Hiring A DBA
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"Length of service shows loyalty."
I totally disagreed with this. What year is this ? You spent 10 years with a company, first of all, all you had was the experience in that company, you did not expose to the outside world. Your company's technology may not be the most recent. Second, over the 10 years in the company, what had this person done ? The same thing - backup, restore, install SQL Server, implement developement to production. I met a DBA working in a company for 10 years, he could not even write a decent DTS package and stored procedure. That's the resume you wanted to put on the top of the pile. Besides these days people changes job every 2 to 3 years is a norm. Actually those people I found had more business and technical experience. Especially if you are a contractor, you work in a company for six months and then another one for six months, it does not mean that person is not good.
Certification - maybe you think is important. I did it once. All I did was reading the book in and out and I passed the exam and got the cert. Did it mean I knew more? I don't think so. I used to work at Xerox, all their repair engineers required to get a MCSE, all of them got it. Half of them did not even know how to turn on the computer.
The company I used to work with and the company I work right now both said it is very hard to find a good SQL server DBA and SQL Server developer.
My last company after months of search they hired a bimbo for DBA. The first day of I contacted her, I found out I knew SQL server more than she did. Nothing what, it was the impression the manager had on that person, some people can spot a good candidate, some can always find loser. I remembered years ago, my manager hired four people, none of them could do anything, six months later, they all got fired, including my manager. Ha Ha!!!
Another important thing is making sure that person can fit into the department and the company culture. Otherwise you may have to go thru the interview in a few months.
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You spent 10 years with a company, first of all, all you had was the experience in that company, you did not expose to the outside world Not to sound rude but... what planet you on. I have plenty of experience with many different companies in the outside world. Just because I have worked at the same company for a long time does not mean I have tunnel vision and I have found on occasion I know more about how other companies work than their own employees do!
Second, over the 10 years in the company, what had this person done? Oh! please, plenty and varied, a job and job title does not restrict your knowledge and experience only you do.
The same thing - backup, restore, install SQL Server, implement developement to production. I met a DBA working in a company for 10 years, he could not even write a decent DTS package and stored procedure. That is a lack of knowledge and experience, nothing to do with loyalty.
Besides these days people changes job every 2 to 3 years is a norm. Actually those people I found had more business and technical experience My experience is the opposite.
Especially if you are a contractor, you work in a company for six months and then another one for six months, it does not mean that person is not good. Does not mean they are good either. I have met many, many contractors who knew less about databases than me and even when I knew nothing. And even now I know of contractors who have no breadth of knowledge due to specific restrictive contracts.
I am not saying that frequent movers are better or worse than long serving employees, only that you need to know the circumstances.
Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon. -
I am just talking about my experience. What I said definitely applied all the people. I did not mean to offend people.
I did met some people working for the same company for 10 years doing exactly the same thing and they refused to learn anything new. As a matter of fact, my company just fired one.
Every person has his own perspective. One VP of a company said I never worked for a job more than 5 years, it meant I had no loyality and did not hire me. Another company said I could hold on a job for 5 years, it was excellent.
Everyone is different. I went to many interviews and I also interviewed many people. It also depends on your own experiences.
You have good experiences with people working for a company for a long time and have bad experiences with people working for 2 to 3 years and my experiences was just opposite.
Please don't get angry. It is just my 2 cents.
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I did not mean to offend people. No offence here
I did met some people working for the same company for 10 years doing exactly the same thing and they refused to learn anything new. Yep know a few of them
Even had some bleating about no opportunities to learn other things and when you offer to help them and suggest they learn in their own time I got some funny looks 
Every person has his own perspective. One VP of a company said I never worked for a job more than 5 years, it meant I had no loyalty and did not hire me. Another company said I could hold on a job for 5 years, it was excellent. Very true. One man’s chalice is another one’s poison. Loyalty can be very subjective at times and can work both ways, would you want to work for a company that would sack you after 2-3 years. May suit some people but not all.
Everyone is different. I went to many interviews and I also interviewed many people. It also depends on your own experiences. Again, very true.
Please don't get angry. It is just my 2 cents. Not angry at all
sorry if I gave that impression 
Just my pennies worth.
Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon. -
great article. i have a question though. you say
Length of service shows loyalty."
I am not long out of college, and have been 18 months in a SQL server Admin role with a small bit of dev. I definately dont want to spend my career in this company but i plan to have a minimium duration of 2 years. I came up with this figure by talking with recruitment agents. they say the same thing, loyalty to a company counts very well in your favour when going for a job, and here in Ireland 2 years is respectable for a young person not long out of college. But 2 years is a big step from 10 years. and i really want to stretch my legs, as after 2 years, I dont feel my current company will have much more to offer me. I will have learned most of what I can learn in this role and would like to gain more expirience while I am still young.
In your interview process, would moving from a company after 2 years due to not being challenged or wanting more expirience count against me?
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I left my first job after two years because I felt I was not going anywhere and there was nothing to learn. I was given all the simple task to do. For every project, the project leader would have meeting with the senior staffs and figure out what kind of tasks. They excluded me in every meeting. I was just given the task written on a piece of paper.
The average number of years I stayed in a job was two years. One job I stayed for five years, I loved the job and I thought that would stay there. Unfortunately they changed the vice president, after six months, 10% of the staffs were resigned (including me), one guy worked there for 19 years resigned, it told you how bad it was.
Another job I stayed for 8 months. It was one of a division of a fortunate 500 company. They told me the division was solid. After six months, the company announced to sell off that division, if no one bought it, they would close it down. I immediately found another job.
Things changed so fast these days. Even you want to stay in a company, maybe the company does not want you. The other company I worked for decided to outsource the IT department to India.
If you are still young and only work for IT for two years, I would think about switching career !!!
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BTW, we hired a guy whose resume was wonderful and he had over 10 years experiences. When he came to interview, he talked liked he knew what he was doing. Of course I did not ask him any technical questions because he had over 10 years of experiences. (my big mistake). It turned out he was a flop.
He said he was a DBA, designing database, installing database, tuning database. The server ran out of space and he did not even know what to do.
He also said he was a developer writing all kind of procedures. His procedure was a joke. He had two cursors in one procedures which ran hours. He said there was the only way to create a table with parent/child relationship. I wrote a select statement to create a table with parent/child relationship and ran for seconds. The problem was he made all kind of excuse when his procedures failed. He kept saying he did not understand the business. The job was too stressful and he just had a new baby.
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Well, I'm afraid I am not at all impressed with this article ... just one more example of the painting by numbers crowd who will never really get it.
There is actually only one question you ever need to ask a DBA and like the saying goes, if you have to ask .....
And I'm afraid that if anyone tried that AWE nonsense on me ... my starting salary just doubled
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roger clarke (6/20/2007)
Well, I'm afraid I am not at all impressed with this article ... just one more example of the painting by numbers crowd who will never really get it.There is actually only one question you ever need to ask a DBA and like the saying goes, if you have to ask .....
And I'm afraid that if anyone tried that AWE nonsense on me ... my starting salary just doubled
Say that again but slower? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Actually, the point I wanted to make is about the job posting. If you advertise for a "Sequal Data Base Administrator" (sic) then I'm not going to take you seriously. Get someone with a good grasp of written English (or whatever langauage you post it in) to check it. Also, if you ask for 5 to 10 years of experience in just about everything but only specify an average salary then how am I supposed to know whether you're going to revise the quality of the candidate you're after or the salary you offer? Something will have to budge - I've seen job postings like that repeated for months on end!
John
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