Re: Question about entry level Oracle DBA

Daniel Morgan <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message news:<3DAAE348.D6B12ADA_at_exesolutions.com>...
> los wrote:
>
> > If every job listing is asking for 3 to 5 years of experience in Oracle,
> > how are entry levels supposed to break into the business? Is it impossible
> > to get an entry level Oracle position right now?
>
> You are supposed to become a developer and learn about the architecture, how
> to code, how to tune, how to debug, etc.
>

Who sez? That would be for a development DBA, does not necessarily generalize to all DBA's (except for those morons who post things like "Must have 5 years experience with O9R2").

> Your question is analogous to the following:
>
> Every job listing for Chief of Thoracic Surgery is asking for 3 to 5 years of
> experience performing surgery. How are you supposed to get into the business?
> Or
> Every job listing for Supreme Court Justice is asking for previous experience
> as an attorney and judge. How are you supposed to get into the business?
>

Have you ever seen a job listing for Supreme Court Justice?

> In short ... do your apprenticeship. Pay your dues. There are a lot of good
> Oracle developers who are far more qualified than you and they get first shot
> at every opportunity which is as it should be.

The "pay your dues" stuff is reasonable. However, the part about developers getting first shot at every opportunity is very questionable.  

In many cases it is as others have posted, management has decided to move someone into the empty spot, and often that someone is "excessed" from another group, or some PC guy. When I was vendor-supporting DBA's, just about every one was new (probably some skew there because experienced ones wouldn't be asking... but I didn't get the impression that there were many customers like that). When I worked in a big gov shop, it was amazingly stupid. That's the real world.

_Should_ developers get first shot? Some DBA's might argue about removing the "first" :-) If the place is big enough for more than one DBA, I would argue only one of them should have come from the recent development ranks, the skills required are much more global, and there should be a spread of experience among the DBA's (both length of time and breadth of experience).

And I don't know if my view is again skewed by smaller shops, but to me it appears that most places don't want to have a full-time DBA, as it is considered simply overhead. So you wind up wearing multiple hats. Could be a bit of a pain on your resume, when you spend the majority of your time doing DBA tasks, but are not a "DBA." But if you really love it, it's not like work at all.

jg

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