"The fact that the industry is trending to a managed service model for
database administration is NOT A BAD thing for salaried DBAs out there. I
think the opposite is true."
So, let us all second the Oracle sales pitch about them managing our
databases for us, and hope to sneak into Oracle ;-)
And if I cant manage that, my Oracle stocks will feed me ;-)
Raj
"Paul Vallee"
<dbalist@pyth To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
ian.com> cc:
Sent by: Subject: Re: Remote or Not? Was:
Production Oracle DBA Needed in
root@fatcity. Rocheste
com
March 26,
2002 01:08 PM
Please
respond to
ORACLE-L
Hello everyone,
This is a very interesting thread. Speaking as a part-owner of one of the
companies John held up as an example of the successful outsourcers (thanks
for mentioning us John), I'd like to make some points that I think will be
of interest to all.
The first is that working in a shop such as Pythian is actually a dream
come
true for many DBAs. The fact that the industry is trending to a managed
service model for database administration is NOT A BAD thing for salaried
DBAs out there. I think the opposite is true. The same thing happened for
payroll specialists in the 80s and 90s, and now some 40% of companies
outsource payroll. Those payroll specialist jobs simply migrated from
individuals working solo in firms into working in teams for the Ceridians,
Paychex and myriad competitors (i.e. almost every bank too) of the world.
It's a great transition for many reasons that work well for the DBA as well
as for the customer. I'll concentrate on the advantages for the DBA (why
DBAs love working here), because they might not be as obvious. I can't
speak
for our competitors (hissss!!! just kidding) :-) , but I believe a similar
dynamic applies to them. A Pythian DBA gets experience on every major
platform Oracle runs on: Solaris, HP/UX, Tru64, AIX, Linux, Win2k, I'm sure
I'm forgetting some. A Pythian DBA gets experience on many versions of
Oracle, in many industries simulaneously. We get to learn and develop best
practices learned by seeing the way Oracle is used in many shops. We get to
work in teams, relying on each other to help in emergencies, unstall each
other, teach each other and develop each other's skills, and make sure we
put our best foot forward for any customer simply because as a team we have
an enormous amount of skills and experience. We get to learn and teach the
very best in the industry, getting to know and understand that even the
giants don't know everything while still having so much to share. We get to
know our customers so well we mutually consider ourselves teammates,
co-workers and sometimes even friends, greatly leveraging our network of
contacts and friendships.
We get to take on new shops on a continuous basis, whenever the company
signs on a new customer, instead of having to quit a job when it gets
boring. The way I've structured our company, in many small teams, we even
get to take on completely new challenges and team dynamics simply by
changing teams, rather than having to look elsewhere. We get to not be
on-call every night, to not get shit for taking holidays, to not have to
work insane hours (our team model is scalable in a way that the
single-person salaried model is not.) We get to work on some of the most
challenging environments in the world. I'm not kidding; I'm sure Jeremiah
at
Amazon has his hands full, but I am confident any DBA here would have
something to talk with him about if they sat together at a dining-room
table.
Moreover, we get the satisfaction of doing an extraordinarily good job. I
considered myself an accomplished DBA before having started this company.
And yet I am completely certain that never was I able to do as good a job
as
we are doing now as a team. We provide sophisticated problem tracking
tools,
availability monitoring tools and and performance monitoring tools that
never when I was an individual could I have contributed. It's extremely
satisfying and fun.
Moreover, much of our work is with DBAs (or teams of DBAs!) at customer
sites. We work with many shops where we are not the sole DBA resource, but
rather a part of a larger team, sometimes with us doing mentoring, back-up
and on-call support for a DBA early in their career. Sometimes, it's when a
company has an (or many) expert DBA that's completely swamped, and we help
with the 24/7 and routine but lengthy aspects of the work and let them
focus
on the project management, strategic data modeling and other tasks that are
more than enough to keep them on the right side of the very busy/having a
breakdown boundary. I can't recommend it enough; I haven't had a better job
or been happier at work than I am here.
Hope this give you some insight into our company and what we're trying to
do
here.
Best regards,
Paul
---
www.pythian.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 877-PYTHIAN
Smarter than adding another team member, Pythian has new services for
supplementing DBAs: get our help with monitoring, 24x7 on-call, daily
verifications, storage management, performance and more.
----- Original Message -----
To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 2:53 AM
Personally I like being in the office environment and interacting with
other
members of my species :-) I do get the opportunity to work from home on a
fairly regular basis and I do take it when I really need to focus on
something but I do miss the buzz of being in the workplace if I'm away for
too long. Working from home is ideal around the holidays and those days
when
you have overindulged in whatever your favourite tipple is the night before
and driving into work would be too risky :-)
FWIW - there are two DBAs in this country (UK) working for our company and
we live about 300 miles apart. I work from the Data Centre, with the UNIX
SAs and the hardware in the North East of England, he works from an office
in London with the developers. It works well (esp. for me !!) and we meet
up
on a regular basis for status meetings and catch ups.
Regards
Lee
-----Original Message-----
Sent: 25 March 2002 23:08
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Rocheste
Hi all,
Thanks Chris for that nicely worded e-mail. It *is* true that Development
work is easier to farm off elsewhere where it is cheaper, and even Oracle
Corporation is farming out Internet-based Support and Development work
elsewhere. These teams typically work with a bunch of junior developers
somewhere else working on the major chunk of the project, fronted by one or
two 'implementors' - typically senior and more 'culturally aware' locally
working with the users/businesses they serve. This Development model does
lend itself to such offloading.
However, I haven't heard of similar farming out of day-to-day DBA or SA
services *outside* of the US. These services are perceived as 'Business
critical' jobs still and Management wants to see/hear the key-clicks, esp.
when a Disaster occurs or something goes wrong. Steve Orr - the one who
escaped this $$$ valley for the wide open spaces he loves - made the point
that Remote working is more an organizational issue than a technical issue.
Face-to-face and human touch-and-feel still is still required, and time
zones are still an issue (even here in the States where the West and the
East is separated by just 3 hours).
Having said that, I have to say that I am in the process of wrapping up a
'remote' performance troubleshooting mini-project for a previous client.
VPNs, Previous association and familiarity with systems/personnel and the
requirement of out-of-the-ordinary skills for a limited period drove this
remote assignment, and it worked out successfully. I did suffer from the 3
hour timezone difference, though it worked to our advantages at times. I do
also know that many DBAs have been 'farmed-out' to 'Remote DBA Services'
within the country (counting Canada too - Pythian, TUSC, ...), and a number
of cross-country tuning assignments (from Australia - need I say more!)
have
also worked out well.
On a personal front, I observe that (at least in the US) the urban/suburban
cost-of-living is driving more and more remote workers (quite a number of
IT
workers, esp. DBAs) into the extended suburbia (100 miles or more, up from
the current 50 mile radius), where these workers do come in once or twice a
week, sometimes to 'branch offices' spread out among the various
suburbs....
Hence, you could theoretically work as a DBA in a city somewhere else for
an
organization with HQs/DBs somewhere else, as long as you have
access/presence of a remote office, and possibly fly down to the HQ once in
a while. Remote workers still need to be in a community, with access to
education, recreation and health servcies, so this will probably not be too
far off the beaten path.
On another tack, there was a discussion on this list about Ari's cool tools
- the PocketDBA/SA. I could theoretically be far away in a log cabin (Steve
- are you listening?!) and still be connected to the office - the question
is: Do you want to be? In other words, most tools for full remote
capability
are available. But would Damagement accept them and not have to see a warm
body fill a seat?
John Kanagaraj
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Grabowy, Chris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 12:46 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: RE: RE: Production Oracle DBA Needed in Rochester, Minnesota
>
>
> Ahhh...be careful what you ask for. If that were truly the
> case, then you
> might not be able to find a job, since you would be outbid
> from someone
> working else where. Obviously, skills are a critical factor,
> but explain
> that to the bean counters...
>
> Some of the developers here are becoming very angry because
> some of the work
> has been "farmed-out" overseas because of their lower rates.
> It is a very
> interesting situation that I am quietly observing. The world
> is indeed
> becoming smaller.
>
> I have carefully worded this email in the hopes that I do not
> offend some of
> the VERY talented/god-like DBAs we have on this list that
> come a variety of
> locations around this great planet. I hope that I have succeeded.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 3:04 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
> Yeah, does anybody know what happened to the new Internet concept of
> "location doesn't matter"? I thought by now I could be sitting at home
> taking DBA assignments all over the country, if not over the world?
>
> Dennis Williams
> DBA
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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