Re: Slightly OT, and a cautionary tale

EdStevens wrote:
> For those who care about personal notes ... the large IT services
> company I work for recently lost their contract to an 'offshore' firm.
> I've been here over 21 years, first as an employee of the client
> company, then an employee of the services company when the client
> decided to outsource. I didn't like the future prospects at my current
> employer and found another Oracle DBA job at another company in the
> area .. one that had outsourced, then brought it back in-house. Will
> be starting there next week.
>
> Now the cautionary tale .... we started with oracle at v. 7.3.4 on Win
> NT 3.11 and two DBA's. Myself, coming from the apps side with a mix of
> mainframe and client/server experience, and the other coming from
> DB2/MVS. Over the years I've grabbed every opportunity to learn as
> much as possible, especially grabbing a chance to start supporting
> Oracle on unix systems. I've spent a lot of time in this ng, takeing
> some lumps along the way, but learning a lot. I've stocked my personal
> library, and taken CBT courses when funds weren't available for live
> classwork.
>
> On the other hand, my partner has used every excuse to not learn
> anything new. He drags his feet on upgrades, doesn't read any more
> than necessary to solve the ORA-nnnnn problem at hand, and refuses to
> engage in any learning activity except for (rare) company paid live
> classes, and digs in his heels whenever I've tried to get him engaged
> on the unix side of things.
>
> Result? We both started circulating our resumes at about the same
> time. Within a month of beginning my job search, I'd had on-site
> interviews with two companies, a job offer, and a signed commitment.
> He's complaining to me that he can't get past an initial phone
> interview.
>
> You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
> Sometimes, you can't even get them to recognize the water.

In my area we have quite a few cellular phone companies. One of them has told me, off the record, that they will not hire and train dinosaurs and to no longer refer anyone whose knowledge base is not current to at least 9.2.4.

I agree with hpuxrac ... this is not off-topic and quite relevant to many. Congratulations on your new opportunity.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)