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If you can model data, build data warehouses, manage and maintain schemas, and help analysts write effective SQL; you'll be employed for a very long time. If yo

If you can model data, build data warehouses, manage and maintain schemas, and help analysts write effective SQL; you'll be employed for a very long time. If your entire focus is on the system administration perspective, that career is quickly disappearing in favor of SaaS/PaaS solutions.

jve 4y ago
> quickly disappearing in favor of SaaS/PaaS solutions. Remember that HN is a bubble and world is a much larger place :) No, it is not disappearing "quickly".
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  Whilst the word quickly is subjective, I haven’t seen anyone roll out Oracle for about 15 years vs literally hundreds of Snowflake, Redshift, RDS, Elastic cloud deployments. Maybe OLTP is moving to SaaS slower, but the on prem data warehouse market must be dying a death?
  - Annatar 4y ago
  - jve 4y ago
    What you say also marks some direction: there are new and useful DB technologies to be learned. Anyway, software world is built on DBs, whether they are administered by someone in the cloud or not.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    Yes there are very few Oracle rollouts but there are still plenty of on prem MySQL, PostgreSQL and MS SQL rollouts. Yes, there is a lot more cloud today, but I feel Oracle really is the product hit the hardest.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    May I introduce you to Vodafone? There is noSql solutions being built, but when I left a couple of years ago there were Oracle database backed projects in flight. Some of the 3rd party applications supported PostGres so they didn't even need to stick with Oracle, but they did. It was when management pushed for a project to be Oracle back that caused a few of us to quit. It's nasty enough to develop on, I don't want to support too.
- mastazi 4y ago
  I'm located on the opposite side of the world with respect to Silicon Valley, and admin jobs are disappearing quickly here. This may surprise you but we have heard about this "cloud" thingy. ;-)
  - pesfandiar 4y ago
    There are industries much slower to adapt new technologies right here in North America. The HN bubble is not just geographical.
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      But the question is, would you like to get a job at those companies relying on outdated processes where you take care of a pet server? Maybe even running on an old flavour of proprietary UNIX?
      - butlerm 4y ago
        Almost no one has a job taking care of a pet server. They would be bored to tears when any decent sysadmin can take care of dozens to hundreds.
  - Annatar 4y ago
    It's like every fashion fad in IT: stuff hits, everybody goes gaga over the toy examples until it's time to put it in production. Then they finally find out what kind of a dumpster trash fire the newfangled fashion fad is, and start looking at tried and true technologies. It's always the same.
    - twblalock 4y ago
      Not really. The cloud won. So did microservices and NoSQL databases and containerization. The industry is not going back.
      - nickcox 4y ago
gigatexal 4y ago
As a former DBA I agree. And this was the fun part of the job. The provisioning databases, installing updates, configuring, doing backups, etc., that’s all automated by any decent cloud provider. And that part is no longer necessary unless the place you work at insists on rolling their own DB instances instead of a managed provider.
DeathArrow 4y ago
You mean switch from Database Administrator to Database Architect?
- atwebb 4y ago
  A bit more nuance I'd throw on it is to a Data Architect. While databases are a primary storage system, knowing data modeling / systems in general is beneficial and leads to a broader role / career.
gadders 4y ago
Not sure if I agree about which role is disappearing when, but it does highlight the two types of DBA: - the "Dev DBA" who makes sure ER diagrams are constructed sensibly, knows how to look at an explain plan to see where queries are going wrong, maybe even the odd stored proc (heresy!) - the "Sys Admin DBA" who makes sure the database has enough space, rollback segments are big enough etc etc.

jve 4y ago

> quickly disappearing in favor of SaaS/PaaS solutions. Remember that HN is a bubble and world is a much larger place :) No, it is not disappearing "quickly".

benjaminwootton 4y ago
Whilst the word quickly is subjective, I haven’t seen anyone roll out Oracle for about 15 years vs literally hundreds of Snowflake, Redshift, RDS, Elastic cloud deployments. Maybe OLTP is moving to SaaS slower, but the on prem data warehouse market must be dying a death?
- Annatar 4y ago
- jve 4y ago
  What you say also marks some direction: there are new and useful DB technologies to be learned. Anyway, software world is built on DBs, whether they are administered by someone in the cloud or not.
- jeltz 4y ago
  Yes there are very few Oracle rollouts but there are still plenty of on prem MySQL, PostgreSQL and MS SQL rollouts. Yes, there is a lot more cloud today, but I feel Oracle really is the product hit the hardest.
- happymellon 4y ago
  May I introduce you to Vodafone? There is noSql solutions being built, but when I left a couple of years ago there were Oracle database backed projects in flight. Some of the 3rd party applications supported PostGres so they didn't even need to stick with Oracle, but they did. It was when management pushed for a project to be Oracle back that caused a few of us to quit. It's nasty enough to develop on, I don't want to support too.
mastazi 4y ago
I'm located on the opposite side of the world with respect to Silicon Valley, and admin jobs are disappearing quickly here. This may surprise you but we have heard about this "cloud" thingy. ;-)
- pesfandiar 4y ago
  There are industries much slower to adapt new technologies right here in North America. The HN bubble is not just geographical.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    But the question is, would you like to get a job at those companies relying on outdated processes where you take care of a pet server? Maybe even running on an old flavour of proprietary UNIX?
    - butlerm 4y ago
      Almost no one has a job taking care of a pet server. They would be bored to tears when any decent sysadmin can take care of dozens to hundreds.
- Annatar 4y ago
  It's like every fashion fad in IT: stuff hits, everybody goes gaga over the toy examples until it's time to put it in production. Then they finally find out what kind of a dumpster trash fire the newfangled fashion fad is, and start looking at tried and true technologies. It's always the same.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Not really. The cloud won. So did microservices and NoSQL databases and containerization. The industry is not going back.
    - nickcox 4y ago

gigatexal 4y ago

As a former DBA I agree. And this was the fun part of the job. The provisioning databases, installing updates, configuring, doing backups, etc., that’s all automated by any decent cloud provider. And that part is no longer necessary unless the place you work at insists on rolling their own DB instances instead of a managed provider.

DeathArrow 4y ago

You mean switch from Database Administrator to Database Architect?

atwebb 4y ago
A bit more nuance I'd throw on it is to a Data Architect. While databases are a primary storage system, knowing data modeling / systems in general is beneficial and leads to a broader role / career.

gadders 4y ago

Not sure if I agree about which role is disappearing when, but it does highlight the two types of DBA: - the "Dev DBA" who makes sure ER diagrams are constructed sensibly, knows how to look at an explain plan to see where queries are going wrong, maybe even the odd stored proc (heresy!) - the "Sys Admin DBA" who makes sure the database has enough space, rollback segments are big enough etc etc.