I'm sure I've never mentioned this before, but I'm a little aged. I'm not real far from 40 years in IT, and I got started a little late in life. Regardless, I've heard this tale of woe before.

And no, this isn't going to be a rehash of all the old stories ("self-tuning" SQL Server 7.0, ORM, NOSQL, etc.). I'm also not going to go on some tear about how Agentic AI is/is not going to eliminate the DBA. Nope. This one is different, and I think it might stick. We may be truly seeing the death of the DBA.

Let's also add this. I'm not saying that your skill set is dead. You've spent years, decades even, learning about high availability, disaster recovery, parameter tuning, query tuning, deployment automation and more. With your skills, you can both secure a data platform, and automate deployments to it so that they're fast, efficient, and yet, safe. Nope, your skill set is absolutely vital to the modern era. If anything, AI, it's use, it's horrific misuse, reinforces the need for your skills. No technology currently in our hands, and none immediately visible on the horizon, is bringing about the death of the DBA. And yet, I stand by my statement. The DBA is dying.

OK, if it's not the tech, what's killing it?

Our replacements.

Go and talk to younger IT pros. I take every opportunity I have, and I do get quite a lot, to talk to people in their 20s and 30s working in IT. I want to understand them. I really want to get an understanding of where and how they gain knowledge. Most of all, I want to find out what mechanisms of communication they're using the most. I do this, because I think it's vital that we reach these people and do everything in our power to lift them up and help get them going. As I said above, the skills we've spent decades building are still needed. They're needed by the younger generation too. The younger generation, at least the ones I've spoken with, embrace this as well. There is one thing, and one thing only, they are absolutely NOT embracing. The title. They do not want to be called "Database Administrator."

• Data or Database Engineer
• Data Developer
• Database Architect
• Data Professional (I use this one)
• Cloud Data Architect
• Database Reliability Engineer

These are the most common terms I'm seeing (and multiple LLMs agree). Anything, everything, but not DBA. I've had conversations with someone where I've asked what they do. They go on to describe the job of a DBA. I say, "Oh, so you're a DBA." I get a very cross look and an immediate denial "I'm not a DBA. I'm a <insert new term>. " I get this a lot. All over the place. Younger data pros simply do not want to be associated with what they see as an old job for, let's face it, old people.

This means, this time, I think it's going to stick: The DBA is dead!