Looking for some advice (MySQL Market)

[choppedwood]

Hi,

Looking for a little help.  After a 6-1/2 year job, I took a layoff (volunteered).  Watching a company slowly die (I survived from 600 down to around 250, it'll probably be 150 employees by the end of the year if it even survives), as people fought over who was going to pilot the ship into the iceberg took it's toll.  Anyways, after goofing off a bit I'm getting serious about work and I'm finding it to be quieter than I expected in the contract market for MySQL.

I was hired by that company to develop a web-presence, which I did, but because of the nature of the job I wound up doing DBA work, BI work and LAMP development.  In addition to their sites, I built an online reporting system that relied extensively on data exports from their ERP system being pushed into MySQL (everything maintained and built by me).  The vast majority of the applications were in PHP, and the tool we used for the exports from a Progress DB is something called Cyberquery (we basically exported delimited files using it because it's the only tool the vendor supported).  The majority of the reporting was designed by me and we provided a massive increase in speed (the exports ran at night and we were able to index on the MySQL end to support our reporting) and information.  The ERP's reporting was very limited, badly designed (as was their indexing for anything but their badly designed reports), and very slow, despite being a million dollar product that none of you will have heard of.

My preference is the database side of the house but that seems, by far, the quietest.  My take on my background is that I'm past a Jr. DBA role, also certified for whatever little bit that might be worth, but not at a Sr. DBA level either.  I know my way around but I simply didn't face the issues that a Sr. DBA will have especially on the tuning end of things and we didn't need a cluster, replication or to plow through terabytes of data.  My hope was to find a mid-level contract, or two, round things out and go from there but I'm not finding it with MySQL where everything seems to be at the Sr. Level (SQL Server and Oracle seem pretty lively).  I really don't want to do development but it does look like there's work there, especially since it seems to find me.  BI seems ok (apparently that term is owned by Microsoft) but I have to draw up the resume differently for that.

Any thoughts?

[The Gorn]

I don't have anything for you, myself.

But there are several members of the board who have moved between roles in software development, DB administration, design and management, and project management, and there are a lot of people here with their finger in the technical wind to see what direction it is blowing.

I recommend that you may want to edit your subject line to be more descriptive - such "MySQL DBA Seeks Career and Positioning Advice".

Hopefully someone in this community can help you, soon.

[ilconsiglliere]

I have had multiple roles over the years. Development, DBA, architect, vendor management, project management - I am a jack of all trades and master of none. Years ago companies wanted IT generalists that could wear many hats, not today.

Today they want specialists in EVERYTHING. They want just DBAs, just Java people, just Project Managers. They also want XYZ years of specific industry experience. I have been in multiple industries and can truthfully say IT is IT but not in company's beady little minds. Must have 20 years of telecom experience, must have 20 years of financial services. I was laid off from a supposedly fairly prestigious life insurance company this past February. Ask me what 5 years at this company has gotten me with other financial services companies - NOTHING.

The reason they want this is it segments the people very nicely and makes them plug and play. A developer is a developer and a PM is a PM. If you lose one, you just get another one. You are a cog in the machine and thats all. Thats what Certs are all about, it STANDARDIZES people and makes them commodities.

In my experience bigger companies wont touch MySQL with a 10 foot pole outside of labs and start up kind of environments. Open source still has a tinge about it being hoke. Most open source software is driven by the fact that its free. I personally don't believe its hoke, but financial companies in particular are extremely conservative and unless you buy the name brand product (IE. Oracle, DB2) with Platinum level support they will never be happy. Telecom is more open about it than financial services because in general they have the ability to do their own debugging. That being said most companies will want the packaged product because the brand that gives them that comfy feeling.

If you want to do DBA work, Oracle is where its at. Oracle DBA's are still pulling down decent coin but they have been infiltrated with H1Bs as well. Its not as bad as development but its still a problem.

As for the ability to switch between technologies and roles, good luck with that. All companies seem to demand that the candidate hit the ground running. They want to train no one nor be patient with someone to come up to speed. You may get lucky with a small company that will cut you slack but the bigger ones are hyper demanding and will not want to train you.

I advise you to learn on your own and learn to lie about what you have done. Honesty will not get you anywhere with agencies and unless you have the EXACT skill set that their client wants you will never get an interview. This is the reality of the IT job market now. Besides this is exactly what the H1Bs do.

I personally believe unless you have some kind of niche development language where there there is a strong hidden market, you should stay away from development. There are way to many candidates for every single job in development and the offshoring and outsourcing has not stopped. There are whole departments now in most companies that are almost entirely H1B people. At my last insurance gig, roughly 50% of the building was H1B and in the telecom gig prior to that I would guess it was closer to 80% H1B.

I say find a niche and exploit the hell out of it. Unfortunately I dont think MySQL is it. Correct me if I am wrong but didnt Sun buy MySQL and than Sun got bought by Oracle?

You might want to look at getting Oracle certified...

[choppedwood]

Gorn, reasonable suggestion and change made.

By the way, is this the old IT Forum, only nicer?

[datagirl]

Hi, choppedwood.  Welcome to the board.

I'm in the rural Southern US, marketing to Mom and Pop businesses... a market that is nearly dead here these days. 

I think you will find that MySQL shops are mostly in smallish to medium-sized businesses who did not want to shell out $$ for SQL Server (or have an anti-MS bias) and would be totally out of their depth with Oracle.  In my neck of the woods there would be absolutely no market for a MySQL contractor that would pay very much, unless you had experience in the client's particular vertical market.

Can you tell us more about your preferred location, industry segment, etc.?

Regards,
-DG

[benali72]

From the sole standpoint of getting a job and making the most possible money...   in DBA World, bigger shops are better, and commercial software is better than FOSS. So big corps will be better than Mom and Pop businesses, and Oracle (and secondarily even SQLServer and DB2) will be better than MySQL.

About MySQL -- maybe it's different with the vendor community out in silicon valley, but out here in IT land in the midwest, there are few large MySQL-only projects. Most MySQL projects of any size are integrated with back-end Oracle (or other commercial) databases.

So if you like DBA work that's the target.  @ilconsiglliere and your own post have more and better detail, but in a nutshell this is it.

[The Gorn]

By the way, is this the old IT Forum, only nicer?

This was an Ezboard.com and then a Yuku.com board that I migrated to this platform. The previous location was here: http://openitforum.yuku.com

This board originally arose out of a mass exodus from the "Realrates.com" discussion board.

[choppedwood]

Thanks for the replies,

I'm West Coast, and there is MySQL DBA work, but it's really specified.  I can very legitimately claim DBA work but I can't really claim to have worked on clusters, replication (maybe I could BS that one) or terabyte sized databases (I probably could stretch that one).  All I'm really after is more, bigger problems.  Training isn't the issue, being in the middle of a FUBAR, and getting out is what I'm after.  I may have to follow Il's advice and start stretching things.

There is a lot of LAMP work but I don't really want to go that route unless I start getting hungry and my last company has been on a long slide so I've put a lot of money away.

What I find a little bit ironic is all the time I spent digging around in the main system of my last job.  If it had been Peoplesoft or Oracle I could write my ticket with the knowledge I have but it almost might as well as have been Quickbooks with all the mindshare it will have with recruiters.  I lived in that database trying to figure out what did what mostly without any supporting documentation.  If there was a market I could build a business supporting it.  The vendor does a poor job supporting it, despite charging $100K/year, and I've got to be on the very top end of their customers in database knowledge, and I'm probably right there with their internal staff.  It's probably worth 10 minutes to explore but I doubt it has much life, given the state of the vendor, the way the vendor controls the product and the industry.

I've thought about the other two platforms (Oracle and SQL Server).  I've had nibbles when I was employed for SQL Server / MySQL migrations as I have a very old SQL Server cert and actually a pretty decent resume.  The SQL Server market looks alive and it would probably be an easier transition than Oracle.  Might be worth it to visit a couple of PASS meeting as well.

Anyways, thanks for the thoughts.

[choppedwood]

ilconsiglliere,

You are correct about the state of MySQL.  My developer cert is Sun and my admin is Oracle.  It's too bad because it's a good product, fast, and priced right, especially against the competition.  Any while I hear nothing about it's demise (Oracle paid a ton for it) I do worry about it.

Thanks for the post.

[ilconsiglliere]

My advise is to get Oracle certified and than make your resume ambiguous to the fact that you worked on MySQL versus Oracle. As long as you can talk the talk at the interview you will be good. Just be able to deliver and you will be fine.

H1B's go to 1 and 2 week boot camps and many times just read a book like they were cramming for an exam. You can do the exact same thing.

This is how it is now and unless you adopt their ways you will be unemployed...

[choppedwood]

My advise is to get Oracle certified and than make your resume ambiguous to the fact that you worked on MySQL versus Oracle. As long as you can talk the talk at the interview you will be good. Just be able to deliver and you will be fine.

H1B's go to 1 and 2 week boot camps and many times just read a book like they were cramming for an exam. You can do the exact same thing.

This is how it is now and unless you adopt their ways you will be unemployed...

I can do those things. I was already heading down that path with SQL Server.  The basic concepts are there but the GUI is like landing on another planet and it feels bloated.  I'll finish up what I was doing and take a second look at Oracle.  You've convinced me.

I've been fortunate enough to avoid the whole H1-B thing.  But, having been around the forums it's pretty obvious that I won't be able to get away with that for much longer.

[ilconsiglliere]

My advise is to get Oracle certified and than make your resume ambiguous to the fact that you worked on MySQL versus Oracle. As long as you can talk the talk at the interview you will be good. Just be able to deliver and you will be fine.

H1B's go to 1 and 2 week boot camps and many times just read a book like they were cramming for an exam. You can do the exact same thing.

This is how it is now and unless you adopt their ways you will be unemployed...

I can do those things. I was already heading down that path with SQL Server.  The basic concepts are there but the GUI is like landing on another planet and it feels bloated.  I'll finish up what I was doing and take a second look at Oracle.  You've convinced me.

I've been fortunate enough to avoid the whole H1-B thing.  But, having been around the forums it's pretty obvious that I won't be able to get away with that for much longer.

Here is the reason you are not seeing tons of H1Bs pimping their MySQL skills: its not on the big commercial radar right now. If it had the mind share of Oracle you can be 110% sure they would be in it. Bet on it.

I have seen things that used to pay top $ be wiped out. SAP people come to mind. SAP consultants used to make the most of anyone, not anymore. You are in the mill with everyone else. Java is another one, you cant swing a dead cat without hitting an H1B Java programmer.

The keys to staying employable in this field IMHO are the following:

*Find a niche that is not widely popular and is not being hyped to death (like the cloud at the moment). Things like functional programming, business process modeling (BPM), DoD, AI, industry specific applications, industry knowledge that is not widely known, etc....

*Have skills that the H1Bs dont - ie. EXCELLENT English both written and verbal, that you understand American business culture and needs, that you understand finance. This is what has saved me. I have been told numerous times I have exceptional written and verbal skills and I have always been into finance. I very much understand how capital, budgets, costs/expenses, etc... work in a company.

*Get befriended by a senior person in a company that is willing to be your godfather and take you under his wing. This is the least likely of all to happen and you have to be hyper political and smart. Out of all my friends I only know one that was able to make this happen. He is a complete douche and sold me down the river long ago.

Sorry for the ranting 

[Slinky]

I can do those things. I was already heading down that path with SQL Server.  The basic concepts are there but the GUI is like landing on another planet and it feels bloated.  I'll finish up what I was doing and take a second look at Oracle.  You've convinced me.

Be careful with Oracle, as a lot of the jobs are market and region specific. You are on the West Coast, while the rest of the fellas are on the NorthEast. I'm in the SouthWest and Oracle is pretty dead around these parts. You know your market better than we do, so make a comparison between the listed position and the database types. That should give you an idea as to what is hot in your market. You may also want to ping a few borks about what they are seeing. That's about the only good use I have for them.

My current play is moving up the database food chain. I'm doing a lateral move from development into Business Intelligence\Datawarehousing. There's not a lot of these types of jobs where I'm at (all seem to be in NJ, Virginia, and Chicago), but the ones that are listed pay relatively well. I'm working with the Microsoft BI stack. A lot of business are trying to squeeze as much information as they can from their data, and that's why I'm seeing an increase in these types of jobs. I'm working with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Those 3 technologies seem to be garnering the attention of companies using the Microsoft BI stack.

I've been fortunate enough to avoid the whole H1-B thing.  But, having been around the forums it's pretty obvious that I won't be able to get away with that for much longer.

Same here. I've only seen H1-Bs at JPMorgan-Chase. They are a rare sighting in my region of the US. Matter of fact, I haven't seen anybody holding that visa in about 3 years now.

[choppedwood]

My current play is moving up the database food chain. I'm doing a lateral move from development into Business Intelligence\Datawarehousing.

This is mostly how I wound up where I wound up.  The reporting was so slow and limited that it was wide open for someone to dive in and I dove.  The manager let me do almost anything as long as it didn't cost money and didn't have the words Microsoft associated with it. 

I'm working with the Microsoft BI stack. A lot of business are trying to squeeze as much information as they can from their data, and that's why I'm seeing an increase in these types of jobs. I'm working with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Those 3 technologies seem to be garnering the attention of companies using the Microsoft BI stack.

I see those a lot as well.  I haven't done much with them but as near as I can tell they aren't that different from what I was doing using LAMP and the command line.  Well, I didn't do much data-mining, in and of itself, but I did a ton of things with customers, inventory, credit, ratio analysis, scoring, etc.  I, actually, really enjoyed that stuff.  I haven't gotten there but that's on the list as well.

[choppedwood]

Il, on the H1-B.  I've been able to avoid it because I've spent the last several years in a company where my tan made me the second darkest person out of 50 in the corporate offices.  MySQL is just as bad as any other technology and I'll have to deal with it going forward.