The Care and feeding of a DBA
(This is as much tongue-in-cheek as real...)
Everyone in your organization is important, of course. You should take good care of your humans, because...they are humans. Not desks, not slave labor, not assets, not even resources. Gold and Oil are resources. Your team is made up of real life people.
In your IT shop, you have a variety of types of people. Developers that write the products you sell, or the customer facing website. Project Managers that herd all the cats to get things done, etc.
An often overlooked group is the administration team. "Administrator" is not as cool of a title as say, "CIO", or "Scrum Master" and quite often, many of the folks outside of the IT team have no idea what an admin does. Exchange admin, Systems admin, Database admin.
ADMINISTRATION - noun - the process or activity of running a business, organization, etc. "the day-to-day administration of the company"
Exciting! Yes?
Your IT admins are the ones keeping everything moving. If you get a "yes" email from a sales prospect, thank your mail admin. If you can log on to your machine each day, from Starbucks and IM with teammates around the world, thank your Systems Admins. If the data that runs the entire company is still there today just like it was yesterday, thank your Database Admins!
Admins keep the company alive and functioning properly.
A few tips on how to keep the database admins happy and eager to be a part of the team:
- STOP BLAMING THE DATABASE! Every time something goes wrong, please quit yelling at the DBAs to fix it. That's like getting mad at the car engine for a flat tire without investigating why the car slowed down.
- THANK THEM. DBAs are human. They appreciate being appreciated. Not just at the annual review.
- TRAIN THEM. Allow your DBAs to continuously improve their skill set so they can continuously improve your systems. Conferences, paid online training, etc.
- FEED THEM. Allow your DBAs to actually go to lunch on a lunch hour without calling them for non-emergencies
- LISTEN TO THEM. When a DBA makes a recommendation, trust, test and implement. When you hire a consultant to come tell you the same thing, its insulting.
- PAY THEM. Please stop offering to pay Junior level wages to a person with 20 years of experience. We know the market rates, just like you do. Be reasonable.
- LET THEM TEST THINGS. Allow them to set up a test environment so they don't have to test in Production when things go bad. Cloud VMs are super cheap to spin up for a day, test something and deallocate.
- STAY CURRENT. No DBA wants to work on old, out-of-support versions of Oracle, SQL Server etc. We hear this from recruiters and already know what the day-to-day is going to be like. (Hint - its going to suck if you are still on SQL 2005)
- TRUST THEM. You have given them SysAdmin rights to all of your company's data. Trust them to use that access wisely. Let them do what they need to do to help you, without burying them under arbitrary InfoSec rules. If your DBA can be trusted to see everything in the HR database, surely she can be trusted to install appropriate things on her laptop, yes?
- LET THEM HAVE A LIFE. A well rested, happy DBA is going to work their tail off for you. Demanding 60 hour weeks and 24x7x365 on call is going to burn them out. Some DBAs even have families they love and want to see. Limit the off-hours calls and texts to actual emergencies
Most of these are common sense (or should be) and apply very well to any number of positions in your organization. Many admins simply want to do their job and chill out in the background while being a part of the overall success of the firm.
Comments welcomed.
Thanks for reading!
Fintech Database Services Manager
3yThis article is the truth.
Then there of course all the IT managers that say don't need a DBA anyway we do devops :-)
Most IT managers think DBA means - Does B***er All. Until the brown stuff hits the fan and then understand why you said a backup is important to take before developers deployed some new shiny.
Senior Engineer - Manager, Database Platforms - Oracle, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL, Cloud RDS
6yDBA - most of the time Default Blame Acceptor
Senior People & Technology Leader | Positive Wellbeing, D&I & Disability Champion | CMI Chartered Manager | 2014 FSDP Scholar
6yThe best DBA is one that has everything in order and automated as much as possible, which means time can then be spent on r&d, the forward plan, that all important documentation and engineering solutions/project work. To get to this position takes a great deal of time and skill, which to the untrained eye goes completely unnoticed, with the only thing seen being that the DBA seems relaxed and in control and not rushed off their feet. A good DBA is one that may look to have too much time on their hands to others. I have never really understood why some people and organisations feel a good use of time for a DBA is constant fire fighting and being rushed off their feet... and then use the DBA team as the default blame acceptors. This is more a wider fault of poor management and process, not the DBA. I am not saying we should all sit around and do nothing, nor that we are never part of an issue. A heathy balance is all most of us can aim for. Take time to understand what the DBA role entails and the pressures such professionals are under and give praise wherever it is due. At the end of the day we are all part of the solution and a happy and efficient DBA function will go along way to keeping the lights on.