This is a public service message (was: Re: SEEKING PART-TIME DBA ROLE (REMOTE))

[richard childers / kg6hac]

> jev wrote:
>
> 
>I HAVE 10 Years EXPERIENCE WITH 
>*ORACLE 7.x 8.x, and 9x DATABASE Administration
>*ORACLE 9iAS Support
>*11i/10.7 ERP/CRM Installation and Support
>*SOLARIS SYSTEM ADMIN
>*3rd PARTY IMPLEMENTIONS 
>* DATAWAREHOUSING Support 
>*SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE CAPACITY PLANNING
>*Oracle DATABASE MANAGEMENT 
>*Oracle DATABASE AND APPLICATION TUNING
>Spent many years at Oracle Corp, and worked with client such as Kodak, Xerox 
>Corp, and Timex.
>ekonic2 at yahoo.com 
>  
>


This is a public service message.

What do Oracle and Solaris have to do with FreeBSD?

But thanks for the opportunity to shamelessly touch on a few topics: 
Oracle ... and employment agencies.


Personally, I would be very suspicious of anyone who boasted of having 
worked at Oracle for ten years; the politics there are pretty fierce. 
How did you survive that long?

On a related topic ... I recently learned, in an unlawful termination 
lawsuit against Oracle, in San Mateo - which was dismissed - that Oracle 
employed what appear to be unlicensed private investigators - whose 
services included posing as employment agents - to contact the 
plaintiff, in the last days of his employment, and solicit his resume - 
presumably in an attempt to create an additional plausible excuse, for 
what would have otherwise been an unlawful termination.

(I surmise that this may have been a reflexive action - SOP - for Oracle 
HR, and that there may be other injured parties - perhaps dozens, or 
hundreds - whom are unaware of the fact that they were victimized by 
their employer. But back to our thread.)

The plaintiff was explicitly directed, by one Lisa Gold - 
LGOLD at US.ORACLE.COM, of Oracle HR - to contact this agency; this seems 
to have created a little unanticipated blowback, as this created 
electronic mail, line items on telephone bills (for toll charges), and 
other forms of corroboration - and it is my understanding that Oracle 
filed a statement, sworn under oath of perjury, from ASAP, asserting 
that they had never had any contact with the plaintiff.

The years of effort spent trying to keep this story from being told only 
add a little more rot to what's already a pretty stinky story; a story 
of not just dirty pool, but of blind-siding, back-stabbing, and 
betrayal, and of an abusive employer, whose concern for their employees 
was nil.

Unfortunately, I have no obligation to Oracle to remain silent regarding 
this matter; I think they owe the plaintiff about ten years' of back pay 
and benefits ... at the very least.

If you're a FreeBSD specialist and you're thinking of working for 
Oracle, you may want to give it a second thought. Or, if you need the 
job, take it; but don't stop looking, and don't give Oracle anything it 
has not paid for in advance.

(I am the plaintiff in question, and can attest to the events described. 
A search of the AnyWho database, dated 30 November 1998, against the 
telephone number of the "employment" agency in question, shows three 
companies. One company sells security equipment - 'Quorum 
International'; one sells security and protection - 'Affordable Security 
And Protection', or 'ASAP'; and one claims to be an employment agency - 
'ASAP Personnel'. There's a fourth business, 'Asset Security And 
Protection', or 'ASAP', and a fifth business, 'ASAP Services', also. 
Commons Lane is a condo. 'Suite 18' is a POB in a shopping mall, two 
blocks away. ... After many years of thought, I think they were spooks; 
I'm not sure whose spooks they were, yet.)

(You can see the document I describe at - sorry for the long-ass URL - 
http://67.120.113.12/Customers/a04d82d5fa6426efdcab0e5ddbbb5a3f/ASAP_AnyWho_1998.11.30.jpg.)



On a related topic, I would have questions about someone's claim to 
simultaneously be a DBA -and- a systems administrator; from my own 
experience, while it is certainly possible to cross-train people, 'DBA' 
and 'sysadmin' are distinctly separate career paths with distinctly 
separate requirements.

One exclusively involves software and abstractions, the other requires 
gritty interfacing between the alien worlds of software and hardware, 
acting as their go-between and occasionally suffering as a result. It's 
not just a skill set; it's an outlook, DBAs live in a world of 
abstractions and sysadmins live in a world of grit. Context switching 
isn't that easy. It's like the difference between being an engine parts 
CAD/CAM designer, and being a mechanic; the CAD/CAM operator never gets 
oil under his fingernails, never cuts himself on sharp metal edges, 
never gets his hands dirty, in fact, even though both jobs exist in 
juxtaposition to the exact same set of fundamental objects.

It seems so simple, but try to explain it to an executive and they are 
sure you are trying to trick them; after all, they have a master's 
degree in business administration, they couldn't possibly be wrong.

To make matters worse, the constant evolution of both types of product - 
operating system, and database (which is sort of like an operating 
system inside an operating system, complete with its own users and 
security issues) - require full time study and use in order to maintain 
the edge required if one is to be maximally productive. Stop using 
either skill for six months and you begin to grow rusty; a year, and you 
begin to grow obsolete. Five years and you may as well start over; the 
product you were trained in no longer exists.

(I'm a systems administrator, trained in more operating systems than I 
have fingers, maybe toes, too. I've also been trained to install 
products from Oracle, Sybase, and ASK/Ingres (now CA/Ingres), among many 
other applications. I've taught myself twice or three times what I've 
acquired through formal training. I know whereof I speak.)

Everyone seems to understand this except the agencies and the employers 
they report to; which is unfortunate, because the current rash of 
offerings requiring six incompatible skillsets (acquired at your, or 
your previous employers' cost, preferably within the past six months), 
pay requirements comparable to those of a Chinese coolie of the 1880s, 
and a willingness to work Sundays and always be on call, without 
compensation, has reached the point of absurdity.

By filtering out those with the capacities to acquire new skills, for 
having not already acquired them ... all that is left are competent 
liars, who will assure their interviewer that, whatever s/he asks for, 
they know ... while people whom answer their interviewer's questions 
honestly, are scrapped.

(Indeed, a new niche has opened up for people with decades of experience 
- free tip here - helping the decidely non-technical employees of 
technical search firms interview their candidates ... either in person, 
over the phone ... or via interactive websites, that generate automated 
reports.)

This carelessness has had serious impacts on the Bay Area economy.

East Coast employment agencies are priding themselves on how low they 
have driven the hourly rates for contractors ... and then scratching 
their head and wondering how, every time they find a good candidate, he 
or she seems to lose their phone service and then become unreachable. 
What's wrong with those people on the West Coast, they wonder, can't 
they keep their phone bill paid?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, evictions have reached a record level, and 
people are leaving the Bay Area in droves. Rents are dropping, slowly; 
too slowly. I haven't seen so many vacancies since after the last big 
earthquake. Lots of people are losing their homes, too.

Many of the people who own rental properties are those whose capacity to 
buy a second, or third, house, was a direct consequence of Silicon 
Valley's intellectual wealth; they are now killing off the source of 
their wealth by holding rents so high that companies, seeking affordable 
employees, are moving to Southern California, or out of the state 
altogether, in droves - go to www.dice.com and search for "unix" or 
"linux" in California, and see where all the IT jobs are, for yourself, 
if you don't believe me. No one in their right mind is going to set up a 
data center in the Bay Area, today, when they can set it up in Phoenix.

One might argue that this is not carelessness so much as it is 
economics, in the workplace and real estate market. But the fact is that 
if a company can only afford to remain in business by living off its 
employees' trust - that another employee will be hired to help, that pay 
will be increased after six months, that medical benefits will be 
delivered after three months, that the contract position will turn into 
a permanent one, that 'permanent' doesn't mean 'until we find a cheaper 
way to outsource the service you provide to us', that 'salary' doesn't 
mean '10 hours a day, six days a week' - maybe it should relinquish the 
Pacific Heights apartment and the Lexus, fold up its tent and steal away 
in the night, like so many of its employees have been forced to, and go 
back wherever it came from, and live with its Mom and Dad, until things 
get better ... and get the hell out of the way, so that someone else can 
come in and do a better job.

Things have reached the point where I could probably make more money as 
a street artist, making jokes about Silicon Valley, dot-com management, 
and employment agencies, than I can as a systems administrator ... even 
if I rewrite my resume to only reference the past three years of 
experience, pretend I'm ten years younger, drop my pay requirements to 
those of a college dropout living in a closet, and misrepresent my 
legitimate experience, by saying that I'm a trained DBA, and a Cisco 
network engineer, too.

I'm not bitter; just wizened by experience. I want to share what I know 
with others, in the hopes that they will learn from my experiences, and 
not have to repeat them.

I'm also optimistic.

It's also a great time to start a new company; with companies dying like 
flies, there are a lot of customers looking for cost-effective 
assistance ... and there's the whole Pacific Rim full of potential 
customers. Silicon Valley is well positioned to leverage off of that 
proximity. (But so is Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and British Columbia.)

Amongst the people reading this message are, perhaps, some of the next 
decade's millionaires, using their downtime to develop new products and 
start new companies.


I think you'll agree (unless, that is, you are Larry Ellison) that this 
message constitutes a better use of the resources than the message that 
it is in response to.

This concludes this public service message; have a nice day.


Regards,

-- richard

-- 

Richard Childers / Senior Engineer
Daemonized Networking Services
945 Taraval Street, #105
San Francisco, CA 94116 USA
[011.]1.415.759.5571
https://www.daemonized.com