Paul's Ponderings

Following is something I got from www.sqlskills.com news letter. Being an accidental DBA and on going struggle to find DBAs, I know I am not alone!

I am for home-growing DBAs. Read this. What do you think.

‘Daddy, mommy – I want to be a DBA when I grow up!’

I’d be surprised if any of you who have kids have ever heard them say the words above – I certainly haven’t. Our girls say things like paleontologist and rock star when asked what they’d like to be in life.

My point is that very few of us really wanted to get into the field of storing, controlling, and managing data. I certainly didn’t – I wanted to work on file systems, which is what I did at DEC before joining Microsoft (my story is here) – and I kind of accidentally fell into the SQL Server world in 1999.

With that in mind, it’s really no surprise that there are very few degrees available in being a DBA and those that exist seem to be online or evenings only (such as this one at the University of Denver where Glenn teaches).
So how does one become a DBA? I don’t see job adverts looking for ‘someone with no knowledge of being a DBA so we can train them’ – all the adverts I see want someone with experience.

I think the route that most people take is by becoming an ‘involuntary’ or ‘accidental’ DBA first, and then moving to becoming a DBA with a job title that reflects the work being done. This means people are learning for themselves how to do the DBA job, and then getting some training afterwards.

Given that so many companies rely on data these days, and there’s a shortage of experienced DBAs in the industry, I think it’s time that some companies come up with formal plans for home-growing DBAs rather than relying on people to gather DBA experience somewhere else.

Call to Action: The next time you’re trying to hire a DBA, consider finding someone in your company that’s looking for a job change and training them to be a DBA.
I’m really interested to know your thoughts on home-grown DBAs—feel free to drop me a line, confidentially as always.