Most of us work for someone else, and will for most of our careers. That's our choice, and there's nothing wrong with choosing to find a job, let someone else run a business, and just work along at building software, managing systems, or something else. I work for a great company in Redgate Software, and I'm really enjoying focusing on database work in my role.

However many of us won't work for one company for our entire career. In fact, we'll likely be changing roles during our career as well, moving in and out of different areas. I've worked in development, network adminstration, server administration, IT management, project management, corporate management, and more. I became a DBA because it was a) interesting, and b) paid well. I think IT continues to do this overall, and things look interesting for 2016.

There was a survey taken that looks at the coming year and the hot IT jobs that companies are interested in. A summary was published this week of the 15 top jobs that are likely to have the biggest salary increases. While I don't recommend you choosing a job solely on salary, if you have some skill, some interest, and would like to learn to work in a new role, I might look at one of these positions. I think many of them will have lots of opportunities for many years. 

If you look through the jobs, many are development positions, but there are some good data ones. Data modeler, BI Analyst, Data Architect, Big Data Engineer, and, of course, Data Scientist, are all listed. This is good news for those of us that work with data, especially with the investments and enhancements taking place both inside, and outside of the Microsoft data platform. Data in general is becoming more important, and your ability to work with data increases your value to your employer. 

I notice that DBA isn't listed, though I don't think DBAs are going to disappear anytime soon. However I think the traditional DBA that manages a database like a sysadmin is a job that is morphing. I suspect that DBAs will be asked to do more, either in development or analysis, or they'll be paid less in the future.

In any case, working in technology isn't much different than working in accounting, law, or medicine. You will need to continune to learn and grow your skills over time, and I hope that we can help you at SQLServerCentral.