T-SQL Tuesday #165: Comparing Database Job Titles

While my family and friends know what I do, I’m not sure how well they know “what I do.” While I can explain the details, for those with little technology experience, it will inevitably get summed up as “he works with computers.”

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday invitation topic from Josephine Bush about database related job titles can be found by clicking the T-SQL Tuesday logo. It got me thinking about comparisons with more well-known titles.

With the NFL Hall of Fame game ready to begin as I’m starting this post, I thought I’d try drawing some comparisons between database-related jobs and sports.

Hard Knocks

Databases – Players:
You have to keep the players happy and healthy, or else the franchise falls apart.

Database Administrator – Equipment Manager:
Database Administrators could be considered equipment managers. Someone has to keep the lights on and make sure everything the players need is ready to go when they need it. They must be organized and make sure equipment is up to standards to keep players safe. What happens when a helmet breaks or a jersey is torn? You better have backups to get that player back in the game.

Database Engineer – Athletic Trainer:
Trainers have to put together an exercise plan and possibly a nutrition regimen to get all they can out of a player. This is just like a database engineer has to design a plan to optimize and design a database.

Database Reliability Engineer – Physiotherapist:
A physiotherapist has to keep an athlete healthy so they can stay on the field. If something is “hurt,” then it must be addressed to prevent it from developing into a major “injury” that causes a longer-term outage.

Database Architect – Head Coach:
A head coach has a broad range of experience working with individual teams like offense, defense, and special teams, as well as with other personnel like team scouts. A database architect also works with databases but may have more responsibility for areas like security and planning for the future.

Data Scientist – Team Scout:
Data scientists and team scouts both spend time reviewing data to find valuable areas of improvement for the team.

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing

I’m not sure if these comparisons would help or hurt, but it was fun to think about.

Thanks for reading!