Getting a DBA job

There is nothing wrong in dreaming to become a connsumate and redoubdtable database administrator (DBA). The things becomes wrong when one tries to do it via short cut. There is no short cut to be a DBA of an organization.

DBA manages the most treasured asset of an organization: information. Information, with out any doubt or question is the lifeline of any enterprise, small or medium or large. Nowadays, information of any organization, which is serious in doing business now and in future, is stored in the databases. These databases enables the organizations to store, extract and manipulate the information in numerious useful ways. These databases grow as the business grow. Everything that grows needs to be taken care of, and similar is the case with databases. They needed to be tended and tended professionaly. A typical database has to be backed-up, restored and recovered, tuned, networked, secured, upgraded, patched and explored. All these functions upon the databases are performed by the dear old database administrator.

No organization, in its right mind, can hire a rookie, just out of university, for the DBA task. They want somone battle-hardened a.k.a experienced. So how does a rookie solve this chicken and egg problem. Afterall, until and unless he gets a DBA job, how would he go about obtaining an experience? Organizations realize this. There is a way they pursue. They hire someone who has development experience, put him in a junior DBA position and chaff him for some years until he knows how to live in the dungeon.

So the million dollar tip is to become a developer, get some software developed, apply for junior DBA postiton, work in it like there is no job left in the world, and hope for the best. One more thing, if you want to be an Oracle DBA, then do development in Oracle Developer. If you wanna be an SQL Server DBA, then do development in any microsoft tool.


4 thoughts on “Getting a DBA job”

  1. @ Faud: I second what you commented and I like your blog. In a future post I will be Insh-Allah discussing what a Junior DBA should do to be a true senior DBA.

    @ Imran: The ideal and aloof response should be that oh leave that .Net job and find some where they develop in Oracle. But the reality is something else. As watching the job market here in Pakistani (especially for the rookies), you should stay where you are and then after getting some experience of development try to get an Oracle job. But during all that time, read about oracle as much as possible and have a test database ready at home.

    Reply
  2. Fahd,
    Glad you brought it up.
    this is very true. i started my career as a developer and graduated to dba/sysadmin. eventually ditched the sysadmin piece and am full time dba but the people i deal day in day and the interviews i do for dba’s shows the lack of infomration people have about a dba and what a dba is supposed to do .
    Also in pakistan people want the DBA to be everything for the Data entry clerk to the person who fixes the code for the developers.
    and the people i see in the market are rather either specialized with one function of the database or know little about all but no basic architecture knowledge.
    and having mentored a lot of dba’s and developers . it is not easy to find a good dba. in pakistan or abroad.
    so you have to hire rookies and train them .After all a rookie has to start somewhere and oracle education even from oracle is not adequate enough

    Reply

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