[busterarm]

Years ago I worked at a financial that had a large tech staff but we only had one full-time DBA. He was a really young, sharp guy and he got to work with basically every department in the company helping them out with stuff. He had his own office, nobody ever disturbed him, he only had to report to one person (rarely) and he got paid fantastically well.

Looked like a sweet deal.

[matwood]

I've been a DBA officially and unofficially off and on my whole career. On one hand it is great. UIs and front end software is like fashion and always changing. What lives on is the data those programs generate. Understanding that the data will outlive almost any program put in front of is a good thing to remember.

On the other hand there is a lot of pressure as the DBA. Backups, redundancy, security, etc... all fall onto the DBA to get done and done right. Fat finger a script and blow away a key table sucks (a DBA isn't a DBA until they have done this once), but it drives the point home that backups, backups, backups are key.

EDIT

The other part is the blame for lots of woes will end up on the DBAs desk. I'm a fix it and move on kind of person, but if you take things like that personally a DBA position might not be for you.

[RefactorCareer]

I've had unofficial DBAs roles in the past, and it wasn't really the type of job that suited me personally (I like UI work as much as db work). I know they're in big demand though, so definitely a good path to look into if you're okay with all of the things listed.

[atwebb]

Yeah, it can also be an always on-call group with limited options supporting software written by dozens/hundreds of different devs with little to no DB knowledge but is crucial to running the company.