The Value of Experience

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The Value of Experience

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Vivien Xing SSChampion Points: 12297 More actions · Answer 1

This discussion makes me think about Brad McGehee’s How to Become an Exceptional DBA. This is not a commercial.

I like Steph Brown’s saying. It’s worth a quote.

“I would say an excellent DBA does have a broader view of business needs, but starting out with formal training as a DBA does not preclude one from gather that broader view. It takes an open mind and some initiative, a willingness to ask questions and receive information, and the desire to see the world from someone else's point of view.

Great DBAs don't pop up out of the ground (college) fully formed - they grow through-out their careers, which give them a lot of leeway to develop a wide array of skills, both hard and soft.”

Actually this not only applies to DBA, but also to the other titles -Developer/Manager/Teacher/Chef/Parents…

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736173 More actions · Answer 2

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

SSC Guru

Points: 736173

October 23, 2009 at 11:15 am

#1070187

Excellent comments, and thanks for the debate.

KevinC. SSCommitted Points: 1570 More actions · Answer 3

I think that, as long as it doesn't preclude information you need to do your job, any experience can be useful. The more you know, the greater an asset to your company you will be. And these are the people who management likes to keep around.

--

Kevin C.

Constant Coder SSC Rookie Points: 45 More actions · Answer 4

I would agree with the idea that you are probably a much better DBA if you have some outside experience, the more the better. But I have a confession to make : I am a developer in mostly Microsoft technologies, not actually a DBA. And the reason I avidly follow the conversations and information on SQLCentral is because I think it makes me a much better developer, to understand as much as possible about what you expert DBAs are thinking and doing. So I think it works both ways. You have my appreciation for all the great material you guys put out here.

Charles Kincaid SSChampion Points: 13593 More actions · Answer 5

Hey Constant.

You are not alone there. I also am an active developer. I got deep into the SQL aspect of it because a previous employer recognized that us developers had not a single clue as to how to do SQL right. They paid for some training. Some of us used that immersion week as a launching point and went deep on our own and the rest were glad that it was over and went back to the "table is a spreadsheet" ways. :rolleyes: Hang in there.

ATBCharles Kincaid

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004324 More actions · Answer 6

Vivien Xing (10/23/2009)

dbo.benyos (10/23/2009)
For instance, a guy with some UNIX knowledge will never write a script to replace strings in a text file. He'll use SED command instead. If you only know Windows, you'll never know that it ever existed...
Windows PowerShell has the functionality to do that.

BWAA-HAAAA!!!! So does any decent word processor! 😛

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

dbo.benyos SSCommitted Points: 1944 More actions · Answer 7

BWAA-HAAAA!!!! So does any decent word processor!

I don't think you'd let any word processor enter any scheduled, unattended process inside production environments... My example was to show that in order to choose among things, you need to have another option other than TSQL,. Still, you might choose to use TSQL, but you CHOOSE.

(And for Xing: Yeah, I know there are POWERSHELL, LOGPARSER and many more...)

Tal Ben Yosef
www.TalBenYosef.com
(visit my LinkedIn profile)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004324 More actions · Answer 8

dbo.benyos (10/24/2009)
BWAA-HAAAA!!!! So does any decent word processor!
I don't think you'd let any word processor enter any scheduled, unattended process inside production environments... My example was to show that in order to choose among things, you need to have another option other than TSQL,. Still, you might choose to use TSQL, but you CHOOSE.
(And for Xing: Yeah, I know there are POWERSHELL, LOGPARSER and many more...)

Heh... relax Tal... it was a joke. 😉

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Robert.Smith-1001156 Mr or Mrs. 500 Points: 502 More actions · Answer 9

I agree. DBAs need to get out more.

I once had a DBA ask me if I'd mind phoning a client for him because he "didn't like talking to clients".

I suggested a career as a funeral home director. Don't have to talk to the clients there.

Robb

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004324 More actions · Answer 10

Robert.Smith-1001156 (10/26/2009)
I agree. DBAs need to get out more.
I once had a DBA ask me if I'd mind phoning a client for him because he "didn't like talking to clients".
I suggested a career as a funeral home director. Don't have to talk to the clients there.
Robb

I must be an oddity then because I'd much rather talk to the client than to the manager who is hell bent on meeting the schedule. 😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

crookj SSChampion Points: 14075 More actions · Answer 11

IMHO - I believe "It Depends". However, the easier path to glory is with experience. The more the better. Lack of experience will not hinder a person from becoming a great DBA but the road will be long and hard.

I also agree that it is better (not necessary) for the DBA to understand the business side. What better source of information is there than the person running the life blood of the company. If the DBA understands and can relate to management, the business will have a great advantage over their competitors.

Joe

Lynn Pettis SSC Guru Points: 442467 More actions · Answer 12

I have to agree that experience is extremely helpful. You learn about things that you may not have known about otherwise. I have experience in computer operations, systems administration, programming and application development/support, and database administration and development (specifically MS SQL Server). Basically a jack of all trades, master of none.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004324 More actions · Answer 13

Lynn Pettis (10/27/2009)
I have to agree that experience is extremely helpful. You learn about things that you may not have known about otherwise. I have experience in computer operations, systems administration, programming and application development/support, and database administration and development (specifically MS SQL Server). Basically a jack of all trades, master of none.

How about jack of all trades, master of some? 😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736173 More actions · Answer 14

That's what you need to aspire to in technology. You need a good general knowledge about a lot of things, and then a specialty or two.

TomThomson SSC Guru Points: 104773 More actions · Answer 15

I think a dba (other than a junior trainee dba) should have experience in at least two other areas of computing and should understand the business (that understanding will usually have to be learnt on the job, so the test at interview is whether he understands the businesses of previous employers). I would never employ someone without customer support experience, or at least a very clear willingness to do customer support (people without customer support experience are usually not nearly as good as people with). Good communication skills and a powerful command of language are important too, as is the ability (and willingness) to apply meticulous attention to detail when it is needed. The most important qualifications of all (apart from dba-specific knowledge, which of course a DBA can't be without) are burning curiosity and an ardent desire to learn new things. (If you replace "dba" in the forgoing by pretty well ANY role in IT it remains true.)

A DBA who wants to live inside his RDBMS box and understand nothing of the outside world is an unemployable waste of space (unless you want a junior technician to do grunt work under close direction from someone who knows something about the real world). A DBA like that is going to be the sort of idiot who will put the transaction logs on a RAID5 array and then when a single disc failure pushes performance so far below acceptable levels that the system is effectively down he will waste the company's money (and cause another day of downtime) on buying discs to fix it by adding more discs to the array; and the second single disc failure, perhaps a year later, will see him trying to blame operations or application development or anyone but himself for the lousey performance because he still won't understand that he has screwed up real big. But don't think it's just over-specialised DBAs that I'm against - overspecialisation in any area is wrong! For example a .net programmer who thinks he doesn't need to understand anything about backup, recovery, performance tuning, locking and security and believes that his application should be allowed to generate ad-hoc queries to run in a production OLTP system is an equally unemployable waste of space. He will probably generate queries that leave transactions open with page locks on a main table while waiting for dialogues with interactive users; and/or process ten trillion (that many because it's a six-way cross join he's traversing - it worked on his test database with only two records in each table, because there he only processed 64 rows) records row by bleeding row and bring the system to a standstill).

Of course I'm not a DBA (although I have been responsible for a lot of databases, have done research in databases and got a previous employer some patents in the field, and have done all the things a DBA does); and I consider over-specialisation a thoroughly vicious illness that IT/Computing suffers from; so maybe I have it wrong. But IF I decide not to retire just yet, next time I'm hiring those are the criteria I'll be using.

Tom