Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?

115 pointslopatin122 comments

Hi all, I'm looking for some general advice about the right way to find a specific kind of job.

My mom has 20 years of experience with Oracle SQL. She's an expert in that, but not in other dev stuff.

Long story short, their devision got sold to a startup, where she is now given responsibilities and workloads that are much more suited for a young, ambitious, competitive dev who wants a promotion.

It's causing her considerable stress. Some examples of tasks she doesn't want to do:

1. Implement the migration of all data and data models to the new system in the new company, with strict deadlines.

2. Study and evaluate modern data warehouse and data lake solutions to provide an analytics product for customers.

3. Get paged on Thanksgiving weekend to fix some random crap that someone else broke.

It's all fine work, but not for her, not at this stage in life.

She wants to find a place to be comfy and write some SQL scripts, analysis, and data modeling here and there, where she will be both happy and useful. Pay is not a priority.

I guess what I'm asking is that I don't necessarily know what kind of title even fits that role, and where to find such leads. Is she looking for an analyst position? Is she more suited for a non-tech company, where her job description would not "feature creep"?

So far my only advice to her was to go interview around at SQL positions around Chicago, and to go to meetups, (we actually went to a Postgres one together) but she's been through enough interviews where she's grilled with Google style questions where she's not really excited about going through it again. Just seeing if anyone has advice for finding such positions that I'm overlooking.

Thank for your time all, Happy Thanksgiving

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Universities use a lot of OracleSQL (almost all of them), are generally very accepting of older workers and have a working environment that is friendly to aging workers. The salaries aren't excellent but the comfort is high.

Funny enough, my time in university tech as a student said the same thing. I was going to say either that or state/federal.

Hello Banner my old friend to the tune of The Sound of Silence

State and federal tend to use MS SQL, but I guess some federal agencies have the budget for oracle

The difference would be irrelevant, based on OP’s description. She ought to be able to plug into literally any SQL dialect if she’s doing junior/mid-level analyst work.

I'm not sure that's correct. AFAIK, having deep Oracle knowledge is very valuable to the right employer, but not so much for non-Oracle shops.

From my experience ~20 years ago, Oracle and SQL Server were very different beasts.

IIRC, once you get past trivial querying and into storage design, query optimization, etc., they're very different beasts. And Oracle in particular is it's own, huge world at that level. (Again, if I recall correctly.)

Sure, and I think that would definitely be relevant to a different kind/level of analyst. Sounds like OP’s mom would be more than covered by knowing how to google “Postgres function for whatever”.

I think for most SQL-only analysts, the vagaries of deep Oracle vs. MSSQL or whatever aren’t super relevant.

My own impression is that she who can write PL/SQL can write T-SQL. My own background is largely in Oracle, but I've dealt with SQL Server a fair bit.

I work with both Oracle and SQL Server, and this is absolutely true. There is a common standard you can stick to, but there is also a considerable universe of Oracle-specific features even just in the query language, to say nothing of temp tables etc.

Her title is db admin and that’s the position she’s gunning for. They’re going to expect senior level skill beyond just creating queries.

“ She wants to find a place to be comfy and write some SQL scripts, analysis, and data modeling here and there, where she will be both happy and useful. Pay is not a priority.”

None of this suggests senior level skill to me, whatever title is associated with it, particularly given the three points OP listed that she pushed back on. This role is, at most, mid-level.

GP mentioned Banner. The company that sells Banner (which uses Oracle on the back-end), merged with another, so now also sells a product in the same space that uses MSSQL on the back-end. The product that uses Oracle is priced lower than the one that use MSSQL by approximately the difference in DB license costs, so the two products come out pretty similar for total cost (I've heard that this pricing scheme was intentional to prevent one product line from cannibalizing the other after the merger).

Of the three public higher ed institutions within a 100 mi redius of me, all are Oracle on the back-end, two Banner and one Peoplesoft.

To the OP, your mom can watch university and community college job boards and search for keywords like "Banner" and "Peoplesoft". Banner jobs will likely be either one of, or a combination of Oracle DBA and writing PL/SQL.

yeah I was an intern in the Federal government and all the praise made me realize I shouldnt be there

who cares if “people my age are usually are distracted by girls and sports” people with cognitive ability to co-prioritize those things are not here at all, they’re in New York City doing the stuff you guys try and fail to regulate after the fact

Definitely could see it for a chiller work life balance, especially if you can come in further in your career and get a great salary

Seconding this comment; it was my exact thought while reading this post.

Ehh, public uni salaries are quite fine considering the vastly better health insurance and other benefits...

Huh? 3 weeks vacation, $3,000 deductible and $8,000 OOP max for a couple. Not particularly notable, and higher than most OOP maxes I've had at private companies.

I mean, sure I can go to some concerts for free at the music school and use the makerspaces but that really doesnt make up for the $50k+/year I’m leaving on the table.

I suppose your mileage may vary. The individual deductible at UW-Madison is $250, out of pocket limit is $1,250. You can also choose between 3 providers. Also, vacation benefits ramp up and are quite generous after you've been there for a while.

https://etf.wi.gov/insmedia/2023/23et-2112sb/download?inline...

Depends on the state. In New York, for example, the health benefits are awesome, but retirement for new employees, especially mid-career, are meh.

Other places are way worse. Devalued benefits and pensions funds that are unfunded.

Thanks for the tip! We haven't even considered that, and did not know that Oracle was widely used in universities. We'll definitely check that out.

Universities do not need any more career retirees. That Is how higher education has become mostly noise.

If they wanted different employees they could pay to attract “real” talent. But jobs that pay $130k in private industry pay $80k at Universities. Honestly the guys I work with are very good at creating stable, long-living solutions with minimal maintenance requirements. They're not ambitious but they’re careful to create solutions which don’t have technical debt.

Management OTOH often shove poor solutions down the pipe after meeting with vendors.

I was primarily a SQL Server dev and worked in an analytics department supporting homedepot.com call centers. I personally did about half and half application work in C# and the kind of query writing/analysis/optimization you're talking about. It was stable, paid okay, and I was working with a good team (which can be a crapshoot obviously).

I'd personally look for stuff like that out of focused tech companies.

Otherwise I think meetups are a fantastic idea, especially when it comes to greasing the wheels around whatever trendy interview practices are going on that week and being able to personalize the context around wanting to stick with Oracle.

Just off-the-top spit-balling, but things like workforce management, analytics, etc are the kinds of things I'd start with.

I also did project based consulting on small teams for about five years and Oracle is all over the place in non-tech industry, so I wouldn't despair on that front. I'm not sure what the market is for that kind of job, but it's so fundamentally woven into the fabric of a lot of F500 and similar companies that it's not going away soon--even if some of them would prefer it to.

Yeah I think that such non-tech companies would be a perfect fit. Especially since they're the ones using Oracle still. The workforce management space is not something I'm familiar with so will definitely look into it, thanks for the input!

Writing from a throwaway account to avoid outing myself...

I work here [1]. We have a QA opening in Chicago that is heavy on SQL. Pay would not be great, but the benefits are amazing. She would have no shortage of work, and of things to learn, but it wouldn't be the kind of competitive stressful situation that you describe. It's a place that really cares about work-life balance.

If you think she would consider QA-type work, have her take a look:

[1] https://www.crsp.org/about-us/careers/

Thanks! I'll pass it along!

https://usds.gov/apply (not tour of duty roles in DC, remote analyst or 18F)

https://www.usajobs.gov/

Slower pace but remote available and very much in demand. Should carry your Mom through to retirement. Hope it helps.

USDS is not slower paced or for the faint of heart.

I was told they do have some slower paced roles (versus most of the "tip of the spear" work they do) during my last interview cycle, but it has been some time since that has occurred. Appreciate the recent ground truth. Does 18F still have a remote contingent of support/ancillary roles? It's always helpful to know who I can send where for those looking for work vs those needing work done.

Edit: Many thanks for taking the time to reply in depth.

18F should; as should DSes at agencies.

If people are looking for hard (the hard mostly comes from the ambiguity of problem space and autonomous nature of our teams) impactful work, send em our way (USDS).

If they’re looking for impactful work, but not necessarily some of the things that make USDS “hard,” our partners are also great places to land.

There’s plenty of work for those that can do it though

Federal government is an excellent choice for a chill place to work as your last job. One perk of theirs is being able to keep their healthcare plan after you retire, and it’s one of the best available in the country.

I would vote in anyone who recognizes what a giant problem it is that the first suggestion for someone who only wants to write SQL for one specific database is our federal government.

I do not want the government to be the landing place for people who just want to coast. We could make a rubber-room department if we really need it, just pay this woman to make SQL reports on nothing to nobody if just getting her a salary is the goal.

But if we need real work done this woman is not our collective best option.

You're entitled to an opinion, but consider reading the room that this particular opinion has no value in this thread. What you want is immaterial to OP seeking a role for his loved one that isn't a grind. If you’re not helping, what was the point in writing this comment? More empathy please.

On a different note, you're probably understanding the value of a good sql programmer, especially outside of pure tech companies. I've seen one provide more value than a team of programmers, and unlike many codebases it's rare that you need to do a complete rewrite 5-10 years later.

Indeed, just because you’re not willing to grind doesn’t mean you don’t have value, or have less value. Value discovery requires experience and wisdom. Great comment.

Banks have a lot of data analyst type jobs that could be good for this. They require a knowledge of SQL to generate reports but do not fall squarely under IT and so would rarely expect those kinds of project work.

Having worked in banks, the demand for data architects and data analysts is not overly tech specific.

Also: an AWS data or Snowflake certification will help tremendously.

That's a good idea. She knows finance/markets stuff too. I guess I thought banks had kind of cut throat cultures, but I agree that it's not necessarily like that in all departments. We'll for sure check out analyst positions at some of the banks.

Stick to consumer banks, they're laid back. Investment banks or asset managers tend to be more cutthroat.

A certificate without experience means absolutely nothing. No one takes them seriously when hiring.

Source: I have six (7?) active AWS certifications and at one point 9. I knew going in they were worthless and just got them to know what I didn’t know and as a guided learning path.

My primary searches would be for something like Reporting Developer, Reporting Analyst, Report Writer, Business Analyst (for a very established business where most of the responsibilities are actually getting stuff out of a database).

I would be looking at small to medium businesses that have been around for awhile, many of them have "legacy" databases that nobody knows how to query, and someone conversant in SQL would have no big problem breaking down.

The breathless ones going on about their cloud migrations are ones to avoid.

Thanks for the specific recommendations for searches, as we don't know the analyst space too well, but it sounds like reporting or analytics at a small/medium established business may be exactly what she's looking for.

Comment for the commenters - With job changing after 20 years, there is often another gorilla in the room - health insurance. Want to be floored, start looking at health insurance costs when you hit 50. See them jump when you hit 55. Get truly floored when you turn 60. This often means that older employees often have their health insurance as their biggest expense.

>> It's all fine work, but not for her, not at this stage in life.

>> She wants to find a place to be comfy and write some SQL scripts, analysis, and data modeling here and there, where she will be both happy and useful. Pay is not a priority.

Sorry but your mom is about my age (nearly 50 that is). "At this stage in life" is reserved for 30 years from now, someone has to break this to her.

Sounds like the private sector is not for her and that's fine but probably should have considered her options earlier. A teacher position doesn't pay developer money but it's also not nearly as stressful and volatile and "get paged on Thanksgiving weekend to fix some random crap".

On the other hand some people are just not cutoff for the level of workload in the private sector (not just programming, try sales or stacking shelves at Target for a change) and are just professional complainers. Someone I know, in his late 20s was stating "it's too late for me to learn something else, I'm done. finished. terminated". Pursued by his mother (now 75+) he did start a teacher's career and is now 25+ years into it with a nice salary and benefits. Of course it's not enough and he constantly complaints of kids being the worst and teaching the absolute most stressful environment one could imagine. For the record he did try to switch to a sales career, lasted two months and came back penitent.

So while the usual supportive shoulder is the default for your mom's case, I'd recommend investigating if there isn't some similarity to the person I know.

Show her this: https://imgur.com/a/zzUoNWC

> Sorry but your mom is about my age (nearly 50 that is). "At this stage in life" is reserved for 30 years from now, someone has to break this to her.

What does your or her age have to do with what stage of life someone else is in and what they are looking for? There are so many other factors that go into what stage of life we feel we are in. Nor are our personal benchmarks or "age thresholds" necessarily relevant for others.

> On the other hand some people are just not cutoff for the level of workload in the private sector (not just programming, try sales or stacking shelves at Target for a change) and are just professional complainers.

There are many, many other situations and lifestyle choices between "cutoff for level of workload in the private sector" and "professional complainer". It reads as though you have some anecdotal experiences that might be coloring your view of situations that are likely not as transferable as you might think.

What a helpful comment. Yes. How dare someone wish to maintain the work/life balance they have worked hard to attain. They must be lazy like your anecdotal associate.

Just a counterpoint to consider: Start-ups are a dirty fraction of the private sector. They burn through people to achieve short-term goals and reach IPO or takeover. They offset this wear and tear with direct remuneration and options. Most private sector work isn't X10 gigabros, it's real people doing a job, developing themselves and adding value to a long term business in a 9-5 setting. These jobs still exist.

Telling someone to stack shelves because they don't want to work at a start-up is contemptible.

>> 20 years of experience with Oracle SQL. She's an expert in that, but not in other dev stuff

I'm not so sure how much of an expert either. Everyone's parent is a hero to them so one has to take the statement they make with a grain of salt.

Is she "an amazing DBA"? If so she probably has little problem finding another job. If she just knows SQL or worse only "Oracle SQL", meaning little experience with other types of databases, well then she sounds like the kind of person of which there are aplenty who wants to learn one trade and do it for life, with little desire to diversify or re-qualify.

I'm not saying I've got a burning desire to "diversify or re-qualify" and the "churn and burn" characteristic of the software development sector is dear to my heart but I'm a professional, veteran soldier that knows very well what he's gotten into. This "job" isn't for everyone and there are different jobs where you get to re-use the knowledge that you acquire: law, medicine, accounting, teaching, cashier or stackshelver at Target etc. Only not the cruel slaughterhouse that's software development, in a war analogy I'd equate this mom's job with something in intendance versus brutal front line battles that most soldiers are forced to fight. But since she's in the army nevertheless, mustn't be surprised if at some point she finds herself sent to the front line.

>> How dare someone wish to maintain the work/life balance they have worked hard to attain. They must be lazy like your anecdotal associate.

I'm not making value judgements about her desire and in fact I'm sympathetic to her. Just pointing out the cognitive dissonance of having such desires and fantasies in the sector where she works.

20 years of being a DBA on a single system is about fifteen years longer than you'd need to be an expert. I'm not sure why you're suggesting she might not be "amazing" (your word, not OP's). This rhetoric is unhelpful.

And I don't think your comparison fits. DBAs aren't software developers. They're analysts, operations, runtime support and debug. Their job is inherently long-term. There isn't the churn of frittering between framework-des-jours because migration is expensive.

The complaint isn't that she might have to learn something new, it's the quality of work. It's not lazy or unrealistic to resist a transition from planned workloads to no-notice scrotwork without respect for your personal time.

And even in software development, there are companies that respect their developers, even work hard at that to retain them. It's a skilled position where domain experience counts for a lot. More to the world than the Bay Area FAANGs and wannabes.

Per every other comment, there are jobs for DBAs at all ends of the intensity spectrum.

Based on numerous other responses and direct experience maybe it's not as dissonant as you're trying to sell is the thing.

If she can work with MS SQL and is in Los Angeles she might be interested in this position: http://jobs.metro.net/JobInformation.aspx?bno=005228-012

Focus on industries in which she has domain expertise.

Use her analytical skills to write data-backed reports. She could even do this freelance.

Overall I would suggest finding positions where SQL is used but not the entirety of the job description, otherwise she will not be able to differentiate herself from the competition.

Agree.

Definitely contracting for government. The places with the most people in these roles are human services (welfare, child protective), tax, transportation and health.

Tax and human services are usually state level programs with federal money and local boots. Health often has a county component, and transportation has lots of federal money everywhere but often not a lot of IT. (They manage things as capital projects)

I don’t know about Illinois and Chicago. It’s probably worth figuring out how stuff works.

It sounds like she had a cushy job and now needs to look for a regular one. The interviews seem to all be like you mentioned. The job expectations or tasks you listed are all just normal expectations for a dev these days. Companies are increasingly forcing additonal roles and scope into a single position to save headcount.

I feel similarly. I have over 10 years in as a dev and the expectations or scope has drastically increased in that time at my company (been the same level for about 9 years now). I also specialized in dead-end tech (Neoxam and FileNet) so I'm not great at a lot of things. I narrowly avoided being sent over to a sourcing company just by lucky timing on switching teams. I have no motivation to find another job due to the shitty interview processes, my lack of expertise in relevant tech, my stressful home situation, and the fact that other companies pretty much all do the same bullshit.

I figure this is just life and I get to deal with it until I die (increasingly skeptical of retirement being a thing).

def non-tech, search specifically for positions with "Oracle SQL" in title if possible

agreed. talk to huge companies whose main business is not directly technical. they still hire for a lot of tech jobs with good pay and low stress

go down the list of fortune 50 companies, the super old dinosaur companies. they have the wisdom to know how to treat employees, and they have the money to pay employees

Keep looking. A friend I know has a similar skillset and age, but is well employed. Being a SQL-only specialist is still in demand, but requires more effort and patience to find the correct fit.

Re: Point #3, this is a red flag to me, and seems like a very demanding position. (I was paged 3 times this Thanksgiving, but I work in ecommerce.)

My first job was with an older woman who was very experienced and had converted to a SSRS (MSSQL Reports) report writer a few years prior. This took her out of the daily operations, but she still used her skillsets and was a great person to learn from. Being a Maybe something like this, but for Oracle? Good luck!

Your mom sounds like half the devs at every single university IT department. Ive worked with nine different sets now, its pure SQL bespoke reporting, adding new query functionality to whatever ed-tech ERP platform they got. Its basically the same work with maybe some light dev tooling management.

Redgate Software may fit?

https://www.red-gate.com/

https://www.red-gate.com/our-company/

https://www.red-gate.com/products/

I've known about them for some years. No affiliation, but I check them out now and then out of interest.

Earlier they may have been only for MS SQL Server, but now, on a quick look, seem to have Oracle related products too.

Earlier

Planetscale might be a good fit. DM Sam Lambert on twitter.

https://twitter.com/isamlambert

The title is DBA. The role can be found at basically every Fortune 500 in the US. She may want to go to Oracle Cloud meetups if she’s been struggling to find connections through other means.

I just got a job through hired.com. It’s nice because your mom can post her resume and add a statement detailing what she’s looking for. Companies can then request an interview with her. There are similar sites such as ziprecruiter.com. Also, I’ve found that generative AI makes it much easier to learn new technologies. I would encourage her to use them. Hopefully she can retire before they put us all out of work.

Would she consider learning Apex? You can get a job developing apps in Apex. If she only wants to use SQL, I just can't see many options.

Maybe reach out to a recruiter or two that might be able to find something. She seems to have a good idea of what she wants, which would be helpful. She might want to avoid the larger firms or ones that are out of country because they're mostly interested in numbers. Smaller local firms and individuals often care about meeting people and finding a good fit.

I would look at Financial institutions’ IT groups. Lots of mediocre SQL query tinkering out there and having an experienced SQL person around can be gold. Think banks, pension funds, insurance companies, not fintech/insurtech. In Chicago, AON has a very significant presence (reinsurance/insurance broker).

I’m sorry as someone who is 50 years old and started programming as a hobbyist at 12 in assembly and professionally at 22, I have no sympathy or advice for anyone who is not willing to transition to newer tech and according to you is actively ignoring clear transition paths.

My advice is for her not to be lazy and take advantage of the opportunity to transition to some newer tech.

Context: I got my first and only job at $BigTech at 46 based on my decades of experience as a bog standard enterprise dev + two years of AWS experience at a startup as a (full time) consultant working in the Professional Services Department. I didn’t open the AWS console and didn’t know anything about “cloud” until I was 44.

When I got Amazoned three years later I was able to find a job in three weeks working full time at another consulting company where I am leading “Application modernization” initiatives (cloud + app dev).

If she isn’t at “a stage in life” where she can retire and she hasn’t gotten over her addiction to food and shelter, if she wants to stay in the industry, she has to evolve.

The career path you're describing is exactly what she's trying to avoid. That's what "downshifting" means.

I am all for downshifting:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966

I never intended to make a life long career at BigTech and was never planning on staying at Amazon for more than four years.

I was always planning on going back to smaller less stressful companies and I’m still in the process of decontenting my life.

But “coasting” in the technology field is just not realistic. Eventually as she has seen, the ground underneath you is going to change.

Coasting is entirely realistic. There are still many jobs that require knowledge that has been releatively stable, that are not stressful. And it is perfectly fine to want them id you realise pay is going to be less than you could get in other positions. You are just being an asshole.

Agree with that. Look at the rest of the world. A car mechanic, electrician, teacher or chef would need to keep up to some extent, but not to the crazy levels of tech. Using the Chef example "Yes you are cooking 1920's Chinese cuisine this week, then next week we'll chuck you on a 3 course meal for vegans that is suitable for orbital space flight"

I said “in technology”.

> addiction to food and shelter

Pretty funny way to put it, yet very sad that this is the reality.

Isn't Oracle SQL still one of the most advanced databases? To some it may be the "new tech" you're talking about. I wouldn't use Oracle SQL for other reasons, but purely from technical standpoint it's one of the most advanced things in it's niche.

As part of a job yes. The original poster just said that the company she is working for expects her to do more than just write sql.

Look at her state, county, city government jobs. These tend to have your traditional DBA, data analyst, report writer types of roles. Only problem would be that openings aren’t always available as people in those roles tend to stay in them for the longer haul.

She already was comfy. I'm 51 and I've never actually even heard of a job where you ONLY had to know a specific dialect of SQL. Also, you would think that mere intellectual curiosity would have taken her at least somewhat "abroad" in the knowledge sense, but I see no evidence of that, which means she was basically a corporate mercenary for 20 years who phoned it in. (Note: I've mostly worked for startups, so my standards and expectations about "job interestingness" and "job expectations" and "necessary intrinsic motivation" are possibly entirely different.)

She needs to find a giant corporation where she can live out her pre-retirement days in Storage Room B, only writing very specific SQL queries for Oracle, IMHO.

Data migration is not that hard, so the fact that she's balking at even step 1 says a lot to me.

> She needs to find a giant corporation where she can live out her pre-retirement days in Storage Room B, only writing very specific SQL queries for Oracle, IMHO.

Cool, how should she get started?

I went back and re-read but I still can’t find where the poster said “judge my mom’s career.”

It's just sad because so many people accept this kind of mediocrity as the norm, when I absolutely believe it doesn't have to be. If you actually enjoy your job, the technology space, and your coworkers (all achievable in theory), then no matter how old you were, those other asks would be givens. And in addition, you'd be 100% likely to be more successful and have some pull when you need some emergency (or necessary) time off.

If money isn't your primary motivator, then heck, let something else be at least!

> in addition, you'd be 100% likely to be more successful and have some pull when you need some emergency (or necessary) time off.

One shouldn't need pull for necessary time off, much less emergency time off.

Good point. I guess I was referring to... well at my startup we're all dads which is very fortunate because some days with toddlers are just... impossible to be productive

I am not going to dispute your opinion but rather point out that people are different. Some people don't mind maintaining old systems and some people love being the person who created a new systems D using new technology. Both sets of people are necessary in our field of development and his mother sounds like she is fine with maintenance type of work.

That's fair

Maybe her primary motivator was taking care of her child?

Not everyone wants to occupy more of their mind with work than is required, and society benefits from this in all kinds of ways.

This answer resonated with me because as the father of a 2.4 year old son, I've been forced to consider something like a downshift simply because these kids are incredibly difficult soul sucking energy vampires. Fortunately I work with a bunch of dads with older kids who completely understand this phase but are probably banking on my ability as soon as I can claw my way back from the stranglehold that this kid has on my "true" productivity

It is a challenging time, for sure. I am sad you described your child that way but I understand — and I hope things improve for you both.

I have ADHD, am 51 years old and we have zero (except for daycare) assistance as dual-income parents. The combination of these things ups the apparent difficulty considerably, based on my research into why this feels so incredibly hard. I am strongly considering an au-pair situation just to not lose my sanity.

This all despite loving the adorable nugget to death.

Get a job in a bank or a telco

Check for open roles in her state government. They're typically big Oracle customers and pace is very very slow.

Source: my mom works for her state government.

I send many good vibes. I wish her new place calls her today to use her awesome skills! Happy Gracias Day! ;)

You don't generally downshift. You should feel lucky she works in an industry where that's somewhat viable with a paycut.

> ..she is now given responsibilities and workloads that are much more suited for a young, ambitious, competitive dev who wants a promotion.

This is the sort of thing that ChatGPT is really good at. It will not do all of her work. But it will be a big help in getting direction, answering technical questions etc.

I am quite old myself. Over 50. I use ChatGPT everyday to learn new things or solve issue when I get stuck. It has increased my productivity several fold.

I would look for oracle customers in your area. Most would love to hire an oracle employee.

Hedge fund, data analysis/BI, any marketing department of any DTC company (soap, food, etc.) or any research group located in and/or around DC. Tons upon tons of jobs are basically SQL.

For those that don't know, you can ingest damn near any file format with columnar data via SQL. You don't have to write some Python script (although it helps.)

I'm just here to ask that you post a followup when she finds that next job!

I follow DBA jobs on Glassdoor and there are Oracle DBA openings every week.

Utility companies

Honestly, sounds like every job I have ever had. Maybe she should sharpen her skills and stay relevant?

Honestly, she sounds like a classic Oracle DBA and should look for jobs that have that as the title.

Are you Little Bobby Tables?

https://xkcd.com/327/

infinite upvotes

lol, maybe :)

Do it for/with her. Nice way to spend time together.

You need to look objectively at her skill set and desires. She has a legacy skillset on an unpopular technology, and doesn't want to grow away from it. That's fine, but it's not very marketable.

Ask yourself, who would find enough value in this skillset and constraints to pay for it? That's who you need to target.

My guess: It's going to be largely non-tech and traditional companies, probably. You're looking for banks, or government contractors. Places that run Oracle and are willing to pay for someone familiar with it and not interested in much else.

Legacy? Unpopular? Can you elaborate a bit more. To my understanding all the rumors of SQL dying have been a bit premature so far.

I think the reference is to Oracle, not SQL in general

I should clarify that she would be able to pick up MySQL or Postgres without too much trouble.

That really depends on how much weight the "oracle" part of her experience has. Oracle has tons upon tons of customized tools, language add-ons/plugins, and quirks. The SQL part of Oracle might translate (more or less) to Postgres easily, but these other things are unlikely to.

Oracle DB is really less and less popular. Oracle DBAs are worried. They know they are like COBOL devs.

It may be less popular for new projects, but every single project/product/service that's using Oracle DB is gonna continue to use, and hire, Oracle DBA for the foreseeable future.

Sure, if you're learning SQL or a technology to market yourself, Oracle DB might not be the best time investment. However, if you're already an expert in that, you shouldn't have trouble finding a role somewhere.

Lol my company is paying a fortune to get off oracle. Anyone that does not need the million features that come with a oracle will eventually move off it. It's way too expensive to use in smaller environments or non mainframe environment's. Oracle has some of the worst pricing and sales techniques.

> Oracle DB is really less and less popular.

Doesn't look like it to me.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ORCL/oracle/revenu...

Sorry, I was unclear. I mean Oracle specifically.

Oracle may be "uncool" to the young crowd, but it runs a lot of very large, very important systems.

https://www.thomsondata.com/customer-base/oracle.php

That doesn't even include primarily government contract companies.

Absolutely it does. The number of new companies launching on Oracle rounds to near zero though.

>Absolutely it does. The number of new companies launching on Oracle rounds to near zero though.

I'm not sure how correct that is either, but it's incorrect to call it a legacy skillset on an unpopular technology. A good number of those new companies, if successful, get acquired and are forced to integrate if not convert to Oracle.

The world is way bigger than SV.

I work on oracle dbs at a large non tech company. It is a great performant rdbms with poor tooling that I cannot believe they included for the licensing cost. Sqlplus could be great but totally isn’t good as a shell tool. Sqldeveloper is garbage. Python libraries and connection engines are solid for running anything automated. Dbeaver is a cool IDE alternative for clicking through tables.

From my experience across some MSSQL server, oracle, sqlite, and some non-professional postgres, the given database model trumps the underlying database tech when dealing with pains writing analytics reports. There are many options to mess up a model design or for feature extension to turn the model ugly.

Forget about building a new company on an oracle stack, the cost is prohibitive. The open source rdbms are very good and cloud providers have chosen their champions. But for a large legacy corporation with expensive, sensitive data, oracle makes sense. To an extent with a well trained dba the db is “self-documented”

Lol sometimes dbs aren’t exclusively used as a global web app backend for ultra scaling grocery delivery services or whatever. Sometimes db models persist for years and you need assurance that this tech is archival quality.

An aside, I think it’s funny the link you shared is a php site, another dinosaur!

Ignore the above 100%. Saying SQL is unpopular is completely out of touch with the reality of how business works.

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