May 5, 2009 at 6:44 am
While I don't think a degree in C.S. or Information Technology is necessary I certainly think it helps. I do not have a computer related degree. I do have a B.S. in Physical Education and ended up in computers because I like them and one of my good friends was the software development manager at the local paper mill. He needed help and saw that I had the aptitude and desire, so he hired me and mentored me. I wish I had more formal training because there are definitely concepts that I don't completely understand. So I agree with Rob when he said:
Having a non IT degree is not a problem in many circumstances; however, I find you do learn what you require, rather than everything! - So, if you imagine a pyramid you might only learn 20% of the base of the pyramid yet also learn stuff on other levels, even the top level.
In a convoluted way I'm trying to say that by having no official IT backing there are often very simple things you don't know as you have never needed to know them - but when discovered can save time and prevent you looking foolish!
I don't know that I've looked foolish, just not as well prepared as I'd like to be.
Jack Corbett
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May 5, 2009 at 6:53 am
Luke L (5/5/2009)
Pretty much the same story here. I was in Music school studying audio for film (had some strange desire to be a folley artist), then joined the Marine Corps where I sort of fell into the computer field. Worked my way from help desk to network ops to DBA. Although I am currently back in school using up the GI Bill money that I paid into and I expect to get an AS in CIS in the near future.-Luke.
Spent a little while on an LST driving you lot around. You're welcome for the ride.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
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May 5, 2009 at 7:08 am
...what is your college degree in?
None. I'm in the UK and did not make it to University (did not even do A Levels). Did attend Technical College for one year to try to get a Computing Certificate of sorts (but failed :crying: )
...how did you get from where you stated
Fell in love with programming in my early teens at school where I learnt BASIC in an hour from a book and wrote my first program in a matter of minutes. Progressed from there to writing Assembler. Still have fond memories of that time. :smooooth:
...to where you are today
Hard graft, a certain amount of selfishness and a determination to know what I want and to go and get it even if it meant treading on toes :pinch:
...does your college degree really make all that much difference in your success as a DBA
Since I do not have a degree and I'm not a DBA, can't say. As to my attempt to get a 'Computing Certificate', diddly squat, next to useless as nobody cared. Although at the time degrees were respected as jobs were advertised as degree minimum.
the first thing I do to the resume is black ink over any letters after the person's name.
I think that is a bit harsh. I suppose it depends on what those letters mean. My son has a degree in physics which entitles him to have letters after his name, he is now doing a phd. I hate to think that someone disregards the achievement just because they are a bunch if letters.
Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon.
May 5, 2009 at 7:11 am
A.S. in Electrical Engineering, B.S. in Education, 20 experience years in military electronics.
Started with a job in help desk and eventually accidentally became network engineer and DBA.
May 5, 2009 at 7:12 am
I wonder how many people have actually made a choice to be a DBA? - Like 'I want to be a doctor, lawyer etc'
The gist I am getting from this thread is not that people go School --> Uni --> DBA, but more like:
School --> Work --> Bit of IT --> DBA
With uni being an optional part between school and work phases or work and bit of IT phases!
That's certainly my situation, and for a couple of other guys I know. (Although I don't fully consider myself a DBA, I basically have my hand in virtually all IT aspects of the company bar the .net / web development side of things!)
May 5, 2009 at 7:15 am
I have a BA in Criminal Justice but that was useless since I am a white male and due to affirmative action(which government agencies flat out told me at the time). So I got a Masters in MIS. That was the reason I got my first job. Then I got certifications in MSCD and MCDBA, and that made all the difference. The only reason I got my 2nd job after 8 years was due to upgraded certifications and the experience I got from my first due, which was due to my degree. Did the degree make me a better DBA? I'd say the database classes I had did for sure, but I learned more on the job as the years went by than education could give. However, there is no way I'd be where I am without first getting my degree and 2nd without getting certifications. So, some people might get to be a DBA due to luck, and some of us had to earn it the hard way. Been trying to become a manager for over 5 years, but that never seems to work out. At least the managers I have are nice and friendly and know what they are doing.
May 5, 2009 at 7:18 am
I have dual BS in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering plus Masters in Business Administration with focus in Finance. I am 100% sure that my degree gave me advantage over any other person without IT related degree. However, I am sure there are many specialists around that are brighter than me thus they can be better specialist than me. I am trying to say that special degree is the necessity but not sufficient for exceptional DBA.
I am really surprised with the question asked. Bill Gates and many other successful business people are drop outs from universities and do not have business or any other degree after high school. Does it mean that university is the waste of time? No, it means that not everybody can be successful business person. The same is true for any other area.
No one needs special degree to be successful in teaching, programming, singing, and etc. However, degree related to the area of the focus is really helpful not to waste time for the opening of the already discovered solutions. Back years person without degree but with the right set of brain and ambitions were more important than anything else.
Why do you think DBA has so much to do? I think this is because a lot of people in IT don’t have either right education, or mind set, or both to do the job right. I’ve seen a lot of examples when people with IT degree right store procedures that are a shame for many self-educated 5th graders.
Alex Prusakov
May 5, 2009 at 7:18 am
No degree at all, I'm still a senior in good standing after 30 years. While I think the core ciriculum would have been helpful, when I was in school the idea of DBA was undeveloped due to a lack of technology. The mainframe ruled and cards were all the rage.
May 5, 2009 at 7:20 am
David Burrows (5/5/2009)
...what is your college degree in?
None. I'm in the UK and did not make it to University (did not even do A Levels). Did attend Technical College for one year to try to get a Computing Certificate of sorts (but failed :crying: )
...how did you get from where you stated
Fell in love with programming in my early teens at school where I learnt BASIC in an hour from a book and wrote my first program in a matter of minutes. Progressed from there to writing Assembler. Still have fond memories of that time. :smooooth:
...to where you are today
Hard graft, a certain amount of selfishness and a determination to know what I want and to go and get it even if it meant treading on toes :pinch:
...does your college degree really make all that much difference in your success as a DBA
Since I do not have a degree and I'm not a DBA, can't say. As to my attempt to get a 'Computing Certificate', diddly squat, next to useless as nobody cared. Although at the time degrees were respected as jobs were advertised as degree minimum.
the first thing I do to the resume is black ink over any letters after the person's name.
I think that is a bit harsh. I suppose it depends on what those letters mean. My son has a degree in physics which entitles him to have letters after his name, he is now doing a phd. I hate to think that someone disregards the achievement just because they are a bunch if letters.
Essentially when hiring someone it's a case of screening them as best as possible with the information available to you. Ignoring qualifications is ignoring another screening factor.
To have got on to a uni course the uni must have screened the candidate too - depending on the uni this could be a good indicator - a prospective candidate with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge would have been picked from quite a few potential applicants to get to those institutions in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying someone from Oxford or Cambridge is automatically better than someone from another uni, just that if you ignore the degree, the quality of the degree and the institution someone studdied at then you are ignoring quite a bit of information!
May 5, 2009 at 7:22 am
Really its very intersting to know the people who having non technical degrees can also become a succesfull DBA. It sounds really great for me as having the master degree in IT also i am not still a successfull developer also 😉
May 5, 2009 at 7:25 am
I started out with a BS in Biochemsitry with an intent to go to medical school. I liked the chemistry end of it more than the bio end, so I changed my mind from persuing and MD to a PhD. After 2 and a half years of not seeing eye-to-eye with my advisor, he kindly asked me to not come back for the spring semester, so I took my MA and left school with no idea what I wanted to do, other than never set foot in a chemical lab again. I took the first job that came along, which was doing inventory and infomation management for a chemical distributor. That turned out to be a horrible place to work, so after a few years there, I foresook the science world and am now a DBA for a non-profit social services agency. Actually, I'm not even really a DBA, though that's my title. I'm more a business intelligence developer, but whatever.
I don't think it's NECESSARY to have a degree in order to have this career, though I would very much like some formal eduction in the CS field. I've always been really good with computers, numbers, and logic puzzles, which is what it all really is when you break it down. I'm just not sure where to start or what the best learning method would be.
May 5, 2009 at 7:26 am
I see a lot of posts decrying the need for a degree of any sort and specifically an IT-related degree. In just the last 10 years I have seen a big shift in focus by employers, and from what I can tell those that don't see the need for the degree have been in the field longer than that (as I have).
The way I see it, 10-20 years ago a rather large percentage of people stumbled into IT fields such as DBA. There really weren't degrees available that addressed IT outside of computer science. Now, people are making conscious decisions to go into various IT fields as a career. I see a degree as an important part of that career decision. Most of those who have been in the field for many years have the experience to take the place of the degree. For those getting degrees, their practical experience needs to start during college or very soon thereafter. As other posters have mentioned, an IT degree has a limited shelf-life for practical knowledge, so it must be put to use in short order for it to be worth anything.
May 5, 2009 at 7:28 am
BA English
DB certification program about 10 years ago.
My route to DBA was via encyclopedia publishing, where I learned about databases while managing the editing stages of the writing. I never did figure out the book-author many-to-many puzzle before learning about normalization, though. 🙂
I got some entry-level reporting jobs with my initial DB training (career change due to lack of prospects in publishing), then did web development for several years, then applied for DBA when I saw that I was doing a lot of the DB work anyway.
I don't think an IT degree is an automatic prerequisite for a DBA job, but I don't see how it would hurt if a person was able to do well in an IT degree program that provided relevant education (normalization, working with a real product such as SQL or Oracle, performance, recovery, and testing topics, etc.). And even if it didn't, I bet it gets a person in the door to have such a degree. Though I also bet most people with the typical CS degree paths steered toward Java or C first and then moved to DBs later.
But the DBA position, even more than other IT positions, seems to lend itself to a person who doesn't have a formal IT education. A motivated person who is willing to learn the hard but necessary parts of DB theory (I'm still learning...) and the quirks of SQL Server and SQL (I'm still learning...) - but who also is well organized (I'm still learning... :-)) - can do well. It seems to me that a lot of DBA issues are less technological than policy and personality related. The hard part is that when the issue is tech related, it is usually very technical or fraught with tradeoffs. That and the fact that almost everything involves data both lead to a very busy job.
Thanks for the question. I think it is a good one, even if having a degree doesn't hold equal importance for everyone.
- webrunner
-------------------
A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html
May 5, 2009 at 7:29 am
I have a degree in Physics, but haven't used it since graduating. I wanted to go into research but was horribly disillusioned by my advisor. My first job was in marketing/merchandising and after several years in related jobs I made a career change and took some VB classes. I got a programming job (in a different language) and eventually became a DBA. My degree did help in getting my foot in the IT door (at least that's what my first hiring manager told me). Hard work and willingness to learn new things has got me where I am today...wherever that may be.
May 5, 2009 at 7:33 am
My degree is a BA in Child Psych/Social Work-use it in every meeting I attend. I was hired in a non-it job and after 3 years bid into a business analyst position. When a TEMPORARY team was formed as a detail to create THE DATABASE, I was assigned by my boss to the 6 month detail. That was June 1980 and I never looked back. I have been the chief of database administration for 7 years.
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