Re: Question about time accounting at your work

From: ~Jeff~ <jifjif_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:41:08 +1200
Message-ID: <363634910909181541v7de88c1cg5d49bf00ad98b26_at_mail.gmail.com>

In terms of visibility, what I learned at my last employer (large outsourcer) was something like this...
- DBAs are like plumbers, do a good job and it will be invisible. The key then is to make it visible .. eg uptime trends, patching, security compliance, recovery tests, SLA targets etc. Metrics that can be graphed are good. Lines that trend positively are extra double good. :) - make sure your managers (and their managers) know when you've done something they'll appreciate - eg, reducing costs, improving reliability, making them look good etc
- save those thank-you emails for annual review time

Career contractors tend to be better than permies at the last 2 rules of the game ... ;)

HTH -
Jeff Wong (permie!)

> Ok fellow full-time employee DBAs I have a question. (Not for contractors
> :)
>
> How many of you use project accounting at your place of work. Where every
> hour has to be accounted for against projects, or maintenance or some other
> code?
>
> I was basically told I'm not "visible enough" --- this is 1 year after
> receiving a ton of awards and accolades for solving a problem at one of our
> sister companies. Now it "appears" that my value to the company is being
> questioned. I imagine questions like "What does he do all day?" are being
> asked.
>
> Usually I lump database support into 1 group, and patches/maintenance into
> another group and performance tuning into a 3rd group. Now, I'm goign to
> have to start micromanaging my hours. I work for an internal IT department
> at a large corporation. I think we bill the other departments for services,
> but not sure.
>
> Anyone else have to deal with this?
>
> *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
>
>
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Received on Fri Sep 18 2009 - 17:41:08 CDT