-----Original Message-----
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 3:13 PM
>I'm curious. Does everyone here think the IT profession is hard? Does
>everyone think that being a DBA is harder than say, a teacher, or a sales
>clerk, or something else?
>
>I don't understand the attitude. Or maybe I'm just lucky. The IT field is
>wide-open for everyobe to find a niche where they are comfortable.
>
>And it is certainly a better field than nursing (hours, pay and exposure to
>multyitude of diseases suck!), teaching (while working with most kids would
>be fun, the pay is tough and the hard-luck kids are tougher), retail (wanna
>work in Home-Depot?).
Moving the whole "ORAWOMAN" issue back "On Topic" and specifically with
respect to what Thomas Mercadante brought up, I just couldn't resist
answering this question he posed.
I was an Electrical Engineer for about 7 years out of school. But you know,
in the following 23 years I've been in the IT field, (10 years IBM mainframe
technical support, then 4 years Software/AG Adabas DBA, finally the last 6
years adding Oracle DBA to the mix), I've come to absolutely love dealing
with the hardware, operating system, and database technical issues that make
up the IT profession from my perspective.
HOWEVER, there are a number of the people-related unpleasantries that
sometimes make the whole thing unbearable.....
For instance - The IT profession seems to have far more than its share of
people who:
* Leap out of their seats whenever there is a problem, doing everything
in their power to divert blame and resposibility to somebody else or
something else - "the system", "the database", "the network", and those
whose responsibility it is to take care of those things. It's never THEIR
system, their program, their logic, their procedures at fault.
* Display a total lack of patience, wanting everything and wanting it
done NOW.
* Display an arrogance that would rival il Duce (Mussolini).
* Strut around like they are some clever genius because they know a few
commands from some manual that make a machine do something. (By the way,
they like to hide the manual so nobody else can find out what they know.)
* Come up with stupid ideas that make no sense for the environment
because they read some blurb in a technical journal.
* Use the jargon from those journals in such an inane manner while
really displaying their total ignorance to those who know what the terms
mean.
* I could go on and on, but for brevity sake we'll leave it at that.
I'm sure you get the picture.
And it's these (above) kinds of people who seem to have the time to politic
and ingratiate themselves with higher powers and thus end up in the
management slots, making technical people's lives miserable.
So from my perspective, what could be just one of the most wonderfully
logical, organized, rewarding, creative and satifsying professions is more
often than not, turned into a stressful nightmare. Who knows, maybe ANY
profession can become that way - even being a florist or raising puppies.
As for me, I am looking to start backing out of this whole scene and get
back into something where the above negatives can be minimized, at least for
a while.
Jim D.
Present Adabas and Oracle DBA - Future something else.
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Author: James Damiano
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