Re: Fed Up with being a DBA

Noons wrote:

>Hehehe! Now you know how some feel about having to go through all
>that "manual" stuff for the OCP. Most of it is never used...
>

Which might well explain why we/I do not teach a single OCP course and why I have no use for the OCP. I think it has hurt Oracle's reputation by making it appear that they either (1) will certify morons to work on their software or (2) have a lousy product because even those certified on it can't make it work any better than MS Access.

>>nothing this industry can even conceive of that comes close to the level
>>of expertise they require to become Board Certified. And I've seen the
>>numbers of the percentage they reject ... and it is staggering. Just to
>>give you an idea here is a very short list of the more significant hurdles
>>
>>
>
>
>I can imagine. The wife is a nurse manager and she has to deal daily
>with this sort of thing, although on a much smaller scale.
>It's a constant education exercise. It should be no less in
>our industry, if we want to get the credibility that deserves high
>salaries. But unfortunately the "certification" training is far from it.
>

Now if only all of those silent observers from Oracle that are reading this thread has the backbone required
to take this discussion up the elevator to management and get them to rethink what they are doing. Short term
profits at the expense of the corporation's future is not what the stockholders want though many managers seem able to fool themselves into believing that when asked "How did you do last quarter?"

>There is no way vendor "certifications" will ever provide this level
>of training. It is where official educational organizations should
>be allowed to step in. Like it's been suggested here many times before.
>

And I've given that serious thought. But it takes two sides to be in agreement on certification. First you need employers willing to make hiring decisions based on the certification and second you need certified individuals that are truly well qualified. If the two are not in synch it won't work.

I can produce about 100 people per year coming out of my program. That is all. Hardly a dent in the job market
sufficient to make an employer put into an advertisement UW Certified candidates only need apply.

>There is a movement in Australia to have these certifications provided
>by professional associations. I still think it's wrong: most of them are
>sponsored by makers, which means they'll do whatever the maker wants and
>that's it. Maybe some form of union?
>

Perhaps we need to get together a handful of people in the States, UK, Oz, etc. and put something together that has real meaning. And do it to improve our industry ... not just as a revenue source. The minute it goes from being a non-profit to
a for-profit the incentive is to crank as many people through as are willing to write a check. And that is the reason why previous certification programs have little or no meaning.

>>engage in continuing ed. Some developers and DBAs (not all of them of
>>course) seem to think that once they have
>>a job the only requirement is that they show up.
>>
>>
>
>
>Quite true. I'm a strong believer that in the absence of
>government regulation the market will tend to sort itself out:
>this type of person will fall by the wayside out of normal attrition.
>However, sometimes a strong stimulus may be needed. I think what
>is happenning in the IT market now is just one of those instances.
>

They are. But unfortuantely they are off-shoring a lot of jobs in the process and hurting everyone. But another part of the problem is managers managing IT projects that can barely spell ERD and have even less understanding of what it mean.

You can look them straight in the eye and tell them 15 minutes worth of real work will take 6 months and they haven't enough knowledge to laugh and fire you.

>Quick story: Back in the mainframe days, manufacturers provided
>what I think was the best IT education ever. They had proper budgets
>for internal education and gave the trainers quite a large degree of
>freedom in structuring their courses. And education departments were
>in charge of training not only customers but also employees. Ask HJR
>how many internal courses was he asked to provide...
>

I'd probably have to cut off all my fingers and toes to calculate that one.

>Instructors had guidelines, of course. But they were free to decide
>how much and what went into a course. Which tended to create "centres"
>of knowledge where very good courses were put together. I remember
>being told by my manager to apply for an internals OS course in Belgium.
>Because the instructor and course there were the best available anywhere.
>Those were four of the most intense weeks of my life. Still remember EVERY
>single day of them. Never regretted it (if nothing else because the
>beer over there *is* superb!).
>

And the instructor knew the material. That too is important. Today too many of the instructors couldn't
survive without PowerPoint slides and prepared examples. I have yet to bring the first slide into my classroom
and work without a net. Live typing into Oracle usually off the top of my head. A lot of what the students learn is that ORA- is normal and how to deal with them. Something Oracle Ed has never dared to do.

>And you didn't just get a job as a trainer. In order to become one,
>you had to have been in the industry for decades and be recognized
>as an expert in a subject. Which in time *might* qualify you to become
>a trainer in that subject, if you really knew how to teach others in the
>field. You were under constant evaluation. Three bad course feedbacks
>and it was straight back to field support!
>

That's how I got my teaching job. I was consulting at Boeing and they were approached by the U for a
subject matter expert willing to teach. At the time I was running Oracle on the non-TPA node of a Teradata
MPP machine with 32 CPUs and moving data from OLTP Oracle to DW Teradata and writing procedures
to generate sample data that simulated the airplane configuration process. I got the short straw. ;-)

>Some of the best education in IT was available then from the manufacturers
>themselves. In fact, it was a major factor in selecting a company to
>work for. Then Novell, the supermini makers and M$ came along and
>decided to "certify" and outsource the whole thing.
>It's been a sad joke ever since...
>

Following Microsoft's lead has been the ruin of many a company and produced more quarter-qualified developers than anything else.

>>And all in say 500-600 pages? ;-)
>>
>>
>
>WTH, this thread is half way there...
><G>
>
>
>Cheers
>Nuno Souto
>wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au.nospam
>
>

And with this Scotch ... I'm halfway there too.

Cheers

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)