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Ask HN: Can I contribute to a startup?

5 points by ora600 ↗ HN
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.

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.

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.

What can I do to make myself (and my CV) more interesting to startups?

7 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 16.6 ms ] thread
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 ;)
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.
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.
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,