Career Decision Time

They say that you cannot have the best of both worlds.  They say that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.  They say that the grass isn’t really greener on the other side.

For all of you who say things like that, you are wrong.

A number of years ago I was faced with a career path decision.  Do I remain a full time employee as a DBA for a company or do I focus on becoming a consultant.  There are benefits to both being a SQL Server Consultant and being a full time employee (FTE) with an organization.  As an FTE most of the time when you go into work each morning you have a good idea of what you are going to be working on.  You know the servers and the little quirks that need to be managed to keep your systems running at full speed.  There is a lot to be said for building a long term relationship with a company that you can work with for years to come, maybe even retire from.

The downside as an FTE is that new projects don’t always come around every day, and companies are not always adopting all the new technology with SQL Server, so as a FTE DBA, your experience with SQL Server becomes hampered by how the organization you work for uses SQL Server.  In like fashion as a FTE if the database technology isn’t progressing and is stable the need for a DBA to work on the same systems for an extended period of time may just not be there.

I have found that I can have my cake and eat it too.  I have found that yeah, its greener and in short, I’ve arrived.

I have accepted a position at Fortified Data.  This position is going to allow me to build a relationship with an established professional services organization that specializes in complex SQL Server environments while offering them managed services at the same time.