Ask HN: No degree, how do I break into DBA / DB developer work? - jamesmp98
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empthought
Fortune 500 companies are always hiring data analysts, business analysts, ETL
(extract-transform-load) developers, etc. Anyone who knows their way around
SQL and Excel will be able to get one of these jobs.

If you don't have those skills, get them. Consider an associate degree at a
community college or something, because those F500 companies don't give a crap
about GitHub portfolios nearly as much as they do about a piece of paper that
says you can show up on time enough to get the piece of paper.

These companies also use contracting and consulting firms to staff three- and
six- month projects, often for data migration, decommissioning legacy systems,
and other data-heavy tasks. Ask around in the tech community in your area
about which firms treat people fairly, help professional development, etc. and
make contact with some of them. Many sponsor "boot camps" or other training
activities.

After you have that actual job under your belt (and the 40-hours-a-week of
real-life experience with the systems) it will be much easier to pivot into
something that adds up to more than just monkeying around with data loads and
report generation.

~~~
spcelzrd
There are always exceptions in tech, but in my experience companies don't care
about the pedigree of the school once you've been out for a while. They do
care that you have a degree. So much so that many companies don't even
consider people without a degree, even for entry level positions.

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edimaudo
You should look into a devOPs role or learn a DBA stack like MS SQL.

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throwayedidqo
Build a strong portfolio on GitHub and a record of lots of contributions to
open source projects.

To be honest with you, DBA's no longer exist at many companies. Most modern
databases are easy enough to use that all you need is developers. My current
company has a single DBA for 7 development teams.

If you want to break into software dev the low hanging fruit is usually web
development with something like PHP.

You're going to be competing with a ton of people that have degrees and
experience so try not to get disappointed about your search. If you can't land
a developer job straight away, I know many who have gotten into dev by
starting as testers and building their knowledge laterally within the company.

It take the average candidate with experience and a degree maybe 4 interviews
to get an offer, you will probably have to do at least triple that.

~~~
jackgolding
I would also recommend front end design/development or a web language like
PHP/Python/Ruby over specialist database roles

