Career move for DBAs

Had some questions with regards to a career path for DBAs.
1) Do DBAs within Operations report to a Database Manager ? Is that the
right title ? If not, curious to know who else do DBAs report to in an
organisation ?
2) How do DBAs keep their jobs challenging on a day to day basis ? How does
the manager keep the DBAs happy besides the money factor ? The DBAs job is
keeping systems up and running and securing the data and being available to
support the organisation. Doing that day in and day out will eventually get
to you and want to make sure theres exciting work
3) What can DBAs do to move up in their career ?Hi
1. If you have more than a few DBA's, they should be in their own group,
having their own line manager. We have over 3000 database servers (from the
big 3 vendors), and there are multiple teams on duty at any one time.
2. Job rotation within the teams, continuous training. Maybe a bit of a desk
swap with a development DBA if he is capable.
3. Database Engineering (the guys who architect and design the standards,
tools and database product setups, based on your runtime OS platforms and
requirements) is the logical place for them to go after production DBA, and
possibly, up to Lead DB Engineer. Any other track is a paper pushing (sorry
management) track and then the DBA throws his technical knowledge away.
Regards
--
Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Zurich, Switzerland
IM: mike@.epprecht.net
MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/
"Anonymous" <anonymous@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:uOIdBuy8FHA.476@.TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Had some questions with regards to a career path for DBAs.
> 1) Do DBAs within Operations report to a Database Manager ? Is that the
> right title ? If not, curious to know who else do DBAs report to in an
> organisation ?
> 2) How do DBAs keep their jobs challenging on a day to day basis ? How
> does the manager keep the DBAs happy besides the money factor ? The DBAs
> job is keeping systems up and running and securing the data and being
> available to support the organisation. Doing that day in and day out will
> eventually get to you and want to make sure theres exciting work
> 3) What can DBAs do to move up in their career ?
>|||3000 DB Servers Mike ? WoW.. Is this all the db servers within your company
? Does the same DBA team look after development, test,Staging,etc in
addition to production ? Or are there different teams for those
environments, such as OLTP vs Data Warehouse vs BackOffice Applications,etc
?
Who runs data changes on a day to day basis ? Assuming some changes are not
part of the tools and need to be executed using QA.. Do DBAs do that or do
you have some data change analysts doing that ?
"Mike Epprecht (SQL MVP)" <mike@.epprecht.net> wrote in message
news:OIYh6X28FHA.1148@.tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Hi
> 1. If you have more than a few DBA's, they should be in their own group,
> having their own line manager. We have over 3000 database servers (from
> the big 3 vendors), and there are multiple teams on duty at any one time.
> 2. Job rotation within the teams, continuous training. Maybe a bit of a
> desk swap with a development DBA if he is capable.
> 3. Database Engineering (the guys who architect and design the standards,
> tools and database product setups, based on your runtime OS platforms and
> requirements) is the logical place for them to go after production DBA,
> and possibly, up to Lead DB Engineer. Any other track is a paper pushing
> (sorry management) track and then the DBA throws his technical knowledge
> away.
> Regards
> --
> Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
> Zurich, Switzerland
> IM: mike@.epprecht.net
> MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
> Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/
> "Anonymous" <anonymous@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:uOIdBuy8FHA.476@.TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>|||Hi
All changes have to be in the form of scripts, with documentation, that can
be run by the DBA's. OSQL for SQL Server. No script, no update to the
servers. No change control ticket, no change. No backout procedure, no
change.
They look after all the DB servers, be they Dev, Test, Prod or Disaster
Recovery.
The platforms are standard, each install is identical to the next, and the
rules are the rules. Projects can not have something that was not engineered
by Engineering and approved by Security.
Nobody but the DBA team have sa privileges. If the application needs it, it
does not go onto the servers. dbo needs approval from security.
24x7x365, follow the sun, in 4 locations around the world.
Regards
--
Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Zurich, Switzerland
IM: mike@.epprecht.net
MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/
"Anonymous" <anonymous@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:exJoFe48FHA.1032@.TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> 3000 DB Servers Mike ? WoW.. Is this all the db servers within your
> company ? Does the same DBA team look after development, test,Staging,etc
> in addition to production ? Or are there different teams for those
> environments, such as OLTP vs Data Warehouse vs BackOffice
> Applications,etc ?
> Who runs data changes on a day to day basis ? Assuming some changes are
> not part of the tools and need to be executed using QA.. Do DBAs do that
> or do you have some data change analysts doing that ?
> "Mike Epprecht (SQL MVP)" <mike@.epprecht.net> wrote in message
> news:OIYh6X28FHA.1148@.tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
>|||Mike,
I had a few more questions and would like to get in touch with you directly
. How can I do so?
"Mike Epprecht (SQL MVP)" <mike@.epprecht.net> wrote in message
news:O4QkSC58FHA.2264@.tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Hi
> All changes have to be in the form of scripts, with documentation, that
> can be run by the DBA's. OSQL for SQL Server. No script, no update to the
> servers. No change control ticket, no change. No backout procedure, no
> change.
> They look after all the DB servers, be they Dev, Test, Prod or Disaster
> Recovery.
> The platforms are standard, each install is identical to the next, and the
> rules are the rules. Projects can not have something that was not
> engineered by Engineering and approved by Security.
> Nobody but the DBA team have sa privileges. If the application needs it,
> it does not go onto the servers. dbo needs approval from security.
> 24x7x365, follow the sun, in 4 locations around the world.
> Regards
> --
> Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
> Zurich, Switzerland
> IM: mike@.epprecht.net
> MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
> Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/
> "Anonymous" <anonymous@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:exJoFe48FHA.1032@.TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>|||Hi
Look at my posting address and my IM address below.
Regards
--
Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Zurich, Switzerland
IM: mike@.epprecht.net
MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/
"Anonymous" <anonymous@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eWPWmZ58FHA.3952@.TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> Mike,
> I had a few more questions and would like to get in touch with you
> directly . How can I do so?
> "Mike Epprecht (SQL MVP)" <mike@.epprecht.net> wrote in message
> news:O4QkSC58FHA.2264@.tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
>|||On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:21:00 -0800, "Anonymous"
<anonymous@.hotmail.com> wrote:
>2) How do DBAs keep their jobs challenging on a day to day basis ?
Always more backup procedures to create, performance to tune. But
look for something new to do as a background task. New
certifications, if nothing else.

> How does
>the manager keep the DBAs happy besides the money factor ?
The book on this says keep techies happy by offering them new tech,
keeping skills up to date, and like that.

>The DBAs job is
>keeping systems up and running and securing the data and being available to
>support the organisation. Doing that day in and day out will eventually get
>to you and want to make sure theres exciting work
I'm always more on the development side anyway, but just profiling the
data, the better to manage performance, is always something I like to
spend time on. What are the most common names in your database? How
does that correspond to address? Who are the top 10 customers in your
major product areas? Usually there are meaningful reports on these
kinds of things done by marketing in your organization, but that's
sort of top-down, and as a DBA you can sometimes suggest some
bottom-up views that are interesting - possibly getting you involved
with marketing, or special projects, and the like.
That is, if it doesn't violate policy or protocol for you to run those
kinds of queries as a DBA. It probably should, yet nobody ever seems
to yell at me when I show up with some curious report I just ran for
no reason. But if I wasn't easily amused by such things, I suppose I
wouldn't like being a DBA, or data architect, or whatever it is I'm
supposed to be these days.
Josh