What I've found is that a DBA is usually the voice-of-one against many and that the DBA is usually the only one with a mind out for silly little things like performance, scalability, useablility, archivability, and ease of modification. I certainly can't speak for all DBAs but thank goodness I don't actually have amnesia so that I can remember all of the seemingly little stupid things that have caused huge pains in the future. You know... little things we've suggested like "No. Loan Number from a bank isn't good enough to be a Primary Key" or "No. No permutation of first and last name is good enough to be a Primary Key" or "No. Storing multiple addresses and phone numbers on a single row in the Customer table is a really bad idea".

I think that any DBA that has developed a sense of amnesia has yet another hard lesson to learn. 😉