May 7, 2009 at 8:45 pm
I've been with my company 6 years and have grown technically and professionally. I'm 43 and love being a database geek and being a team lead has been fine. But now the pressure is coming to make the jump to full time manager which is not a career goal at all.
Can you stay a shop DBA forever or is that a fairy tale? Does there come a point in your career where one has to choose between becoming an independent consultant or go into management?
Let me know your thoughts.
David
May 8, 2009 at 6:15 am
I'm 46 and I think I'm going to try being a geek forever. I'm just not the management type and I really like playing with toys. I know an MS consultant, Bill Sulcius, who's very close to retirement age. He's been a geek forever and continues to work as one. It does seem possible.
"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 8, 2009 at 6:41 am
I have been raised to a role of Manager but that has not made me stop playing around with the DB. I am always Hands on on the DB. I like playing around with it rather than just do management stuff. Yea, I have to sit in on some useless meetings. I can tell you one thing, if Grant was sitting in one of those meetings, I am sure Pork Chop would be flying fast and furious... :hehe:
-Roy
May 8, 2009 at 8:09 pm
At one time I thought that the only career options for me was to move from technical to a more management style of role. I tried it and found that it was a seriously bad choice. Except for that short interlude into management (about 1 year or so), I have been successfully working in a technical role for all of my working life (I am 46 as well).
The reality is that a lot of people are not all that good at management. Most are, however, pretty good at what the technical roles they know and love. If you attempt to make a change, you really need to think about the implications - the roles are really very different and there is a whole heap of knowledge that you need to acquire. Some you can get by experience, some by education, the rest ....mmm intuition.
I am a consultant (working for a consulting firm) and have been for the last 9 years. This role works pretty well for me since I generally get to use recent/current/bleeding edge tools. This keeps everything fresh and new and working with a variety of customers keeps everything in perspective.
May 9, 2009 at 10:02 am
I've got plenty of friends that avoid lead roles (and management) completely. Others do what you're doing, others try management.
Management is a different role, and a different set of skills. The best "geek" isn't the best manager, it's not a skill set progression.
But it can be a career progression. It can lead to more $$, if you are looking to be a director or above.
I'd say if you want to be a DBA forever, do that. No reason to look down on that decision. Do what you enjoy, and what takes care of your family.
May 11, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I agree. At my last job, myself and a lead on the network/infrastructure team were called into the CIO's office. He sat us both down and asked if we would both like to move into managerial roles. We looked at one another and nearly at the same time said thanks, but no thanks. In that office, manager meant no-longer hands on. My co-worker and I agreed it was like the kiss-of-death. Maybe more money but at risk of rapidly declining skill sets. I love being hands on (and so does my ex-co-worker).
-- You can't be late until you show up.
May 12, 2009 at 8:42 am
I'm lucky in that I'm at a shop that's small enough for me to be both a manager and a developer/admin. If I could only do one or the other full time then I'd choose developer, but I enjoy the position I'm in now. In my career I've never really had a manager with any tech skills which meant that it was hard for my managers to guide me in my professional development. Now that I manage a team of 6, I feel (I hope) that I provide my guys with more practical guidance and less of the MBA-driven drivel.
For this reason, I'd encourage more techies to test the management waters. Until more of us get these postions the tech world will be full of paradigms and action plans and viability matrices and not necessarily stronger code.
Of course I also have to deal with the negatives of both worlds. Just recently I had to lay off a guy who was a good worker for strictly economic reasons. The next night I was stuck at the office until 4 AM reviving a fubared Exchange server because my sys admin was out sick.
But since I can take a big role in architecting all of our systems (from server specs to Web apps), I feel like the buck can truly stop with me; whereas a manager with no tech skills can only pay lip service to that -- in the long run it's the code that makes or breaks a project.
May 12, 2009 at 9:57 am
Yes you can remain a 'techie' ... I'm 51 and been a DBA for 26+ years and still a 'techie' ...
Although I did do the manager thing for a couple of years a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - I hated it and came back where I felt the most comfortable !
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
May 12, 2009 at 10:23 am
rudy komacsar (5/12/2009)
quote]
Rudy, while we're nearly the same age, I've only been a DBA for 10+ years. When I moved into this position, I slid out from under a very close friend. He was my manager who I had worked with for nearly 15 years. I was the senior developer on an AS400 (I started my career on an old IBM S36!). I saw where the future was going, and with his blessing I moved into client/server (how often do you hear that nowadays?) and Sybase - progressing from there. He on the other hand became the sole owner of the AS400 and it's legacy apps. Around 2005, because he had no additional skillsets, he was pushed into "retirement" at age 55. I, on the other hand, have flourished. Love what I do, most timesI feel appreciated. Maybe when I'm "older" I'll try and get out of the 24x7 grind (those 2:30AM pages really suck - IMO) but for now, as long as the paychecks keep coming in, I think I'll continue to do what I do! The funny thing is, my girls call me a nerd (I tried to explain what a "nibble" or "tuple" is to them. They completely glazed over, drool from the lips, the whole nine yards.). Where would they be without us supporting their favorite websites???
-- You can't be late until you show up.
May 12, 2009 at 10:47 am
It's the Peter Principle. Everyone talks about it but hardly anyone follows it. Management assumes that excellence at a technical role whether it be DBA, welder, programmer, etc automatically means that person will be excellent at managing. It's just not true.
A really good way to determine if you or someone you know would be a fit for management is DISC personality profiling. With a 10 minute test it's very straight forward to determine if someone's 'bent' is toward people skills or techie....
http://www.48days.com/products/personalityreport.php#careerProfile">
http://www.48days.com/products/personalityreport.php#careerProfile
I used this when I held a Director position with a company to help make the decision that I needed to get back into a purely technical role. It just confirmed for me what I already felt. It was nice having some type of metric to back up my decision though.
May 12, 2009 at 10:54 am
Interesting, Bob. I might have to get a report.
May 12, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Well, I guess it all depends on what kind of shop you are in at the moment. I'm gonna be 48 years of age two days from now and have been a C++ developer for most of my career, only discovering that I really like to play with data in the last five years or so. OK, I'm not a fully-fledged DBA, just standing in whenever needed when the client's DBAs are both on leave. But I do have two people who report to me, though they are very self-sufficient, so it keeps my managerial duties to close to nothing (we are three contrators sitting at a client to make things a bit clearer).
I'd say, if you are happy with your job and you have any perspective to growing your knowledge, while still performing your job as per requirements and the management requirements don't grow beyond what you think is bearable, stick where you are. But definitely keep on developing your skills.
If you are unhappy? You'll have to decide for yourself what to do. Trying to be on your own isn't funny either, believe me, my wife is a doctor and hardly ever at home. Money galore, but something else goes missing...
May 12, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Jan Van der Eecken (5/12/2009)
Well, I guess it all depends on what kind of shop you are in at the moment. I'm gonna be 48 years of age two days from now and have been a C++ developer for most of my career, only discovering that I really like to play with data in the last five years or so. OK, I'm not a fully-fledged DBA, just standing in whenever needed when the client's DBAs are both on leave. But I do have two people who report to me, though they are very self-sufficient, so it keeps my managerial duties to close to nothing (we are three contrators sitting at a client to make things a bit clearer).I'd say, if you are happy with your job and you have any perspective to growing your knowledge, while still performing your job as per requirements and the management requirements don't grow beyond what you think is bearable, stick where you are. But definitely keep on developing your skills.
If you are unhappy? You'll have to decide for yourself what to do. Trying to be on your own isn't funny either, believe me, my wife is a doctor and hardly ever at home. Money galore, but something else goes missing...
Now if I could only get this signature below to work. Guess I should read the FM...
May 27, 2009 at 4:56 am
I am faced with a similar dilemma. I work for a very large food company. Currently I work in IT in a plant. Because of recent "Lean" manufacturing, our IT department went from 5 (two full-time positions, one contractor and two interns) to 2 (myself, full-time, and one intern - although the other full-time position has recently been posted). My dilemma isn't just the question of whether to get into more of a project management position (PMP anyone?), but also here at the plant, I am the highest I can go if I want to stay in IT. By the way, my IT position is coding (VB, ASP, etc), DBA, Networking, a little bit of evertying. Anyway, if I want to move up the ladder, I have to switch over to "corporate" and I am not much of one for the corporate mentality. I have never liked to be or wanted to be a corporate "whipping" boy. So my problem is not just if I want to move up and that would mean less and less hands-on work, but also moving into corporate.
May 27, 2009 at 6:51 am
I am a database developer and my work starts shifting into project management. I am less and less involved in software development. I am afraid sooner or later I am going to forget how to write code. I like being a techie.
Do I like project management? I HATE it. I like the challenge of solving problems and writing codes.
So what am I going to do? Start looking for another job! !
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