This is the perfect post for my day today. I've recently transitioned to a permanent job at a small company after being a contract SQL Server ETL and, by my willingness to learn on the job, a Cognos Reports developer with that company for some time. A few weeks after I joined as a FTE, the 'DBA' quit and I've now assumed pretty much all of his responsibilities in the vacuum of anyone else with adequate skills.

So, I now have Cognos reports that I support, and their users, I fully own all SQL Server ETL (on SQL Server 2005/SSIS 2005--yay! NOT). I've been trying to get the production SQL Servers up to something at least close to best practices. I've got production databases that were created 3 years ago in full recovery mode that have never had a tran log backup... Servers that have never had their sys dbs backed up, backups that fail 75% of the time because the destination has no space. You have probably seen it before, the small company nightmare. A nightmare that I hadn't planned to own as an ETL/Reports developer.

So, yes, this IT worker is overtasked and needs to suddenly know a new company's infrastructure, build process, network, firewall, Informix drivers, etc. Without formal training except on my core competency: SQL Server & SSIS. This week I'm building a virtual and a real SQL Server (2012--YAY!) and self training on how to set up Informix drivers, how to install on machines with no internet connection, how large the page file should be, etc.

This job is stressful and it is left to the individual employee to try to manage it.

Got to run, the UNIX shell reports and Informatica ETL (no training on either) for the month end process needs to be set up...