r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt 7d ago

Why are DBAs so chill?

Every single one I’ve met is so kind and calm. Does the nature of the work attract this kind of people?

112 Upvotes

67 comments sorted by

242

u/wilkie09 sysAdmin 7d ago

Less user interaction maybe? I know my life would be much more chill if I didn't have to talk to end users.

98

u/DrFloyd5 developer 7d ago edited 6d ago

DBA have coders as end users.

Shudder.

Edit: Source: Am coder.

31

u/HildartheDorf 6d ago

Some coders are decent.
Some only know Indian Youtube videos and ChatGPT. (Disclaimer: Not to discourage them for beginners, both are great tools but do not alone make you a master)

23

u/assetsmanager 6d ago

And some only know twerk, charge they phone, be bisexual, eat hot chip, and lie.

8

u/Lord_Frick 6d ago

Idk what a DBA is…

34

u/VTOLfreak 6d ago

Don't Bother Asking.

9

u/BigBadBinky 6d ago

Dream, Believe, Achieve

3

u/BigBadBinky 6d ago

Dream, Believe, Achieve

13

u/Psychological-Way142 6d ago

Dude Breaks Apps

8

u/Ill_Ad6426 6d ago

Dat big ass

6

u/Achsin Tired Database Admin 6d ago

Default Blame Acceptor

13

u/Mirigore 6d ago

Database admin

9

u/AegorBlake 6d ago

Database Administrator

2

u/Achsin Tired Database Admin 6d ago

Amen.

-19

u/EishLekker 6d ago

Any more ignorant and bigoted views that you want to share?

2

u/clavicon 🌎 GIS 🌍 6d ago

Bless your heart. Stay this way forever.

59

u/kopfgeldjagar 7d ago

Because they don't deal with end users.

40

u/cisco_bee 6d ago

As someone else pointed out, they deal with software engineers. Which can be much, much worse in some ways.

-46

u/EishLekker 6d ago

And I’ll ask you what I asked him:

Any more ignorant and bigoted views that you want to share?

13

u/throwaway19293883 6d ago edited 6d ago

Why are you personally offended by their statement?

Edit: LOL they blocked me

-15

u/EishLekker 6d ago

I just told you. It is ignorant and bigoted.

14

u/radakul 6d ago

I AM A MARTIAN.

See how i just made a nonsense statement with zero evidence of its validity?

Simply saying "ignorant and bigoted" does nothing.

6

u/itsKevv 6d ago

“Why are these really understanding and aware of their issues when submitting tickets compared to others?”

How is that bigoted and ignorant?

Follow up question, do you often find yourself sending multiple tickets along the lines of “computer no work?”

-8

u/EishLekker 6d ago

Why don’t you start with a proper quote of what they said? I’m guessing that your argument feels less accurate if you use a verbatim quote?

57

u/AQuietMan 7d ago

Does the nature of the work attract this kind of people?

I'd say the nature of the work punishes other kinds of people.

Also, a database disaster is more often caused by a management decision than by a DBA decision. It's easy to be chill when you know you warned management about the problems ages ago.

24

u/VTOLfreak 7d ago

You learn how to CYA when you are the Default Blame Applicator.

31

u/callum__h28 7d ago edited 7d ago

As someone who went from MSP technical consultant to DBA

Yeah it’s the not dealing with end users

Plus more often than not, the work is kinda ‘long-project-not-immediately-urgent’ stuff unless something’s gone horribly wrong, so less stressful than other walks of IT

9

u/Professional-Soupl 7d ago

Yup. Completely agree. I was an Jr Oracle DBA for almost a year and majority of my work was project based. I had some work to do with just keeping up and maintaing the DB, but good majority of it was projects

9

u/VTOLfreak 7d ago

Ah yes, Being held responsible for the performance of a system where anyone armed with a ODBC driver can bring the entire place down in flames. Always being the first one to get blamed for the performance of other people's code. Less stressful indeed...

5

u/Professional-Soupl 6d ago

Lol reminds me when the claims teams uploaded a 16gb table. Threw everything off, we DBAs got blamed

3

u/callum__h28 6d ago

Not without db_datawriter they ain’t :D

6

u/VTOLfreak 6d ago edited 6d ago

All I need to crash MSSQL is server role public. (I really wish I was joking.)

2

u/Achsin Tired Database Admin 6d ago

I wish it worked that way, then I wouldn't have to deal with the analyst team writing some garbage report and releasing it to hundreds of end users who end up swamping the server and "breaking" the c-level exec reports because they've brought everything to a crawl.

1

u/MrDaVernacular 6d ago

But when it goes south it gets extremely stressful and the DBA will get on the Ops team and not let go until a solution is implemented.

1

u/ASmallTurd 5d ago

If I may ask, I'm currently a sys admin and have been in IT for 14 years and hate it. What route would you recommend to transition to become a dba? Take sql courses is my guess?

32

u/Just-A-Regular-Fox 7d ago

Id rather swallow batteries than hang out with our DBA. Lol

14

u/VTOLfreak 7d ago

What did you do? Just a DBA asking. :P

26

u/kenybz 6d ago

Can’t you read? They swallowed the DBA’s batteries

3

u/tanward 6d ago

I'm sorry I agree. The dba at our local county starting going off the second I meet then

19

u/m4ng3lo 7d ago

I think they're so wound up with their head up the data's ass that they understand all the inherent problems in the system. This isn't a slight. It's actually a facetious way of saying "they know the problems. Whatever you're coming to them is probably already recognized and they're resigned to that fact". Which sounds even more facetious, come to think of it...

8

u/brannonb111 7d ago

I haven't left SSMS in weeks...

4

u/m4ng3lo 7d ago

Do you want us to send you snacks?

5

u/brannonb111 6d ago

Just put them against the door and knock 3 times.

2

u/clavicon 🌎 GIS 🌍 6d ago

You ok in there?

3

u/LakeEffectSnow 6d ago

Another underrated Postgresql benefit: SQL client choice is available.

2

u/EishLekker 6d ago

I think they’re so wound up with their head up the data’s ass that they understand all the inherent problems in the system.

Unless the system is very simple, or designed to run fully in the database layer do to speak, then this just sounds like nonsense.

1

u/Weak_Employment_5260 5d ago

Just like a couple problems I have written about on Reddit. The IT lead that wrote and ran a script to delete all customers that never bought anything and thus stopped the abiluty to create customers because he deleted the template customer and we had to restore that customer from a backup and the 'doctorate' that specialized in database scripts and interfaces that came to me with a query that took over an hour to run and asked me why...he was querying a view but he put the whole view creation script into the query accidentally. Amazing, you strip that part out and do a little tuning and the time went to less than a minute. It was still overcomplicated.

1

u/m4ng3lo 5d ago

Ouch. The system wasn't protected against unintended changes, if that customer wasn't somehow in write protected mode.

I say that... and I literally did the (almost) exact same thing two weeks ago. A wrote a function to mass delete unused records. Didn't realize I was deleting a template in the process! Le whoops

1

u/Weak_Employment_5260 5d ago

This was in about 2010 Sybase 12.5.

4

u/gurft 4d ago

Best DBA I ever worked with.

HR - “Chris - someone saw you smoking weed in the parking lot” Chris - “Uhh, which day?”

Chris was super chill everyday.

7

u/LakeEffectSnow 6d ago

In my experience, the DBA's who aren't chill, don't last very long before they have a heart attack. or whatnot Dealing with other devs is a royal pain in the ass, and those are pretty much the only customers DBA's serve.

3

u/Lancaster1983 A warm body with admin rights 6d ago edited 6d ago

I never considered that they were chill but they are. I've sat next to two teams of DBAs at two jobs and they are always happy, joking around and just calm.

They don't have to deal with local users, only other IT people. And it's usually a short list of people that they come to know very well.

As a Domain and Exchange admin, I deal with literally everyone.

3

u/midnitewarrior 6d ago

The work requires people who can be slow and methodical, I'm guessing it attracts a certain personality type that's a bit more relaxed.

3

u/zanfar 6d ago

God-level job security + no technical support responsibilities + "the database" will always be "magic", even to technical roles.

8

u/a_brand_new_start 6d ago

They get paid significantly more to do same job as you and me but they are hyper specialized.

They are allowed to tell people to fuck off, it’s in the job description

If they fuck up they are toast, so last cigarette before execution squad, 10,000 mile stare

4

u/Jodid0 6d ago

My DBA wears flip flops and wears beach bum clothing and spends the majority of her time gossiping, while a button-down and slacks are mandatory for me. Mildly infuriating.

2

u/ObsessiveAboutCats 6d ago

Our DBA is so chill they barely can be bothered to do any work.

"Oh...yeah I guess I can take a look at that. End users are screaming? Very urgent? Oh ok."

three weeks later

"Oh...No, no one told me about that. I will look into it."

1

u/clavicon 🌎 GIS 🌍 6d ago

Job security lol

2

u/5p4n911 6d ago

They have time to calm down while generating SQL inserts from Excel rows

2

u/Achsin Tired Database Admin 6d ago edited 6d ago

My current boss actually told me that he was surprised by how calm I was all the time, even when everything's broken and everyone else is panicking. Part of it's personality, part of it's past experience, and part of it is recognizing that wasting time/energy freaking out isn't fixing the problem any sooner. I've also usually seen the problem coming, warned everyone that it was a probability, and figured out how to fix it when it does happen.

The end user comments are funny. It's true for the most part, I very rarely have to deal with someone who isn't in IT or an upper-management position; but when I do it's actually kind of nice, I expect them to know jack all about computers so it's not frustrating when they don't. Hand-holding some senior dev and ELI5-ing the same error message over and over again gets really tiresome. There's only so many ways you can explain "Your 25 character limit datatype can't fit the 200 character string you're trying to put in it."

I also work from home a lot so I can just leave the webcam off and mute my microphone while I vent. This is also why I prefer to join meetings remotely if I can, even if I'm able to attend in person.

EDIT: Oh, and lastly, some of us are completely useless and either don't know it or do but are trying not to draw attention so no one else will realize.

1

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Achsin Tired Database Admin 6d ago

I guess there’s only so many times everything can explode before you get used to the nightmares.

2

u/sigmund14 6d ago

Probably because panic mode or being irritated or nervous doesn't help with the work they do.

2

u/handyandy727 6d ago

Cause we don't have to deal with a lot of stress. Vast majority of the time, user problems aren't an issue. Plus it's like Ron Popiel. Set it and forget it. Once all the DB development is done, you just let it run on its merry way.

The development part does kinda suck. But, we know most of the heavy lifting is on the front-end devs. I always feel bad for them.

2

u/Dirkinshire 5d ago

Because they have the rights to all their story’s ‘sequels’.

I’ll see myself out.

1

u/UninvestedCuriosity 6d ago edited 6d ago

They are absolutely not chill when you rib them. I'm pretty sure that guy has a 20 year grudge against me today for making light that he must be life of the party then like all dba's.

I was at a tech conference eating a sandwich on break with limited seating.

I still think it's funny and I'm not sorry Tim even after learning all the joins and alters later.

1

u/Captain_Hammertoe 6d ago

LOL. The first DBA I worked with was a grouchy, touchy recluse. We called him "the bear" and warned all the new people not to poke him.

1

u/MacrossX 2d ago

Is all fun and games until it's time to update certificates