I was a DBA with FreedomPay about 3-years. I took the job for the challenge. The company had lost their only DBA a week or so before I joined. The environment needs some TLC. It was going to take a lot of work to get the data tier better positioned for where the company wanted to go; especially on my own. With-in a year, we'd upgraded everything -- versions, editions, security rubric, hosts, etc. It was probably one of the longest years of my professional career. The following two years kept pace. While I had some really cool wins, I had to leave, and I did so for three reasons:
First, I was burned out. A month away from marking my third year, I was the firms only DBA. We had one get fired after a month. One left just shy of a year, and another left after a month. Before I left, I was literally begging DBA's to work at FreedomPay. I couldn't even convince the guy I replaced to consider coming back when I chose to leave. 12 hour days were the norm. Weekends were 2 to 8 hours of work regularly. I saw my kids once in a while at meals. A guy in my 30's, I was in and out of the cardiologist office with stress related issues. I took one vacation in my three years at FreedomPay. I was always on-call; ALWAYS. And, no matter how many times I'd say I was at my limit, no one listened until I was handing in my resignation.
Second, the politics were unreal. For a 40 person technology group, I've never seen so much back channeling and under cutting. There was one manager who stuck out. I'd watch him scream at his team, and things he'd say about them behind their back were blistering. He was the kind of guy you know is lighting you up as soon as you leave the conference room. That sort of thing gets old quick.
Lastly, by the end, I felt I was working at the bottom of my degree and not the top. I was helping folks learn to use source control, purge data in bulk, or explain the basics of high availability. The janitorial work of the DBA world. Since leaving, I've been able to take my skills to a new level. I don't think that would've happened at FreedomPay.
