Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?

Are you Little Bobby Tables?

https://xkcd.com/327/

Get a job in a bank or a telco

Banks have a lot of data analyst type jobs that could be good for this. They require a knowledge of SQL to generate reports but do not fall squarely under IT and so would rarely expect those kinds of project work.

You need to look objectively at her skill set and desires. She has a legacy skillset on an unpopular technology, and doesn't want to grow away from it. That's fine, but it's not very marketable.

Ask yourself, who would find enough value in this skillset and constraints to pay for it? That's who you need to target.

My guess: It's going to be largely non-tech and traditional companies, probably. You're looking for banks, or government contractors. Places that run Oracle and are willing to pay for someone familiar with it and not interested in much else.

def non-tech, search specifically for positions with "Oracle SQL" in title if possible

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Universities use a lot of OracleSQL (almost all of them), are generally very accepting of older workers and have a working environment that is friendly to aging workers. The salaries aren't excellent but the comfort is high.

I was primarily a SQL Server dev and worked in an analytics department supporting homedepot.com call centers. I personally did about half and half application work in C# and the kind of query writing/analysis/optimization you're talking about. It was stable, paid okay, and I was working with a good team (which can be a crapshoot obviously).

I'd personally look for stuff like that out of focused tech companies.

Otherwise I think meetups are a fantastic idea, especially when it comes to greasing the wheels around whatever trendy interview practices are going on that week and being able to personalize the context around wanting to stick with Oracle.

Just off-the-top spit-balling, but things like workforce management, analytics, etc are the kinds of things I'd start with.

I also did project based consulting on small teams for about five years and Oracle is all over the place in non-tech industry, so I wouldn't despair on that front. I'm not sure what the market is for that kind of job, but it's so fundamentally woven into the fabric of a lot of F500 and similar companies that it's not going away soon--even if some of them would prefer it to.

https://usds.gov/apply (not tour of duty roles in DC, remote analyst or 18F)

https://www.usajobs.gov/

Slower pace but remote available and very much in demand. Should carry your Mom through to retirement. Hope it helps.

My primary searches would be for something like Reporting Developer, Reporting Analyst, Report Writer, Business Analyst (for a very established business where most of the responsibilities are actually getting stuff out of a database).

I would be looking at small to medium businesses that have been around for awhile, many of them have "legacy" databases that nobody knows how to query, and someone conversant in SQL would have no big problem breaking down.

The breathless ones going on about their cloud migrations are ones to avoid.

Focus on industries in which she has domain expertise.

Use her analytical skills to write data-backed reports. She could even do this freelance.

Overall I would suggest finding positions where SQL is used but not the entirety of the job description, otherwise she will not be able to differentiate herself from the competition.

She already was comfy. I'm 51 and I've never actually even heard of a job where you ONLY had to know a specific dialect of SQL. Also, you would think that mere intellectual curiosity would have taken her at least somewhat "abroad" in the knowledge sense, but I see no evidence of that, which means she was basically a corporate mercenary for 20 years who phoned it in. (Note: I've mostly worked for startups, so my standards and expectations about "job interestingness" and "job expectations" and "necessary intrinsic motivation" are possibly entirely different.)

She needs to find a giant corporation where she can live out her pre-retirement days in Storage Room B, only writing very specific SQL queries for Oracle, IMHO.

Data migration is not that hard, so the fact that she's balking at even step 1 says a lot to me.

Maybe reach out to a recruiter or two that might be able to find something. She seems to have a good idea of what she wants, which would be helpful. She might want to avoid the larger firms or ones that are out of country because they're mostly interested in numbers. Smaller local firms and individuals often care about meeting people and finding a good fit.

Hedge fund, data analysis/BI, any marketing department of any DTC company (soap, food, etc.) or any research group located in and/or around DC. Tons upon tons of jobs are basically SQL.

For those that don't know, you can ingest damn near any file format with columnar data via SQL. You don't have to write some Python script (although it helps.)

My first job was with an older woman who was very experienced and had converted to a SSRS (MSSQL Reports) report writer a few years prior. This took her out of the daily operations, but she still used her skillsets and was a great person to learn from. Being a Maybe something like this, but for Oracle? Good luck!

Do it for/with her. Nice way to spend time together.

Writing from a throwaway account to avoid outing myself...

I work here [1]. We have a QA opening in Chicago that is heavy on SQL. Pay would not be great, but the benefits are amazing. She would have no shortage of work, and of things to learn, but it wouldn't be the kind of competitive stressful situation that you describe. It's a place that really cares about work-life balance.

If you think she would consider QA-type work, have her take a look:

[1] https://www.crsp.org/about-us/careers/

I follow DBA jobs on Glassdoor and there are Oracle DBA openings every week.

Your mom sounds like half the devs at every single university IT department. Ive worked with nine different sets now, its pure SQL bespoke reporting, adding new query functionality to whatever ed-tech ERP platform they got. Its basically the same work with maybe some light dev tooling management.

Utility companies

Check for open roles in her state government. They're typically big Oracle customers and pace is very very slow.

Source: my mom works for her state government.

Look at her state, county, city government jobs. These tend to have your traditional DBA, data analyst, report writer types of roles. Only problem would be that openings aren’t always available as people in those roles tend to stay in them for the longer haul.

Keep looking. A friend I know has a similar skillset and age, but is well employed. Being a SQL-only specialist is still in demand, but requires more effort and patience to find the correct fit.

Re: Point #3, this is a red flag to me, and seems like a very demanding position. (I was paged 3 times this Thanksgiving, but I work in ecommerce.)

I’m sorry as someone who is 50 years old and started programming as a hobbyist at 12 in assembly and professionally at 22, I have no sympathy or advice for anyone who is not willing to transition to newer tech and according to you is actively ignoring clear transition paths.

My advice is for her not to be lazy and take advantage of the opportunity to transition to some newer tech.

Context: I got my first and only job at $BigTech at 46 based on my decades of experience as a bog standard enterprise dev + two years of AWS experience at a startup as a (full time) consultant working in the Professional Services Department. I didn’t open the AWS console and didn’t know anything about “cloud” until I was 44.

When I got Amazoned three years later I was able to find a job in three weeks working full time at another consulting company where I am leading “Application modernization” initiatives (cloud + app dev).

If she isn’t at “a stage in life” where she can retire and she hasn’t gotten over her addiction to food and shelter, if she wants to stay in the industry, she has to evolve.

I would look for oracle customers in your area. Most would love to hire an oracle employee.