Re: SAHM considering database administration

"Cristina Sovereign" <csovereign_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1123877628.933673.176870_at_o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>I am a 36 year old stay at home mom, with eight years paid work
> experience working with Oracle databases at the user level and
> analyzing data, and bachelors degrees in economics and mathematics.
>
> I am considering re-entering the workforce as a database administrator.
> Before I invest time and money retraining and gaining experience, I
> want to be confident that I will have made a sound decision.
>
> Before I move forward, I would like to know the answers to these 9
> questions:
> 1. How many hours on average each week does a dba work?
> 2. Am I too old to start in this career?
> 3. Should employment prospects be good in the next 15 years?
> 4. Is there ageism in this profession?
> 5. How long will it be before I start earning at least $38K a year?
> 6. How does one gain entry into this career?
> 7. What kind of people excel in this career?
> 8. What is the career path?
> 9. Are jobs only plentiful in big cities?
>
> If you are a practicing database administrator, would you mind briefly
> responding to some or all of these questions? I would be grateful.
>

I found it really helpful if you've done some years of programming in advance, espacially when developing high-performance database driven applications (for example : web applications). Good SQL and scripting knowledge is an advantage, as is basic knowledge of UNIX/Linux. The job of a DBA is NOT comparable to that of a Windows SA who only presses the Next Next Finish buttons from time to time :-)

Matthias Received on Sat Aug 13 2005 - 05:58:53 CDT