It seems we never have enough staff in many of our technology departments. I have worked in companies where I thought we had too many IT employees, but somehow it seemed my department was always short of people. We always had more work than we could get done with our staff.

However one thing that I've seen almost universally is a larger number of developers than DBAs in most companies. That makes sense as I think there usually is more code to write than instances to administer, and I've usually found companies have to hire a few developers before they see the need for a DBA of any sort, whether production or development focused.  I've also found the relative levels of staffing have widely varied.

This week I'm curious what ratios you've seen between these two jobs, developer and DBA. I'd like an answer to this question, based on your experience:

How many developers does a DBA support?

I'm looking for the real ratios that you've experienced. In the places where I've developed code, or worked with developers I've typically seen about 1:10 DBAs to developers, but that number has varied. I've seen 1:5 and 1:20+, but in most cases it's been near 1:10.

Let us know this week and get a little market research that might help you convince your boss that you need a helper or two.