RE: how to prevent DBA burnout?
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:52:08 -0700
Message-ID: <BAY144-W360642318FC634F4DFCCC2BD8D0_at_phx.gbl>
I agree about the disk space and memory. It seems to take more than one loss of service outage to pry disk space, memory and/or CPU out of management. The number of times I have had to argue my case before stonewalling management burns me out and makes me want to leave a job.
What's also frustrating is when staff DBAs are asked to do performance analyses and it is apparent that more system resources are required, management suggests running Gather Schema Statistics more frequently before they revisit the possibility that the DBA might be right. I even had one client who called in very expensive consultants to review the performance analysis I did, (also ran their own performance analysis tool) only to agree in the end that more CPUs were definately needed.
I wish I had the freedom to act like I had in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Before Sarbanes-Oxley. DBA work isn't fun anymore, but it pays the bills (not as well as it used to).
Vicki Pierce
Sr. Oracle Apps DBA
Subject: RE: how to prevent DBA burnout?
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:59:16 -0500
From: Chris.Taylor_at_ingrambarge.com
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Give them more storage and RAM!! :)
Chris Taylor
Sr. Oracle DBA
Ingram Barge Company
Nashville, TN 37205
Office: 615-517-3355
Cell: 615-354-4799
Email: chris.taylor_at_ingrambarge.com
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Jerry Cunningham
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 8:45 AM
To: Oracle L
Subject: how to prevent DBA burnout?
Hi all...
I came across this question on twitter (http://twitter.com/Michael_Corey). How do you prevent DBA burnout?
I know there are a lot of smart people on this list - any thoughts? I replied via my blog (more than 140 chars!)... here are my 2 cents:
===
- Communicate with them regularly. Forget business/corporate formality - everybody you work with is simply a person. From the security guard at the front desk to the CEO. How is life? Are you happy? What is stressing you out? If there are problems, what can I do to help?
- Don’t forget how hard it is to find good people. At a previous job, when interviewing for a vacancy, I had interviewed for weeks without a promising candidate. This made me realize how good the people we had were, and I told them so. I told them, that while they were working harder due to the staffing shortage, I was not going to settle for less than the high standard they had set.
- If somebody resigns (and you value them) - make them a counter offer immediately. It amazes me how often this does not happen. Or, the employee is asked “what can I do to keep you?”. Too vague - make a concrete offer.
===
Jerry
http://jerrycunningham.wordpress.com
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