Junior

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Junior

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SQL51F1 SSCommitted Points: 1929 More actions · Answer 1

(dammit - how to do I get a quote box up in this? )

Steve is right in his latest post:

I was actually hoping this editorial would bring to light some of the ways you might classify a junior DBA. It's traditionally been years of experience, which isn't a good measure. I think it should be skills based.

And we could call it DBA I, DBA II, DBA III, but traditionally it's been Jr and Sr to HR, so I stuck with the terms.

The idea was to give you some way to rate yourself and rate others, maybe help your career and get it growing.

I know I'm guilty of occasionally hijacking a post and going off at a tangent....

I think there are only 2 reasons why the title of "Junior DBA" exists:

1) To signify to someone new to the area that an individual is in training, thereby putting them in their place (a power play is another term for it), and

2) A term used by a company that wants to hire a DBA with years of training and skills but are not willing to pay what they're worth to get such a resource. This effectively means that the company places little stock in their people and consider the DBA duties to be little more than monkey work but they don't have the skills in-house to do it all themselves.

A normal mid-level DBA is one who may generally have the technical skills of what one may refer to as a 'senior' but is not recognised as such by the company to pay them what they're worth.

A Senior DBA is one who has lots of technical skills and has been there and done that but is now entrenched in going to endless meetings; is the first person called by any plonker with a problem because it's ALWAYS "critical"; has the ability to understand and make office politics work for them; and, generally falls into the position because everyone around them left and they needed someone to take on the role and couldn't find a "Senior" at the "Junior" wages they wanted to pay.

So... in the end - it seemingly comes down to politics and money.

How much politics a person can handle in a role and how little money they can be paid for doing it.

It's OK to be cynical - we're in IT - it's part of the job specs

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

Rudyx - the Doctor SSC-Forever Points: 43695 More actions · Answer 2

I've mulled this post over for quite a while. There are lots of interesting things that have been stated. The Junior/Mid-Level/Senior categories and application/development/production categories all have meaning. Unfortunately each oranization and each manager and HR department in those organizations have complete subjectivity in determinig thier meaning. Thus I have come to the conclusion that something taught to me at the very beginning of a DB2 DBA Admin course quite a while ago would seem to catgorize the differenct between the levels of expertise ranging from Junior to mid-level DBA onto Senior DBA. At the beginning of the course the instructor wrote the following on the erasable board:

DDL
Bottleneck
DML
Politics

Ths instructor then stated that 'this course' is designed to teach you 1 & 3. By putting 1 & 3 into practice you will become 2. Once you become 2, and successfully extricate yourself, you will have to become proficient at 4.

Based on this generic (applies to all DBMSs) but concrete (solid situations and principles) example I would propose the following: