Database Administrator Jobs in IT

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I posted a thread a while back asking what it is like being a system administrator. As of now I am still undecided but I am leaning toward maybe becoming a Database administrator. Is there anyone who is or was a database administrator and can you share your experience in that job?

My secondary question is optional: What is the best job in IT for someone like myself: I am not very good at math. I am interested in programming but don't know anything yet. I have been in the customer service for awhile and I FREAKING HATE IT WITH ALL MY SOUL, therefore I want to have minimum interaction with people with the greatest degree of respect possible because I suffer terribly from the spotlight effect. I prefer to work alone..

I am not a DBA yet, just became a SysAdmin a year ago. And, I will say about both, that it would be better to work as support for a department in a company, rather than a service providing company or supporting the main system of a company.

For example, I work for a financial services company, but, I don't keep their money-making systems online, I work in the Facilities Department supporting their specific software (accounting, legal, hr, facilities, etc all have their own systems that make them tick, so, small scale things like that won't have you working all weekend and failures won't have you turfed out by the owner of a company for impacting revenue etc ).

DBA is still on a long term goal list for me. I used to work in the Facilities department of a hospital, and interviewed a couple of the DBAs that supported the other departments (for a school project when finishing my degree). They clearly said that they loved the work, but, the 24/7 schedule for emergencies for other companies was draining. They affirmed that, like what I experienced, working for back end support, far from the front lines in our company, was better and less stressful than other jobs they'd had (though still as technically compelling and interesting).

So, companies like these would be universities, hospitals, or large business hq's, etc.

Hope that helps.

Systems Admin (at least in the Linux world) is going DevOps where code drives virtualized infrastructure. The best job for you is your special interest in IT. I hate programming and DevOps requires a degree of coding. Like you, I'm looking at my career options. What do you like to do that could possibly be an IT career? Are you creative?

Reviving an old topic, I have been combing the internet to firgure out what skills are needed to be become a dba; so far programming and math are definitely requirements. Does anyone who is a DBA know how much programming and math is required to be a good DBA?

When I first started looking into it, I followed some people I'd seen present at the free SQL Saturday event, then saw the blogs they posted about databases and their jobs in general.
http://www.johnsansom.com/how-to-become ... erver-dba/

This post has a collection of resources, with half a dozen bloggers talking about how they became dba's. I think some good information can be found there.
Sorry, it's been forever since I read this, and I can't follow the post or the links in it because blogs are blocked here at my office.

No problem, thanks so muh for the info