Re: Are Oracle GUIs causing a decline in DBA salaries?

Karsten Farrell wrote:

> On your primary gripe, I'm not sure that the current tight financial
> environment can be blamed on GUIs. My experience is that management
> usually has no clue what the technical people actually do ... whether
> they use a GUI or the command-line. I have had bosses who stand over my
> shoulder when I work ... but thankfully not often. The others never see
> how I accomplish my assigned tasks.

Has little or nothing to do with the financial environment. Has everything to do with the approach used by vendors to "get to management and convince them why it is important to buy xyz". The general pitch used by anyone in the GUI world is 'ease of use', quickly followed by 'more productive', 'reduced cost', 'lower training' and 'fewer skills'.

So I should really revise my primary gripe from blaming it on "management assumption that GUI product saves money" to "management gullability in believing the vendors assumptions that GUI product saves money" <g>

Once the decision has been made, the techies have to live with it or go away. I have yet to see a situation where a technical person, using technical arguments, can overturn a management decision that is based on money. A technical person's only hope is to use money arguments grounded in, but not using, technical aspects.

And other than an emergency restore/recovery/restart situation, my experience is that management tends to stay away. (In that situation they hover, which increases nervousness and likelyhood of failure - when will they ever learn?> Received on Tue Apr 29 2003 - 12:05:58 CDT