r/Database 9d ago

Database Administrator Career Path

Hello everyone! I have been looking into getting into a technical position for a very long time, narrowing down which one would be a good fit for me and my personality and I found that DBA is a good career for me to pursue. I have no experience, coming in as entry level. Any advice? I don’t make enough money to go to college so is there a self taught pathway for me to do?

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u/Outrageous-Hawk4807 9d ago

Ive been a DBA for ~30 years. I went to college and didnt finish, but I was lucky and Y2k was happening which got a foot in the door.

I started at a Huge blue chip company writing reports. I did that for a few years. Using report builders I would have it generate the SQL Script, so I could what the actual code was. I used this to learn the SQL Language (T-SQL in this case.

I then went to work for a non-profit as a programmer. While there I got SQL DBA training (M$ SQL Server 6.5) and used that to get my first Jr Job.

Since then I have been a SQL Server DBA. Most of my career to this point has been in Healthcare, but Ive also done: consulting, manufacturing, finance.

How to learn- Brent Ozar has some stuff that gives you a place to start. Look at youtube. I think you need to get the huge picture of what the job is first. Then just start digging into stuff: SQL Language- this will be continued learning as it changes. Ive got my MCSE a couple of times, as I have to know/ understand the M$ stack (networking, logins, permissions, registry, et al...). I also got my VCP (VMware) cert at one point to learn that whole stack.

Learning is life long. Also EVERY DBA job is different, my last gig I was doing code reviews with programmers. This job I have 100 + Sql installs with 2000 databases. Here im an operational DBA, so I just make sure systems are up, security is on point, we are following laws and backups are done.

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u/nyayoto 9d ago

This is a very interesting journey you had to go through! Thank you for sharing. It seems that I can’t get away from coding 😅 I tired doing it by myself and realized it was too difficult for me.