Re: Trajectory of a [Pg] DBA

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 2:44 PM, Thalis Kalfigkopoulos
<tkalfigo(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'd like to tap into the list's experience regarding the job of a DBA
> in general and Pg DBA in particular.
>
> I see that most of the DBA job posts ask for Sr or Ssr which is
> understandable given that databases are among a company’s most
> valuable assets, but it is also an obvious catch-22. So I'd like to
> ask the list's part- and full-time DBAs, if it's not too personal, how
> they landed their jobs.
>
> Is it an easier and more common entry point to be a part-time DBA e.g.
> perform DBA duties as part of being a U**X sysadmin?
>
> Is it more common to start as a developer and change focus to DBA?

That's what I did. Way back in the days of pg 6.5 I helped build a
corporate intranet and as the senior architect of all of it, I had to
learn both how to admin unix boxes and keep a postgres db happy. I
later learned other dbs (Oracle, db2, and a few others) because we
were constantly interacting with them as the corporate intranet
system.

While it's common for dbas to specialize a lot on dbs like Oracle
(just performance, or development, or 24/7 operation and so on) most
pgsql dbas are, by necessity, generalists. Management often hires a
large team for a database with $500,000 in licensing without batting
an eye, but when the db is free, figure they can get by with 1 or 2
DBAs max.