new daily rates

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Dying skill, you need to be thinking "Whats next"

WTF? DBA a dying skill? How is anything related to databases anything but a booming skill - more systems, more reports, more cloud stuff. It is only getting bigger and companies are desperate to find good people!

[Hercule]

It seems that all sorts of jobs which would gyrate around the £500 mark only a few years ago are now being offered for around £350.
And to be honest, i wouldn't even mind doing it for that money if i was to work remotely. However, most of the time the expectation is that you need to be onsite 9-5.
The problem starts once expenses have to come out of such a low rate. Plus i really hate to wake up in some hotel room.

Work is subject to supply and demand, just like any other good. Clients will only get away with such low rates for local capacity if we let them. Think about it

[Bluenose]

One factor is that a high percentage of agents have lost the capacity to negotiate, they just act as sales drones for the client end rather than as a true agent negotiating both sides.

[yasockie]

I never quite got what DBAs were supposed to do. If the db, the app, the server etc are all set up correctly and all is humming nicely, there is nothing to 'administer', it's not a car ffs, it should require periodical manual maintenance and if it does it's bad software design.
Otoh gaining insight from data - reports, dashboard, heck even powerpoints, whatever sends the message across is valuable to the business. This is what they are hiring 'data scientics' for nowadays.
Is that something DBA used to do in the past?
If not what was it?

[Scratch It]

WTF? DBA a dying skill? How is anything related to databases anything but a booming skill - more systems, more reports, more cloud stuff. It is only getting bigger and companies are desperate to find good people!

My thoughts exactly. I suspect more of a case of supply meeting what is still strong demand and rates falling as a result.

Do people really expect data centric skills not to be in demand in the medium term? Rates for 'Big Data' developers are good for now, though expect that to change as SQL and BI devs adapt and move into the market.

[yasockie]

If you have to ask ....

The performance of the Database varies with the data put in it - One of the ongoing roles for high end systems is to carry out maintenance and recommend changes to keep it going. It's an application in it's own right and needs feeding and watering like any application.

Isn't that more optimising the kind of queries that you're supposed to run? Laying out data and duplicating or indexing or caching where needed, to speed up the retrieval?
I guess what I don't understand is why would you separate that role out of the overall software development stack - what needs to be optimized is what users click most often etc
In other words, I'd that kind of thing as more 'backend software developer' thing that a wholly separate role.
The only place where I see these things separated out is bloated corporations, where is takes forever to implement any change, not just db related.
Could this be that DBAs are getting a rate hit, because they are so far for the end user that they do not deliver enough value for the customer?

[colinrobinson]

The issue being that development costs are capital costs and can be justified as an investment with ROI. DBA work is classed as a run time cost as its post implementation, something to be reduced to allow investment. This gives a much clearer reason why Data Scientists and Data Wharehousing (business intelligence in the real sense) are much better paid roles in the market right now.

A fair point hadn't thought about from that perspective. but a performance tuning exercise (clear DBA task) that delivers a higher transaction throughput from the same hardware can and does improve the return on investment without more capital input.

[darrylmg]

A fair point hadn't thought about from that perspective. but a performance tuning exercise (clear DBA task) that delivers a higher transaction throughput from the same hardware can and does improve the return on investment without more capital input.

But alas, if they can just buy a bigger box with bigger flashing lights, many companies go down that route instead of better using what they've already got.

[TheFaQQer]

Could this be that DBAs are getting a rate hit, because they are so far for the end user that they do not deliver enough value for the customer?

DBA is a thankless task. Do the job well and people never notice what you do, and question what value you add. Do the job badly and people always notice what you don't do, and question what value you add.

Add to that the problem that in many places they aren't allowed to modify the code, or even look at it, but are responsible for making sure it runs quickly. The good DBAs that I know wouldn't have a clue about the code that the developers produce, because they are never privy to the business requirements that the code needs to meet. And yet they are the ones who will get the blame if the system grinds to a halt.

A good DBA will deliver the value, but it won't be recognised.