Hi everyone,


Upon the advice of a relative in the IT field, I just finished OCP DBA certification. Granted that being my relative he could be biased in my favor regarding my ability, but he told me when I nagged him about the subject--- that supply and demand being what it is today with DBAs that I would be able to find a job somewhere. (This being the crux of the current thread.)

Now when I started this track I really had no experience what the DBA did from day to day. Long time ago college courses have included programming in Pascal and C, data structures, discrete structures (required by Rutgers for a comp sci major) and more recently, a relational database management class, many advanced science and math classes and an English major.

I have not worked in IT. However, programming does come easily to me and I am quite happy doing it. (In 8th grade I did some basic coding in Fortran for my father). But I do have an aunt who is a programmer and I fear that the sheer volume of hours she works is incompatible with raising a family. On the other hand, I am not so sure of dba type stuff is such a natural fit for me and my abilities, but I will never know unless I try.

And having seen that DBA is NOT generally an entry-level position, I have decided to get the OCP certification for the develper track and will continue my plan to start a Unix boot camp in two weeks.

The upshot: So after this, I will have gained certification in Unix/C/C++, Oracle DBA and Oracle Developer.

The question: What type of job should I concentrate on finding, with the primary goal being (Out of necessity) to simply break into the IT field and the secondary goal being to position myself in a job which will offer career growth?(Oh and unfortunately I can't use nepotism; all my relatives are in IT but are 1300 miles away :( )

I apologize for the length---I guess I just wanted to lay all my cards on the table.

Any coments, suggestions?

Thanks everyone.