Well, I’ve been thinking about a minor career change, but I need some more information.
For the last three and a half years, I’ve been working as a database developer/programmer. This is my first IT job.
Over this time, I’ve become fairly proficient at using Microsoft SQL Server and could probably qualify for a Junior DBA job right now. With a little more experience (which I’m working on obtaining at my current job) on the adminstration side, I can probably work my way up to full-DBA competency.
Someone who works in our office, who has had experience outside of my present company, informed me that I may have a problem becoming a DBA because I cannot be available 24/7 for server emergencies.
So, my question here is: If I go on job interviews and inform people that I want to be their DBA, but I can’t be available from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday under any circumstances, will I be laughed out of the interview? Since this is a non-negotiable matter for me, am I wasting my time in persuing this branch of the IT field?
I have been working in IT for 17 years, variously IDMS , Oracle and SQL Server for different applications. Although, as a medium size government department we generally have a DBA on call, the idea that any individual could be available 24/7 is a nonsense.
Check out Vyas’ site and concentrate on what you can contribute.
Many companies don’t need there database to be available 24/7 so they don’t need there DBA’s to be available 24/7 either.
Companies which do need 24/7 database availability should have multiple database administrators. Would you be willing to be available 24hrs some days but not others? If you are flexible enough to do this then most large companies would be happy (qualifications and what-not withstanding).
Only in a small company requiring 24/7 database availability might it be important for you to be available 24/7 every day.
An important factor with DBAing is that the better you do the job, the less likely and less often will you need to come in outside normal working hours. But it is the sort of job where you will have to be flexible about your working hours on occasions.
So if you work hard and learn well how to do your DBAing role you won’t be called in for anything unexpected outside working hours, because you can prepare for all normal possible problems. But if a new server has to come in on a weekend, then you will need to be there to get its database working on that weekend. And if the server room burns down, you may need to spend a half hour or so in the middle of the night when you come in and switch to your offsite secondary/backup database server (assuming you did work hard and learn well you will have allready set up the offsite server during normal working hours.
This of course is all IMHO, as an Oracle DBA of 5+yrs experience.
Well, that’s the key. I don’t mind being available at 3AM if a hard drive fails or if the server room burns down. But, if it happens between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday, I won’t even be answering the phone, checking the pager, etc. I don’t mind working on Sunday to get a new server in, but Saturdays are out and completely non-negotiable. That’s why I need a better idea of what goes on in other companies.
Well then, if you can do 24/6 support, I’m sure you would only have problems in a very small company where they expect to only have only one DBA but non-the-less expect to have the database available 24/7. I susspect any other company would be fine, if your willing to do some 24 call out periods (but of course no saturdays) that should not be a problem. I should mention your need for not working Saturdays in any interview, especially if it is for Religious reasons (I would susspect an interviewer would be very anxious not to be seen to be objecting to aspects of a prospective employees religious lifestyle, I know I would if giving the interview).
If you can enjoy DBAing then go for it.
Zev, you’re talking about a religious accommodation.
If they want you 24/7 and you provide your no-can-do sundown Friday to sundown Saturday because of a religious accommodation response, it should remove any objection on their part to not consider you. You do need to tie in the religious accommodation point here and not assume everyone knows what you mean.
They may very well choose not to hire you because of that, but that’s illegal. They would have to make up some other excuse why they didn’t hire you. You may never know the reason why to take them on as a result, though.
Seems to me, if you’re that good they want you, they need at least two people to cover the job, if anything for backup or when you take sick/annual leave. If that’s the case, I can’t see why they cannot make a resonable accommodation to have someone else handle the sundown Friday to sundown Saturday emergencies.
Then again, is there any exception in your religious belifs where a truly life/death DBA emergency would occur and you could go to work? (Am only asking for the sake of just asking.)
I know that by law they have to make reasonable accomodations. However, as you pointed out, they may simply reject me and never tell me why. If so, I’d like to avoid banging my head against a wall that won’t budge. If, however, it is common for DBAs to have some flexibility, then I would consider persuing it.
If I was the DBA for a mission-critical 911 system (or other similar system) AND I was the only available DBA who could fix it then there may be grounds for Sabbath violation. But outside such a situation, then the answer is no.
It depends on the company. I’d go and interview - it can’t hurt. In my company the DBAs may work some weekends, but that work is scheduled they are not “on-call”, and not all the DBAs will ever work a weekend.
One thing to keep in mind is that “DBA” does not mean the same thing to everyone. In some peoples mind’s a DBA is strictly an administrator - they will be responsible for change control, monitoring and maintenance. In other organizations they may be database developers: data modeling, writing extracts, defining interfaces for programmers (writing stored procedures) etc.
I am curious why you want to move into that role. A senior programming position would pay just as well and be just as interesting (if not more interesting). You could also aspire to be a software architect or systems analyst. These are roles that don’t have a strong support dependency but are definitely a career advancement.
It could be an issue but don’t let it stop you from applying for jobs. Any company that truly needs 7/24 will have more than one DBA. The company I work for is not one of them. We have near 7/24 operations in the US and Europe but only have two full time Oracle DBAs in the corporate office plus a Sybase/SQLserver DBA.
One thing I must point out not to hire you for the reason stated.
It would depend on how phrased. Coming from H/R I would simply ask “Do you have any limitations that would prevent you from being able to be on call 24/7” If you answered No, you could be let go for falsifying your applicaiton. If you answer YES. You wouldn’t get the job. There is no illegality in asking this way.
Well, the type of position that I would be looking for would be the latter that you described. I don’t want to just sit around and tune the server all day. I want to get my hands dirty with stored procedures, DTS and all the other goodies that MSSQL offers.
As for why the move, that’s a good question. From what I’ve seen in want ads, DBAs are making fairly good money, and are in (much) greater demand than simple ol’ database developers. While I do have some programming skills (Perl and VB are my strong languages), I (admittedly) haven’t given much thought to persuing something along those lines.
I work for a larger company with many DBAs, so it isn’t much of an issue here. They all take turns of being on call during off-hours or have scheduled night and weekend shifts (all of our production change controls happen after 7pm or on a weekend).
This could be an issue, though. We wouldn’t have a problem scheduling things so that you never work during Sabbath, and I don’t think this would be an issue in making a hire, but you also wouldn’t be available at a time when we do 80% of our production deployments (Friday night, so that when things go to hell we have two days to fix it all). Over time, this would probably mean that you would tend to be assigned “maintenance” or “enhancement” projects rather than getting to work on the more interesting stuff.
I don’t know how specific this schedule is to our company, though, and I am sure there is much variation. It might cause problems for you at a small minority of companies, but if you are qualified and good at what you do, I doubt this itself would be a big hurdle.