Re: Case study for interviewing Oracle DBA

I wish it is as easy as learning how to work the system, Dave. It may work in a few places but not in most.    

<grumble>

What if the management has preformed opinions? What if your manager thinks an MBA from a Top 10 school is always a better person and will do a great job managing IT infrastructure even though the person may not know enough? (I have seen them a lot). Many non technical managers think that programmers can only think in terms of 0 or 1.    

Many managers have preformed opinions based on your degree (which you might have gotten 15 years ago, and if it is from a foreign land you are kept in the bottom most rung of the corporate ladder - "not from a recognized school"), whether you worked for 'Big 5' (you need not know anything, but if you worked for them, you are god to some managers), whether you are from a certain university ("you went to my university too? Great"), and so on. I find it hard to agree with the statement that learning to work the system can you take you above. (A woman could have worked real hard about 30 years ago - I dont think it would have taken her anywhere here in US. No way she could have 'worked' the system back then).    

DBAs/technical people should be judged by what they know and what they will be able to do. To measure that a manager has to have a reasonable level of technical knowledge, among other things. If the manager does not have that knowledge and she/he is going to judge a tech person by a whole bunch of other criteria and they are going to get the wrong result.

</grumble>  

Thanks

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 16:14:36 -0500, David Wendelken <davewendelken_at_earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Ok, Ellis, I have to ask you this:
>
> If you work 70 hrs a week compared to 40 hrs a week, for less money, and =
> you
> have a far more stressful job, why do you think your managers are so =
> dumb?
>
> And if layoffs are pending, who will get the axe? You or them?
>
> They are succeeding because they know how to work the system.
> Until good IT people learn how to do that - and remain good IT people -
> things won't change.
>
> --

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