RE: RE: Career Advice

Ryan - Excellent points. I well know the feeling of being tied to Oracle's future. As to Oracle pricing itself out of the market, I would like to make three points:

• Pricing is one of the quickest things a vendor can change once it becomes convinced this is hurting it. On the other hand, I've seen software vendors that stopped investing in new development. They aren't in business anymore because you can't quickly change that decision.
• Oracle being perceived as high priced tends to increase our salaries. A company spends a lot of money on Oracle, so they want it used to good advantage. The salary surveys I've seen show MS SQL Server DBA with lower salaries on the average.
• Has anyone seen salary survey results for MySQL or PostgreSQL? The database is free, so how much should a company spend on a DBA?

Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 1:19 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

your goals should tie into the job market. you might absolutely love Pascal programming, but I dont recommend studying it.

Right now(and I dont know how it will fluctuate), there is far, far, far more demand for Software Engineers who specialize in Java or .Net. Far, far, far, more than people who specialize in the Oracle database. I think there has been a fundamental shift in database development. In the past you would hire mostly Oracle specialized people to do most of your development. They would use forms or powerbuilder to do your GUIs.

These days, a growing number of teams hire a large number of java or .Net experts and only a handful of database people. is this the best way to go? I dont know. I do see a trend though. How long will the trend last? I do not know.

The biggest problem for IT workers is that we are so tied to one specific skillset and vendor. If Oracle prices themselves out of the market, our skills become far less valued. Employees today want super specialized skillsets. If you have them and they are hot, your set, but they wont be hot forever and its very hard to switch since people want experience in the specific skillset before hiring you.
>
> From: "Thater, William" <William.Thater_at_carrier.utc.com>
> Date: 2003/12/18 Thu PM 01:44:37 EST
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
> Subject: RE: Career Advice
>
> DENNIS WILLIAMS scribbled on the wall in glitter crayon:
>
> > Saira
> > I think you have to decide what your goal is. Then you need to
> > decide how to best accomplish that goal. One tool that can lead you
> > toward a goal is self-study. I have used that tool many times myself.
> > However, with experience you learn the self-study tool has its
> > limits. To consider self-study, consider the following questions:
> >
> > 1. Is this an area that I can gain significant knowledge with a
> > reasonable amount of effort? For example, are there good books
> > available? Is the area well-defined enough for self-study?
> > 2. Since I'm trying to substitute self-effort for work experience, is
> > this an area where there are few people with real work experience?
> > 3. Are there credentials that can be earned?
>
> i'd like to add one more...
> 4. is this something where getting it right will still give you a charge
> after doing it for 10 years or more?
>
> [and yes DBA and programming still do for me. but i'm finding the chances
> of being allowed to do it right are becoming few and far between.]
>
> --
> Bill "Shrek" Thater ORACLE DBA
> "I'm going to work my ticket if I can..." -- Gilwell song
> william.thater_at_carrier.utc.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
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> Author: Thater, William
> INET: William.Thater_at_carrier.utc.com
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  INET: DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM

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