

Ask HN: Can I contribute to a startup? - ora600

I am an experienced Oracle DBA. I have 15 years experience in IT. I know Unix, storage and networks, and naturally I can code in bash, perl, sql and pl/sql. I'm a very good DBA - in addition for doing a good job for my employees, I also speak at conferences, write articles and in general I'm respected by my peers.<p>My problem is that me and most other Oracle DBAs I know are employees of IT departments of very large organizations. But I live in the bay area and working for utility companies and banks feels like I'm missing all the fun. I want to work at a more fast paced, exciting, cutting edge place. With maybe 20 other employees working on something unique.<p>I realize that most startups can't work with Oracle. I'm learning MySQL, but I'm wondering if DBAs at all are interesting to startups, or maybe the position is normally shared between sysadmins and developers. None of the "HN Jobs" I've seen were looking for DBAs.<p>What can I do to make myself (and my CV) more interesting to startups?
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jacquesm
If you're prepared to take a significant pay cut in return for equity in a
high risk environment I'm sure any startup with big plans will have you
gladly.

You probably will be wearing a few more 'hats' in the beginning though. Start-
ups tend to employ people that are multi-talented to keep payroll costs down
in the beginning. Later on there is usually more specialization.

~~~
ora600
That sounds reasonable. I think my CV is a problem - 15 years of Oracle
probably sounds like "very expensive specialist" to a startup. I should
probably rewrite it to say "Will do any type of work very cheaply for a
startup", only without sounding desperate ;)

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iamelgringo
I'd suggest that aside from Perl you look pick up a language at something like
Python or Ruby. Ruby would probably be a bit easier because it pulls some of
its influences from perl, although Python has a fairly gradual learning curve
as well. There is always PHP. I know a number of companies looking for decent
developers that know PHP.

I think that brushing up on MySQL is a good idea. I'd also know startups are
doing some pretty cool things with Postgres. I'm again guessing that going
from Oracle to Postgres would be less of a jump than going from Oracle to
MySQL.

Also, I know a lot of founders, myself included would love to pick a DBA's
brain. I'm in the middle of deciding how to model a complex data store right
now. I'm toying with the idea of going to a NoSQL database, but that's
primarily because I don't really know anyone that has a bunch of experience
with this type of problem. All we hear as founder is "RDBMs's don't scale".

I know a bunch of really smart guys from HackersandFounders meetups, but there
aren't tons of them that have a huge amount of experience managing a lot of
data with a lot of complex relationships. Or, the guys that do have tons of
experience managing that kind of data work for Google and they can't talk
about it. :P

So, I'd suggest coming to the next <http://HackersandFounders> .com meetup and
letting me pick your brain. :)

It's not that hard to get into the startup scene. Go to meetups like SV New
Tech, Hackers and Founders or any number of technology specific meetups like
the MySQL, Postgres javascript, Python, Rails, iPhone, etc... Hang out at the
Hacker Dojo or NoiseBridge. Hand out business cards. Build a couple of simple
web apps in your spare time and get people's opinions on them.

~~~
ora600
Thats for the detailed reply. My email is cshapi@gmail.com, feel free to pick
my brain :) I joined Hackers and Founders meetup - just meeting people who are
doing interesting work sounds like great fun and will probably make me feel
more "silicon valley" than working at a bank does.

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alanthonyc
Personally, I think a DBA would be a valuable resource, mainly because my
primary skillset lies in different area. It's the area in which I could use
the most help in my project, also the area in which I have the fewest possible
resources to tap. But as Jacques says, you can't be _just_ a DBA. Try to pick
up some more programming, especially in one of the popular frameworks (Django,
Ruby, etc.) or maybe even design work.

~~~
ora600
Thanks for pointing out specific frameworks. I got the feeling that I should
be doing more programming than just unix scripts.

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adrianscott
Make sure to get some public url's of some demo apps up online. That'll help
w/ your marketing to startups.

hope this helps,

