Re: what sort of dba can you get for 100K nowdays

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:30:34 -0400, NetComrade wrote:

> I interviewed a few of interestig people with 5-10 years as Oracle DBA
> in the past few days over the phone.
>
> You'd expect most DBAs to realize that (besides CPU) the most common
> bottleneck in any database is IO.
>
> None knew their current file system block size (but few knew oracle's
> block should be a 'multiple' of file system block)
> Most could not really elaborate on relationship
> db_file_multiblock_read_count and their RAIDs and OS
> None could really talk about file system options (asynch and/or
> directio), even though most worked on different platforms
> None were actually using the 10g disk management, in which case they
> could probably care less about everything above. (one guy actually
> told me he recommended buying a bigger disk array when they had 'io
> issues')

$100k shouldn't be a problem, I have worked in NYC for less, but finding a DBA with good understanding of the underlying hardware and software can be a problem. People are usually using OCP style of learning and are concentrated on knowing every, however exotic, option to SQL statements and commands instead of seeing what is commonly known as the "big picture". Also, years of "corporatization" did the trick: DBA is perceived as a guard dog and a high level clerk instead of a computer engineer with an expertize in Oracle. I must say that I came to detest the label "DBA" as it doesn't mean a thing. It can be used to describe a person who tunes SQL, does R&D about applicability of various advanced options like Oracle Streams to the organization and does a fair amount of Perl scripting, but is almost never on call (my present position) and to describe a person writing capacity plans, monitoring production, being on 7x24 regime very frequently, doing installations and alike (my previous position). It can also describe a "development DBA", in essence, a SQL tuner. It can also imply various levels of knowledge and understanding. Position name like "database performance analyst" or "development analyst" will likely attract less people then a general DBA position which attracts everybody with OCP. It will also attract people with specialized knowledge that you're looking for. Last, but not least: a good DBA must know the answer to the question of life, universe and everything, should be able to discuss the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow and should know which color of the database takes least RAM. Correct answers to those questions will tell you that you have in front of yourself a rare breed, the type of person you're looking for, a true and unadulterated computer geek. To the horror of my colleagues, I did ask those very questions in the interviews, after I verified that the interviewed person looks qualified. The people who knew the answers never disappointed me and were usually the best system and database administrators.

-- 
http://www.mgogala.com