TravisDBA (4/30/2013)

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Jim Youmans-439383 (4/30/2013)

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Part of the daily grind for a DBA, in my experience, is dealing with frustrated people. You have to have excellent technical skills to find and fix the issues and you have to deal with the users and clients having the issues. I have seen a client (who was paying us a lot of money to mind his data) almost pull the contract over the way a DBA treated one of his people. The client called the OnCall DBA at 2 am with a permission issue, he could not log in. Turns out he was trying to log into the wrong server, honest mistake but frustrating, but the DBA tore into him for 15 minutes on how his stupidity was unforgivable ending the call with a string of profanity.

That is why I think that people skills are very, very important. Each situation is different and there is a place for the Sheldon Coopers of the world, but it is not client facing.

Jim

I absolutely agree Jim, there is no excuse for being outright offensive and rude to others, in any context, However, as I and others have said before please don't confuse this example of rude and offensive behavior with a DBA not letting others do what they want whenever they want. It is our job to guard the gate to the enterprises precious data. We have to set up perimeters. So, don't get pissed off because we don't drop everything and do what you want everytime. People tend to confuse these two behaviors many times as the same thing (Sheldon Cooper Syndrome) and they are definitely not. One is just bad or arrogant behavior while the other is just doing our job. 😀