Re: dba mentor

Apropos mentoring people, it's also important how many of them did become successful in later life. Most of the formal mentoring programs that I have encountered have produced results like this: http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-08-28

My personal philosophy is what the person who mentored me told me: DBA's are grown like mushrooms. You keep them in the dark, feed them garbage and let them grow. In reality, it's survival of the fittest. My mentor was a gentleman named Rade Pobulic who used to work for Oracle Slovenia in the late 80's and who taught me everything I knew about Oracle 5. I have also received some mentoring from the gentleman named Wolfgang Schluessel, who used to work for Oracle Austria in Vienna, in the early 90's. The most important lesson I received that I have to keep learning and that I can only expect minimal help from my mentors. I used to work with things like rpt/rpf, SQL*Forms 2.3 and 3.0, SQL*ReportWriter 1.0 and 1.1, SQL*Net 1.0 and 1.1, Lotus 1-2-3 connector, connector for DDE and many other arcane products that probably nobody in this group except Mark Farnham, Niall Litchfield, Tim Gorman and Jonathan Lewis even remembers. The final lesson I discovered myself: when to stop being a DBA.

Oracle DBA is not a samurai or a jedi master. Oracle DBA is someone who knows the main product of the Oracle Corporation really well. However, there are many other corporations and many other products. General knowledge acquired by years of studying Oracle, DCL, source code of VAX/VMS 4.7, AT&T Unix, Irix, Wyse Unix, SCO Unix and HP-UX 9, reading McKusick's BSD books, Magic Garden Explained and A. Tannenbaum's "Modern Operating Systems", learning Perl, PHP and Python can be well applied to learn SAP Hana, DB2, virtualization and many other products. It is not particularly wise to tie yourself to a single corporation, especially when that corporation doesn't really want DBAs. Now, we have "Oracle 18c, the database that will manage itself". The subtle message of this marketing slogan is that there is no need to hire expensive DBA personnel because "the database will manage itself".  Long story short, mentoring people to become DBAs is disservice to the people who haven't done any harm to me or wronged me in any way and will inevitably lead to results from the aforementioned Dilbert comic. Oracle 18c has been promoted into a PHB. God save the DBA!

Regards

On 09/11/2018 04:56 AM, Martin Klier - Performing Databases GmbH wrote:
> Niall,
>
> briliant :) Did coaching for three "generations" of new DBAs in my
> career, and you hit 180.
>
> One thing I'd like to add (or clarify) is teaching self-organization
> under pressure. Often new guys enjoy the blessing of having no ancient
> burdens, but stabilizing our own personal performance under various
> pressures is a very useful skill from the beginning.
> Just to mention: system down, manager pressing, half-true facts
> rolling in. How to keep your head above the waves?
>
> Stay safe
> --
> Martin Klier | Performing Databases GmbH
> Managing Partner | Senior DB Consultant
> Oracle ACE Director
>
> martin.klier_at_performing-db.com | https://www.performing-databases.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Von: *"niall litchfield" <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com>
> *An: *"Backseat DBA" <backseatdba_at_gmail.com>
> *CC: *"Oracle-L Freelists" <oracle-l_at_freelists.org>
> *Gesendet: *Mittwoch, 22. August 2018 18:02:12
> *Betreff: *Re: dba mentor
>
> Hi Jeff
> Like many of the other respondents, I never had a mentor (and the
> closest I had was, er, not very good). I have however seen
> mentoring take place and it's definitely a highly useful approach
> for a short while (say 9-18 months). Probably the key skills a
> mentor can help with are the soft ones.
>
> * dealing with customers
> * knowing when and how to say no (and yes)
> * knowing how other departments/silos work and who the key
> contacts are
> * knowing how to judge the reliability of a source (no-one seems
> to teach that these days)
> * a healthy scepticism that new software releases work as intended
> * a healthy scepticism in one's own ability. (the easiest person
> to fool is yourself)
>
>
> Technical skills *can* be taught and/or picked up from good online
> resources. Like the others here online communities (this list,
> Usenet, Oracle forums, serverfault, twitter) have proven
> invaluable to me for this purpose. The quality of the answers you
> get back definitely increases as you contribute yourself - which
> can be a catch-22. If you have a good local usergroup (i.e not one
> that's all Oracle speakers or vendors) or meetup then those are
> pretty valuable as well.
>
> It's also very valuable to have a lab/laptop environment of your
> own to break, I mean experiment in.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 8:53 PM Jeff Chirco <backseatdba_at_gmail.com
> <mailto:backseatdba_at_gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Did any of you have a mentor to help you along your DBA career
> path? Someone to coach you on what is right/wrong, offer
> advice for various projects, etc…  I was the first DBA for my
> company and never had someone to go to for advice and such.  I
> learned completely on the job besides going to some classes at
> the beginning and a couple conferences recently.  And then
> some consultants over the years.  I’ve always reported to a
> Programming manager, and they understand some of the job but
> not everything that needs to be done. Although I have been a
> DBA for over 10 years I feel there is still a ton for me to
> learn and be better at. I was alone for many years and did a
> lot of database development in addition to DBA duties. Kind of
> a jack of all trades expert at none. I am a lead now, we have
> one other DBA and maybe a third in the near future, but I know
> I can be a better leader and hope to advance that further.
>
> Did any of you have some kind of mentor during your career? 
> For most of you it probably was someone inside the company but
> what about outside?  How did you find this person and was it
> helpful?  What did they do for you?
>
> Another other details or advice?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> --
> Niall Litchfield
> Oracle DBA
> http://www.orawin.info
>
>

-- 
Mladen Gogala
Database Consultant
Tel: (347) 321-1217


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