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Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
61–70 of 128 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#62Universities 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.
Ehh, public uni salaries are quite fine considering the vastly better health insurance and other benefits...
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#63Universities 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.
Ehh, public uni salaries are quite fine considering the vastly better health insurance and other benefits...
Huh? 3 weeks vacation, $3,000 deductible and $8,000 OOP max for a couple. Not particularly notable, and higher than most OOP maxes I've had at private companies.
I mean, sure I can go to some concerts for free at the music school and use the makerspaces but that really doesnt make up for the $50k+/year I’m leaving on the table.
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny enough, my time in university tech as a student said the same thing. I was going to say either that or state/federal. Hello Banner my old friend to the tune of The Sound of Silence
State and federal tend to use MS SQL, but I guess some federal agencies have the budget for oracle
GP mentioned Banner. The company that sells Banner (which uses Oracle on the back-end), merged with another, so now also sells a product in the same space that uses MSSQL on the back-end. The product that uses Oracle is priced lower than the one that use MSSQL by approximately the difference in DB license costs, so the two products come out pretty similar for total cost (I've heard that this pricing scheme was intentional to prevent one product line from cannibalizing the other after the merger).
Of the three public higher ed institutions within a 100 mi redius of me, all are Oracle on the back-end, two Banner and one Peoplesoft.
To the OP, your mom can watch university and community college job boards and search for keywords like "Banner" and "Peoplesoft". Banner jobs will likely be either one of, or a combination of Oracle DBA and writing PL/SQL.
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#65Universities 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.
Thanks for the tip! We haven't even considered that, and did not know that Oracle was widely used in universities. We'll definitely check that out.
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#66Check 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.
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#67Look 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.
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#68Keep 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.)
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#69I 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. Otherw…
Yeah I think that such non-tech companies would be a perfect fit. Especially since they're the ones using Oracle still. The workforce management space is not something I'm familiar with so will definitely look into it, thanks for the input!
Re: Ask HN: How can my mom downshift as a SQL developer?
#70Writing 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-typ…
Thanks! I'll pass it along!