Re: The best of times, the worst of times
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:04:17 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <6ab5a8fe-d71d-4f60-885a-a2d62f32f61d_at_m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 19, 11:25 am, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Even a brief overview of DBA job postings on Dice and Monster will show
> that the demand for skilled Oracle DBA people has gone down dramatically,
> at least in New York City area.
> I expected seeing a demand in people with MySQL or PostgreSQL going up
> accordingly, but that isn't happening, either. This started to happen in
> January and February. What is going on? Does anybody have an explanation?
> Articles like this are also alarming:
>
> http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/not-your-fathers-ibm/#comment-206300
>
> Is that caused by US elections and corporations trying to escape the
> increased taxes that some people foresaw or is that a global ocurrence?
>
> --http://mgogala.byethost5.com
Labor costs are higher here in the U.S. for several reasons:
- The income tax rates are high primarily due, I suspect, to our penchant for deficit spendng (the national debt is staggering)
- The cost of living is higher here than in many other countries (countries where outsourcing resources are plentiful)
- SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) (due do the Enron mess a few years back and the gross fiscal irresponsibility of the housing and banking industries)
There are other factors as well, probably too many to list here, but it boils down to a weak economy (no surprise there). Note also that overseas a Senior Oracle DBA can have as little as 5 years experience (and that doesn't need to be progressive experience). As such a senior-level database administration resource can earn less than a senior-level database administration resource here in the States (most companies here won't consider a 5-year DBA as senior).
Of course with fewer years of experience these 'senior-level' DBAs overseas don't have the knowledge or confidence to reliably handle emergency situations (I doubt that many, if any, have encountered corrupted datafiles or similar events); yes they are cheaper by the hour but in many cases the company gets less than they're paying for, in my opinion. The upper management is mostly concerned with shoring up the bottom line, regardless of the quality of service, over finding quality people who can perform reliable work. If one outsourced DBA doesn't work out there are hundreds more, all cheaper than those in the U.S. but lacking the skills and experience most of the U.S. resources possess. This doesn't seem to matter to the CEOs, as dividends and profits are more important than quality service and any way to get the profits up is acceptable. In many cases everyone suffers from this mentality -- invcluding the CEOs who choose quantity (money) over quality (reliable and respected employees) as the gravy train soon comes to a halt when their clisnts soon make exodus to a competetor who provides better service even though it may be at a higher financial cost.
I, too, was hoping that corporate America would have learned its lesson some time ago with respect to wholesale outsourcing but that hasn't happened. It may take a devastating event, such as many of these outsourcing giants closing their doors because their former clients are fed up with the cost-saving but service-robbing measures these companies chose to take.
David Fitzjarrell Received on Thu Apr 19 2012 - 14:04:17 CDT