If you're saying there are more Oracle DBAs because they are paid more, that's the opposite of the point I was making. Basic supply/demand economics would indicate that you'll have a surplus of something that is falling out of favor, and that surplus will be inexpensive. There would be many looking for jobs because it used to pay well when it was in demand and there was a shortage, not because they're making lots of money looking for jobs.
If you're having trouble finding decent Postgres DBAs to hire, it could be that other companies are snapping up all the good ones, and that you're not offering enough.
You're presenting anecdotes, I'm presenting anecdotes. Exciting stuff. Market shifts take quite a few years, so I'm sure there are still plenty of high paying Oracle DBA jobs, and I'm sure that there will probably always be some of those jobs to support legacy systems.
It may be less popular for new projects, but every single project/product/service that's using Oracle DB is gonna continue to use, and hire, Oracle DBA for the foreseeable future.
Sure, if you're learning SQL or a technology to market yourself, Oracle DB might not be the best time investment. However, if you're already an expert in that, you shouldn't have trouble finding a role somewhere.
* People who love RDBMS technology. Oracle's Database division is big and has a lot of veteran and very skilled software developers and architects who work with the Database kernel code. New employees can also work on this code. I am sure a lot of people would like to work on the database kernel with skilled and intelligent teams. RDBMS as a domain can be fascinating for developers. It involves everything from compiler design (SQL) to system programming (memory management, locking semantics, concurrency, etc.)
* People who love to work on open source and get paid well. Since Oracle ships its own Linux and since the database is also certified to work on many Linux environments (not just Oracle Linux), Oracle takes the responsibility of patching security problems in the supported open source environments if the upstream does not patch in time. A lot of people like this kind of work where they can work on open source, security and development at the same time and get paid while doing so.
* System programmers. Many developers working on the Oracle Database are involved in system programming.
I think that a key explanation of Oracle success is that the complexity of their database administration has created a generation of full time jobs: DBA. These people are like salesman working for Oracle to defend the future of their job. They are well paid, but this cost nothing to Oracle. At the opposite, Oracle can sell training.
I work with a few former-Oracle DBAs in a PostgreSQL-flavored consultancy now and they are aces. All the root-cause analysis and organization skills transfer handily.
The Oracle Database Developer Tools organization is looking for additional members to develop technologies that operate at high scale in a broadly distributed multi-tenant cloud environment. Our customers run their businesses on the Oracle Database in our cloud, and our mission is to provide them with best-in-class database tools available. Specifically, we are looking for versatile developers to build native cloud services using the latest cloud technologies.
I am not a DBA but I work with many of them. Most of the DBA's I currently work with have/had Oracle experience, but they are currently supporting MySQL. Some of them also know Postgres. There will always be a need for database engineers and architects. Even knowing how to optimize queries can be quite valuable to a company. Already being an Oracle DBA it should be rather easy for her to pick up the open source databases and widen her career opportunities. IIRC there are even blogs where former Oracle DBA's wrote how-to's that summarize command equivalents for Oracle -> MySQL and Oracle -> Postgres so that if you already know one, you can see the equivalent commands in the corresponding technologies.
As a side note, there are also some git repos that have optimizing scripts for MySQL and Postgres that may also help her learn some of the memory management differences in the other technologies. [1][2] These tools are not perfect, but may be informative.
You truly underestimate the zealotry and kool-aid drinking capacity of the average Oracle DBA. When your entire career is based on the training and certifications you've received from a single company, every database solution magically becomes Oracle...
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