I will be talking at my daughter’s high school for career day on Monday, explaining my job as an Oracle Database Administrator. Wish me luck!
The funny thing is that no one understands what Oracle DBAs do, unless they are one or work closely with one. I have a feeling that my talk is going to fall flat, but if it helps one of the students in any way it will be worth it.
To me the best thing about being an Oracle DBA is that you can do a pretty interesting and technically challenging job and companies that are not technology centric will still hire you to do it. I’ve always been interested in computer technology but have worked in non-technical companies my entire career – mainly a non-profit ministry and a food distribution company. Neither companies make computers or sell software!
My other thought is how available computer technology is to students today. Oracle, in one of the company’s more brilliant moves, made all of its software available for download so students can try out the very expensive software for free. Plus all the manuals are available online. What is it like to grow up as a student interested in computer technology in the age of the internet? I can’t begin to compare it to my days in the 1980s when I was in high school and college. Did we even have email? I guess we must have but I can’t remember using it much. Today a student who owns a laptop and has an internet connection has a world of technology at their fingertips far beyond what I had at their age.
Hopefully I wont bore the students to tears talking about being an Oracle DBA. They probably still won’t know what it really is after I’m done. But at least they will know that such a job exists, and maybe that will be helpful to them.
– Bobby
P.S. There were over 100 students there. They were pretty polite with only a little talking. Here is a picture of myself on the left, my daughter in the center, and a coworker who also spoke at the career day on the right.
