Andy Warren (8/31/2015)
Jeff,I wonder if the life of a DBA isn't different than most because of the complexity compared to other systems. I'm not an Exchange/Sharepoint/whatever/whatever guy, but it sure seems more like those systems don't require (or get) the kind of low level tuning that we sometimes need to do. If (big IF) that's the case, then as the outlier we get stuck with the expectation that we're like those systems (set it and forget it) and once they realize it's not that easy, they want it to be that easy and start thinking about text files and NoSQL.
As far as problem solving though, I still see the challenge as being that of harnessing the potential of a problem solver. Somewhere between "do whatever you feel like doing" and "don't change anything" is a place where the PS is happy and useful and the business is getting the right ratio of gain to pain.
Heh... except for the fact that no one let it get huge where I work, SharePoint would be a huge pain for me. I don't know who wrote installed it or what they were thinking but it has such lovely features as 3 separate jobs that run once each minute to kill some form of inactive sessions. We have just one SharePoint system left and I'm working on replacing that functionality so I can kill the database.
The reason why we don't "have to" spend much time on Exchange/SharePoint, etc, is because we simply elect not to. The one time I did spend some time on a major fix, it would have violated the support agreement if I didn't get the SharePoint team involved and get "written approval". The process took months. When they finally did say it was Ok, they also said they'd incorporate the fix into the product. Ok... so wait a minute... I just spent how much of my company's time to fix something that shouldn't have been broken in the first place?
When I was the Director of MIS for a small but nationwide telephone company, someone asked me about my habit of hiring nearly over zealous people. My answer was and still is that "It's much easier for me to guide someone that's extremely motivated than it is to create the motivation".
I agree that it's sometimes a bit of a chore to harness and control one, but I'll take a motivated problem solver over a "Yes Man" any day.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.