example of developer malfeasance. But as a horror story, it is quite ho-hum.
In addition, "one of our most experienced" is an ambiguous, relative denotation and tells us absolutely nothing of the actual experience level of the developer.
Actually, in thinking about it a little longer, I am quite able to identify with the developer. If I sent in a script to create a table and the DBA team responded with "fine, but let's add an index or two" (or words to that effect), without specifying any reason for indexing and me knowing that they have not been privy to the design sessions that went into the creation of the table, I just might have created one index on all the columns as a way of saying, "There! Happy? Now shut up, do your job and let me do mine!" Yeah, in thinking about it, I have to admit that I'm not above doing just that. 😀
Tomm Carr
--
Version Normal Form -- http://groups.google.com/group/vrdbms
August 21, 2008 at 11:18 am
common sense would say that if you create a table that will hold thousands of rows you need an index or two
or my favorite, years ago we told devs to use index hints in some queries because for some reason a query would not pick up the index that it needed to use. so the devs use the same index hint on 10 different queries with different columns in the where clause. and then they blame sql server for performance issues. you tell them to fix it and they don't do it because it's too much trouble finding the code again
August 21, 2008 at 1:31 pm
SQL Noob (8/21/2008)
common sense would say that if you create a table that will hold thousands of rows you need an index or two
Why? I'm assuming the table had a PK and the associated index, did it need more? Were there going to be queries searching or sorting on other columns? You don't say.
Maybe the table really did need additional indexing. But the way you described the incident, you come off as saying to the developers, "Hey, nifty little table you have there. Slap an index or two on that sucker and it'll be perfect!"
or my favorite, years ago we told devs to use index hints ...
Hey, if you want to swap bonehead developer and bonehead DBA stories, that fine, but we could be here a loooooong time. :w00t:
Tomm Carr
--
Version Normal Form -- http://groups.google.com/group/vrdbms
August 21, 2008 at 3:55 pm
jeffrey yao (8/15/2008)
To be honest with you, Vivien, whenever I see requirements likeVivien Xing (8/14/2008)
* Expertise covering a broad range of specialized skills* In-depth project management, vendor management, and business process analysis
* Strong non-technical skills, e.g. communications, leadership, contextual orientation
* Deep insight into drivers of business value
* "Versatilists“ with numerous roles, assignments and experiences, creating synthesized knowledge and business value
I feel it is "ridiculous and funny" for the author to come up with such requirements, can majority of people (say 75% of people) meet this requirement? IMO, to know as much as possible is something nice to have, but it is optional, and we should never sacrifice our "core values" as a professional in a specific field to dive deep into some other areas. After all, we are human beings, not superman, and I swear in my decade long professional life, I have never, ever known or heard of a person who has met any two of the requirements listed above. 😛
Back to my original question, i.e. whether DBA skill can be a commodity, personally I do not think so because db administration has a longer learning curve than programming. So if DBA skill becomes a commodity, then programming skills should be commodity much earlier;)
I take it you haven't been looking in the job market in some time. Vivien's post might as well have come from the majority of postings I saw. There ARE a lot of positions where having both aspects are not only required, but demanded.
I understand that it can be tough to balance both sides, and there are both types of jobs (meaning - the DBA with no business skills who gets tasks tossed over the wall along with the red meat he requires once a day, or the DBA who is heavily involved in bettering/adding value to the organization) out there to be had.
That being said - if you CAN achieve the standards required to be an asset on both the technical end and the business end, then you might see the leveraging of your knowledge, and your value as a commodity come through fully.
Technical talent is valuable; technical talent that can be packaged in an approachable way, so that the user community isn't afraid of you and doesn't feel condescended to each time they talk to you, THAT's a commodity.
It's ultimately the difference between being "just" a DBA, or being a DBA that will end up growing into an Architect. It's a matter of personal choice which one you'd prefer to be.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
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