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@yahoo.com --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now
richard childers / kg6hac
2004-Jan-04 10:50 UTC
This is a public service message (was: Re: SEEKING PART-TIME DBA ROLE (REMOTE))
> 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@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@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