DBA''s more scarce in 2007
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Down here (South Africa) an average-good salary for a DBA with 4 years experience is around R360k/year. At current exchange rates, that's about $50k/year.
We've also got major shortage of skilled DBAs and developers. My company's been hunting ofr staff for almost a year. So far we've hired one person and are about to make an offer to a second.
Way too many people apply for Senior DBA position and when questioned can't write a select statement or tell you what types of backups SQL can do. 🙁
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverabilityWe walk in the dark places no others will enter
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I keep getting calls from recruiters wanting to know "how are things going", putting feelers out for whether or not I want to jump ship. Then when I return their calls (don't want to burn any bridges) and tell them I'm currently happy with where I am, they start asking me for other names that might be looking for a job.
I can't give them the names of my co-workers for 2 reasons. 1) My co-workers like their jobs here too. 2) My boss's boss would hang me from the flagpole. I can't give them the names of past co-workers because my past jobs either involved me being the only DBA on the team or doing help desk work. And none of the co-workers from those jobs know enough about SQL to be a DBA. Worse, I keep hearing from other tech-nonDBA types that when they're looking for DBAs they see the same round of canidates every time.
So what's the problem? Is it that no one is moving because companies no longer search outside the local area or offer to pay for moving expenses? Is it because the "paper cert" scandal on top of the tech bust on top of the outsourcing which is making people shy away from a career as a DBA? What about the idea that employers are offering half the price of a SQL Server DBA job for someone to do SQL, Oracle, DB2 and programming/regular Server Admin duties? Could that be the reason no one is applying for SQL Server jobs?
Or could it be that it's just plain to hard for people to switch from their current jobs to being a DBA? I know I worked my butt off for 3 years learning about SQL Server before I felt confident in being a DBA. And things are getting more difficult as Microsoft adds more capabilities to their software.
I'm not sure what the answer is here. But I do know one thing. There are several out of work SQL Server DBAs in the Florida area that got downsized during the tech bust. They had to take other jobs to survive. And now that people are hiring again, they can't seem to get back in because they've been out of the market. It looks really bad on their resume to have gone from DBA to Security Guard. I don't know if these people are any good or not. I've never worked with them. I've heard their stories, though, and can't decide if it's just plain bad luck or if they really sucked at their jobs.
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I got laid off in 2002 due to the reduction in the number of contracts available (I worked for a consulting firm at the time). During the 3 months I worked really hard at staying on top of things and not getting rusty. I also spent a lot of time studying C# since it was a new product. Even so, I was rusty when I got a job again. If you been out for a couple of years, I can just imagine how hard that would be to do well on a job interview.
Of course, a lot of the people I came in contact with during the .COM boom I would rate rather low for their skills. Mostly due to most of them being in it just for the money. I just do not believe you can do this job well if all you are interrested in is doing it for the money, it takes a level of passion for what you are doing. IMO
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I don't worry about getting rusty, that will drop off fast. Being a good employee, communicating, etc. shines through above technical skills in many jobs. The basic principles of being a DBA are still there and you can pick up the rest.
Brandie, I have some friends doing recruiting and it's a tough business. It's sales and you're always looking for new candidates. If you've had a friend start in real estate, they've probably called you to see if you wanted to move. Same thing. These guys and gals are struggling, so they try to network through you and just ping you every year to see if they can make a "sale" by placing you. It's not that there's not jobs, it's that there are lots of recruiters.
I never give out candidates names. If it looks interesting, I'll send it to friends and let them decide to contact the recruiter. It's not my place to give out friends' information.
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Steve,
I completely agree with the giving out people's names thing. It's just funny that I don't have any to give out even if I wanted to. @=)
As far as the sales thing goes, I'm not so sure this is the case. The calls come in batches. I'll get called in a 2-3 day period by 5 or 6 different recruiters in town saying they have a SQL Server job available. Then silence for a while. And I'm not talking a year or a quarter worth of waiting for the next batch of calls. The length of the "silence" varies.
Still, I can't say that sales has nothing to do with it either. Though, when I was in customer service doing temp work, I never got other recruiters trying to poach me. So I guess the type of work you do also has something to do with the volume of calls. @=)
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I agree with you on the rusty part Steve, but it does something against your self confidence during an interview. Last couple of interviews I have done I think I have had zero technical questions.
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Not that it has anything to do specifically with DBAs, but I've noticed a lot of job ads that list every skill the company could possible want. I call them shotgun ads.
"Minimum 2 yrs with PowerBuilder, Delphi, Oracle 9.xx (dev and DBA), SQL Server 2000 (dev and DBA), XML, HTML, Struts, COM+, Corba, C++, Java, J2EE, .NET, etc."
This tells me they don't want anyone REALLY good in any field but would rather have someone who can muck around in a lot of fields. Or maybe they want one good DBA, and four good developers (two for the front end and two for the back end) so they put all their requirements into one ad instead of 3.
Either way, I don't even bother applying. And I sometimes wonder what kind of people they get who do apply.
My favorite ad (and I am not making this up) was around the beginning of 2002 and it was for a position at Lawrence Livermore Labs. It started out ok: "SQL, PL/SQL, data modeling, HTML, Java,..." I'm reading this mentally checking off each skill that, even if I'm not an expert, I have at least some experience with. Then I get to the final phrase: "...and PhD in Particle Physics."
I don't know about the management of other companies, but if I hired a PhD Physicist -- and paid him PhD Physicist's wages -- if I found him writing code I would fire his Physicist's rear end, particles and all.
If I wanted to develop a really good, say, financial application, I would want three people. A front-end wizard, a back-end wizard and a financial wizard. I wouldn't care if any one of them knew a lot about the other's field of expertise. Aamof, I would rather the developers not know a whole lot about finances and vice versa.
In the meantime, some companies are trying to find all this talent in one person. Good luck. I'll have my team together and the app in final testing before they find such a superman.
Tomm Carr
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A lot of what happens in ads is they ask for everything, knowing if they get it, they've won the lottery. They're often willing to accept less, so keep that in mind if you get scared about a job listing. If you can cover 60-70%, give it a shot.
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(My favorite ad (and I am not making this up) was around the beginning of 2002 and it was for a position at Lawrence Livermore Labs. It started out ok: "SQL, PL/SQL, data modeling, HTML, Java,..." I'm reading this mentally checking off each skill that, even if I'm not an expert, I have at least some experience with. Then I get to the final phrase: "...and PhD in Particle Physics."
I don't know about the management of other companies, but if I hired a PhD Physicist -- and paid him PhD Physicist's wages -- if I found him writing code I would fire his Physicist's rear end, particles and all.)
Hi Tom,
That is very funny but I know three PhD physicists who can program, one is my brother inlaw but C++ almost ended the marriage of one of the three. So Livermore was just looking for a PhD Physicist who can program, in case you forgot we got the Web from a physics graduate Tim Berners-Lee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
Is Tim Berners-Lee being paid today to write HTML? I seriously doubt it.
I don't doubt there are physicist who can program, and program well. My point is that I can have my programmer do the coding at 1/4 the rate I'm paying the physicist. It's a matter of economics, not ability. An electrical engineer I know is an amateur horticulturist, but I'm not going to pay him $175/hr to come mow my lawn -- even though I know he will do an excellent job.
See "Economics, Comparative Advantage" (I minored in Economics)
Tomm Carr
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Steve,
My old boss was doing that last year. He'd spell out a shopping looong laundry list of skills and shoot it to HR knowing they wouldn't be able to find someone with A through Z then we'd hire the one with the most or whoever we felt could learn the quickest.
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So how did this one end up?
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The problem with the shopping list ads is that contracting companies take them seriously and won't submit you for a job if you're missing what they see as the important skill(s). Such as the PHD in Particle Physics.
So, you can try to apply for them, hoping to get past the contracting company and/or HR so you have a chance to impress the hiring boss with the skillset you DO have. But usually the contract company and people in HR don't understand what the job entails, so they tend to throw "underqualified" resumes in File 13.
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I recently had a discussion with a recruiter where I told him I didn’t want to interview a candidate because of the poor English in the resume: misspellings, bad punctuation, etc. He seemed shocked that I would consider that important.
I explained that I considered the ability to communicate effectively in writing to be a necessary skill for a DBA. I also explained that I felt that writing a resume was an important job and that the poor quality of the resume showed me how the candidate treated important jobs.
I also read cover letters that I receive very carefully. It is common to have professionally prepared resumes, but cover letters are usually written by the candidate, so they are a good indication of written English skills.
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So maybe it's not that DBAs in general are more scarce this year. Maybe it's just good DBAs that are scarce. Would that be a fair assessment?
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