How Is The Job Market for Oracle DBA's?

Was working at a large telecom. They had been in trouble for a long time. Since the time I had been there it was endless layoffs, downsizings, etc...

Anyway they came in and chopped out 20% of the employees. Cost reduction. The separation package as they call it was not bad but the job market sucks. Bad as it was there (the place was full of H1B's - employees were a minority, you would think you were in India) it was still a paying job. The day before I went off payroll there was an email from my director saying there now going to offshore projects to get costs lower as there is pressure from the business to control costs.

The location of course was India. Try this for rates and it will make your hair stand up. The Indian consulting company gets $15/hour for each body, the person (programmer, etc...) gets.....get ready (it shocked me) $3/HOUR! How are people here ever going to compete with that? IT in this country is doomed.

I have 15 years of experience (I am old ) in a variety of technologies. MVS, UNIX, NT, programming (C, C++, Cobol & some Java) database administration (Oracle, DB2, IMS), system administration, networking, architecture... In my last position I was a systems infrastructure manager.

Anyway I have sent out close to 300 resumes already and have only gotten a handful of responses. Its really tight. The H1B's have really tightened up the job market. I have been in this field for 15 years and have never ever seen it like this. Usually it might take you a month to find a job but I have been at it for 3 already. Starting to get scared...

I am contemplating getting back into Oracle DBA work. I did it for a number of years and was offered an "opportunity". Got out of it. As part of severance package I got money for training (anything I want) that will cover taking ALL the current Oracle DBA training?

How is the job market for Oracle DBA's? Is it tight?

Reason I am asking is that some parts of the tech field are flooded with cheap labor. Are Oracle DBA's one of them?

I would like to hear some opinions.

Thanks.

John Received on Sun Apr 07 2002 - 11:54:45 CDT