Is being a DBA a bad career choice in 2020?
I'm curious the thoughts on this. I had a few years experience as a web developer, then sql developer, before making the move to becoming a sql server database administrator for on-prem servers. I've been at my current company, a large fortune 10, but not faang, for two years. I mostly like my job, since I'm able to write a lot of powershell to automate large scale tasks, and of course a lot of sql as well, which I enjoy. I'm also involved in a lot of devops support and implementation which is also up my alley. I don't mind that some parts are more mindless like verifying backups or adding storage. I prefer the mix of development and operations type work.
However if you search anywhere, people keep saying it's the worst job, a dying field, that azure will swallow most jobs, and that I won't even be able to get a job as a developer or devops engineer when all the dba jobs go away because I'm narrowly focused in relational databases. Apparently developers these days know enough about databases themselves that DBA are less needed.
Is that stuff true? I actually like this career but I don't want to keep getting better and learning the dba craft only to be completely not in demand. If it is, any recommendations for my next career pivot? Like I said, devops and cloud engineering roles also sound appealing, but I do have strong sql skills that would go to waste, unless no one would care anyway.
. #dba #database #sql #powershell #mssql
comments
I have lots of tech debt and I am 42 don’t want to compete with young folks with new tech everyday. If I don’t like the people management I might go back to tech.