The Future of DBAs
I was looking around the web for information regarding DBAs in the cloud era, when I came across Steve Jones’s recent blog post chatting about the “death of the Database Administrator” - he’s over at blog and on twitter. But hang on a sec, Steve was actually talking about the title of the job, not the job itself. Talk about playing with words, huh?
If you scroll through the wild world of the internet, you’ll see that folks have been predicting the demise of DBAs for quite some time now. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher considering the insane amount of data being churned out every day. Apparently, it’s a whopping 2.5 Quintillion Bytes of Data Created Daily. Can you wrap your head around that number? Yeah, me neither. Is it 2,500,00 terabytes? Or maybe 250 zettabytes? 2.5 yottabytes? Who really knows?
More False Nostradamus Vibes?
Yep, the whole “DBA’s gonna vanish” prophecy has been floating around for ages - maybe even eons, if you ask me. It’s all based on the idea that the role of the DBA won’t be the same old gig anymore. And you know what? That might actually be starting to ring true. With the spotlight on the cloud, DBAs might not have to deal with hardware or backups soon, which could mean a whole bunch of extra free time on their hands. So, unless they fancy early retirement or a total career switcheroo, DBAs are gonna have to shake things up.
Shake things up into what, you ask? Well, if you’re a DBA right now, it wouldn’t hurt to polish up those dev skills. DBAs will always have a place, but I’ve got a hunch that the job is morphing into more of a development gig. The ever-growing influence of DevOps in the DBA realm is gonna be the game-changer. Even if you decide to skip the cloud action, you’ll still be treating builds like deployments. And hey, there’s also the enticing paths of Data Analytics and Data Science to explore.
When you spot the big shots in the community making moves, that’s your cue to start mulling over your next steps. Take Thomas LaRock, for example. In July, he spilled the beans about diving into Data Science over here. And that Brent Ozar fella has been chatting it up in a few interviews about these same hot topics. All in all, if you’re gaga about working with data, it’s time to take the reins on your career. No matter where you are in your journey, keeping up with the latest trends is a must.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmY1pTo3mkA)