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Comment by w4ffl35 | Hacker News Reader

I worked with a dba around 14 years ago, and then again in 2016. Those were both at corporate jobs. Other than that I've worked for small businesses, start ups and as a contractor and that's all been fullstack. I think specialized roles make for better software and small teams trying to support the whole stack with their javascript bootcamp training are the biggest reason so much tech is absolute garbage these days.

So I hope you find from other people that this is still a good role to pursue and that you do become a dba and work as a specialist with highly skilled teams and make the code world a better place.

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I hate to imagine how many startups out there don't even create indexes and just consider it to be a database problem and increase CPU/RAM and look the other way.

I worked for several years at a semi-startup as a Database Engineer where my role was to guide developers in writing performant SQL (and writing indexes for them) and architect their schema to be inline with our future plans and various other database tasks (managing query plans, being an expert on the database feature set etc). I even created an internal course: SQL School, that I included the directors/customer support teams in.

To that specific company my role was priceless, new features could be built in 1/2 the time with an expert writing the queries and handling the database. My programmatic analysis of our 20 year old code base had 5000 unique queries and 3000 more when accounting for dynamic SQL. Not gonna lie it was a complete mess but if I didn't exist they would have needed a lot more database resources. It was a terrible code base and any plan to refactor and avoid this mess would still need my role to do the transition.

I loved that job but its extremely hard to transition to any other roles and nowadays its easier to use alternative solutions.

My experience is that almost any startup needs to write some complex SQL and has to deal with slow query performance, so at least one or two engineers tend to be good at SQL/databases/query plans/indexing/etc. They may not be as knowledgeable or useful as a full dedicated Database Engineer/DBA, but at least you have indices/someone who enjoys writing SQL/someone who thinks about query performance.

Or they don't and then conclude that SQL and relational DBMSs are crap and that they have to switch to NoSQL to save the day (/s but only slightly)

> don't even create indexes and just consider it to be a database problem

is this DBA stuff though? Sounds like creating indexes would be basic junior-level backend dev knowledge?

You would think! But during my years as a cloud consultant I was parachuted into a problem project. I observed a large well paid team doing weird shit like archiving all their data to keep their database fast.

The database was 10gb RDS with no indexes.

It’s interesting that nobody there thinks: “There are much larger companies out there not archiving their data every month, what solution are they using?”

thing is, if you google for it, you will find it as a technique https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/VLDBG/GUID-5A76B6CE-C96... which I can imagine is used to justify the path they were on.

and we must note that the business side did eventually bring in external consultants because the project was clearly distressed. So it did eventually get corrected and I naturally tend to see the worse examples of this kind of thing, but yeah, it is possible to assemble a team of 8 developers and get unlucky such that not a single one knows anything about indexes or cloud databases in general.

I think it’s ridiculous since I come from an era where it was considered basic knowledge. I can’t imagine a software engineer that doesn’t have a passing familiarity with the goals of indexes (even if they don’t know exactly how they work).

But that’s turning out to be more and more untrue. Newer engineers really do not know.

> is this DBA stuff though?

Yes, it is or should be.

If you have a mission critical database with a lot of writing to it and the requirement of millisecond response times then every index you implement needs to be balanced against the cost of writing.

Like other database objects, i.e. constraints and triggers that's absolutely a DBA job.

> hate to imagine how many startups out there don't even create indexes and just consider it to be a database problem and increase CPU/RAM

I've worked for a few of those fairly recently. I also worked for a place that was running on a fully custom codebase, no framework, php with all sql scattered through each page and all the devs using their individual machines to ssh into a central dev computer to work (tell people which file you're working on first). No version control of course.

> No version control of course.

This is an automatic fail for an employer. In interviews I ask, if it comes up I interrupt the discussion, verify, and if they truly develop without valid source control/revision control - I end the interview and inform the recruiter NFW and why.

I'm not saying I don't use version control. The company I worked at 14 years ago wasn't using version control. They are now.

> small teams trying to support the whole stack with their javascript bootcamp training are the biggest reason so much tech is absolute garbage these days

The lazy stereotyping is inaccurate, caustic, and uncalled-for. I've worked with several bootcampers, and nearly all of them have been entirely capable.

I think it depends. I've seen bootcampers who are motivated by being a Software Engineer at FAANG on 500k yet they don't understand why turning off your computer stops programs from running. But I've also met bootcampers who spent several years writing bots for runescape or coding in their spare time and are using the bootcamps as a way in to the industry.

Which just supports the point that the stereotype doesn't hold up, and only serves to discourage and exclude capable people who may already have impostor-syndrome.

I'd argue the years writing bots and coding in their spare time are what benefited them and the bootcamps just helped them pass the interview... which is exactly the same thing I've been saying in all my comments already.

I've contested in a separate comment that there are likely some talented individuals who took a boot camp course. Really doesn't say much for bootcamps though. My anecdotal experiences differ from your anecdotal experiences. My experience has been that people were trained to pass interviews not keep jobs.

The difference is that I'm not claiming bootcampers are broadly exceptional, either; I'm saying I don't have enough data to tell you whether or not someone will be a good engineer based on whether or not they went to a bootcamp. I know my anecdotes are limited, and I'm not trying to make broad statements based on them.

I'm speaking less about the individual and more about the method of education. I don't think someone should go from zero experience, to 6 or 12 month bootcamp, to lead engineer at their first job. Something very wrong with "the industry" as this is becoming more typical in recent years from what I've experienced.

And to that I would argue: that's a hiring problem, not a learning problem.

Based on my anecdotes (I guess I am getting into drawing broad conclusions now), good bootcamps are a good way to turn someone into an entry-level engineer who's equipped to start contributing value and then learn more as they go. If they got hired immediately as a lead engineer and weren't ready for it (which they wouldn't be, if the bootcamp was their only experience), that's the company's problem.

I would add too that there's a huge gap in quality between the best and the worst bootcamps; there are some that consistently crank out totally capable junior engineers, but I've read horror stories about others that are outright scams. It's possible we need an accreditation process of some sort.

But now I feel like we've got to review my original statement. I don't believe I ever said people who went to bootcamp shouldn't be hired or anything to that effect... I think that small teams (often made of bootcampers with relatively no experience) are disastrous.

One Jr Dev won't take down the ship but a whole crew of Jr's with senior titles and authority will at least slow you down to a crawl. In recent years I've worked with teams who are largely made of bootcampers and Jr devs. As I've said from the start, I've been in startup land for a long time now and it's usually all about getting by on a shoestring. I fully understand the financial reasoning behind it, but I dont think the people running these companies have thought far enough ahead and I strongly doubt that any of the places I've worked in recent years will be around even 4 years from now.

Additionally, that Jr dev could have learned to code in their basement from some books for all I care... or could have graduated bootcamp sure. It doesn't matter where they got their info as long as they know what they're doing... but from what I've seen, bootcamp alone does a really poor job producing people who know what they're doing... worse so than college because it's meant to be lightening fast education and job placement.

> but I dont think the people running these companies have thought far enough ahead

Ah hah! Now we're getting to what could be the heart of the issue: short-term business practices, the incentives that drive them, and the market conditions that make it hard to find or afford the necessary technical leadership. This is a complex topic and out of scope, but it feels like a truer source of the problems you've witnessed.

> but from what I've seen, bootcamp alone does a really poor job producing people who know what they're doing... worse so than college because it's meant to be lightening fast education and job placement

It's fair to report that as your experience (even though my experience differs). The issue I took at the top of the thread was with broad, incendiary statements like this:

> small teams trying to support the whole stack with their javascript bootcamp training are the biggest reason so much tech is absolute garbage these days

This is a pile of tropes, capped off with a bold assertion. Bootcamps aren't even especially focused on JavaScript; the ones I'm familiar with also let students pick Python or Ruby for their projects, and also teach the basics of how to use a database and other technologies (of course they don't make you an expert at any of these things). But it was used here because "JavaScript" has become a stand-in in the context of Hacker News comment sections where people are complaining about perceived poor engineering practices. Like "bootcamps", it's come to paint a particular picture in people's heads of a particular kind of dev, whether or not the thing itself is directly relevant to the discussion at hand. Leaning on (and entrenching) these stereotypes is what I'm pushing back against. They aren't accurate, and they encourage certain devs to be disparaged for no good reason.

Actually it was chosen because I've had to work with lots of javascript code camp people.

I think you're missing the point of the comment. There is no judgement on their capability there, merely an observation that a JS bootcamp probably doesn't adequately prepare you to manage a typical startup's entire tech stack, and if you try to do so with only that training/experience, the result might not be very good quality.

Exactly thank you.

Lots of people in the industry are in a race against time to make as much money as possible before they have to understand how things work.

The implications for the future of this industry, if what you say is true, are profound.

Isn't it true for a lot of newish industries ?

For instance we have the EV boom, and visibly a lot of companies are rushing in to try to make as much as they can without planning for what they would do if they become the next Toyota. But surely, some are planning a bit more ahead (or have a more long term viable approach, even if by accident), and time will tell who they are.

My glass half full view would be that we don't need most companies to succeed, as long as the well isn't poisoned.

The issue is that we're not that new anymore, people have been doing software engineering for at least half a century.

In the beginning, if you wanted a computer, you had to design and build it yourself. You had to be an expert in electronics and computer science to do it. And back then, there were no computer parts. You had to manufacture everything yourself from vacuum tubes. Once you were done, you would have a tiny amount of memory and processing power to work with, meaning that you had to be an expert programmer to take advantage of that tiny processing power. And, there were no stored programs. Your program was implemented as an arrangement of cables on a plugboard, something that was error prone and time consuming. There were no compilers or interpreters for your code therefore no compiler errors, no runtime errors, no debugger, no anything. If things didn't work, they just didn't work and some types of mistakes would have disastrous effects on the hardware.

Now, you don't need any of that. Yet, you can call yourself "full stack". No one truly full stack anymore.

no one is saying to take it back to assembly, but at least maybe try to understand how asynchronous code works if you're going to try to program professional applications in Javascript.

I am self-taught and cringe when i think back to my early days because I knew so little and didn't realize it. I've never attended any CS courses and learned everything I know from putting in almost constant work on the side (I mean this literally, I almost only work on creative projects with all of my spare time) -- but I can't overstate how much I learned from people on the job as well, they propelled me to new heights. All this is to say: I don't begrudge newcomers and have always tried to give back more than what I got from others when I was Jr...

But good lord bootcamps do not produce much in the way of talent in my experience. I'm sure there are some shining stars that benefited, but I have yet to meet one of them. One guy I worked with fully admitted to me in private that he plagiarized his "final" for bootcamp which was a rather difficult algorithm. He just used some open source code he found on github and only slightly modified it. The code he wrote that I had to support was some of the worst spaghetti I've had to pick apart and fix and he was the lead engineer for the company.

These companies would make more money with proper talent. Code camps need to go away.

I've worked with many bootcampers and all but one have been fantastic. And the one wasn't bad because of arrogance or deception; they were a super nice person with plenty of integrity. They were bad at their job because they simply had no feel for programming, and would have been just as bad if they'd had a CS degree.

Bootcamps are like anything: you get out what you put in. They are a(n often effective!) way of learning a skill. If there's a problem, it's with tech hiring and its ability to accurately evaluate candidates. But that's an intrinsically hard task, and I don't know if there's a real solution (and the inaccuracy cuts both ways, and affects everyone, regardless of where they learned to code).

Stop inflating your own narrow experience and projecting it onto a huge swath of people. Pushing stereotypes is harmful.

I gave an anecdote mentioning one shitty individual who would likely do shitty things even as a proper CS student yes. Beyond that I'm dissing the form of education, not the individual human. Maybe they're "nice" people but if they are leading a team of engineers right out of bootcamp, you're gonna have a bad time (and I've seen this happen in at least one occasion as I mentioned).

Looking back over this hours later I want to add the following:

the anecdote I offered above was not an effort to paint code camp participants as untrustworthy or incompetent. My point is that this individual was lacking in skills and knowledge beyond a Jr level engineer and plagiarized at least part of his codecamp work.

The only thing he needed codecamp for was the "education" on his resume and a shortcut through the interview process. He was made lead engineer, potentially just to boost his resume, but regardless he was involved in "fullstack" development which was leading to some really really nasty issues. He had already worked there for some time once I joined the team, so I have no idea how limited his skills or knowledge were when he joined. What I did see was that he took a codecamp shortcut. This is harder to do with college CS courses and totally pointless if you're doing it for the fun of learning and creating things in the first place (which is the motivation for my and many other people's self-education).

I've worked with self, college and bootcamp educated people. To reiterate I PERSONALLY have not encountered someone from bootcamp who was beyond Jr level. I'm sure there are people out there who are very talented and have used bootcamp education to their benefit, but I see it as an easy system to abuse and I'm skeptical over the actual educational benefits offered by these schools.

I would also like to add that I have worked for a number of companies who refuse to even look at a resume from people with codecamp education (hiring people who are self-educated over codecamp educated even). I think this is a heavy handed approach and disagree with it.

Regardless of the source of education, loading up your company with people who are only Jr to Mid level is a recipe for disaster.

You are so right. People now in the industry know the mechanism of money and capital much better than software. But as a software engineer who loves the technology and products that we can build from it, I would really appreciate real DBAs with in-depth skills. After all, databases are essential, and we need experts.

> I would really appreciate real DBAs with in-depth skills.

heheh, I hear that all the time, but show me the money...

Hmm, I kind of feel like if someone is still around as a DBA now, it’s either because they’re amazingly good, or amazingly bad.

I’ve worked with DBAs at well-funded, forwarding thinking startups.

But they wore lots hats. I worried it was a way to get H1B visas for software dev roles.

Why would dba help get h1b over other roles?

Employers have to show they can’t hire enough locals. If there is a surplus of “software developers” locally, it might be tricky to get H1B folks.

So they simply say, “We are not hiring for software developers, we are hiring for DBAs … totally different thing ;).”

Shady. The worst ive seen is forcing your American staff to hire a massive overseas team at approx $10k per employee per year, having them set up a local company in their country with the understanding that it's just a front and you are their only client, force them to work during American hours and forcing all of your American employees to remote train them for two years and then firing your American staff. Had this happen to me once.

How did it work out for the company?

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