Survey: inter-team relationships

I'm going to do two surveys this week. In this one I want to know what the relationship is like between the DBA team and the dev team wherever you work (or whatever comes closest team-wise). Remember the survey is completely anonymous. If you want to, feel free to add an anonymous or otherwise comment below too.

I'll present the results during the second week of February.


Thanks!

6 thoughts on “Survey: inter-team relationships

  1. Last year the DBA role was part of the dev team, the relationship between the dev team and me was great.

    However this year, the DBA role was moved to Operations, now the relationship is strained. The dev team no longer raise change controls but are making changes directly to production. I have raised this with the Dev manager; however the response I got was not what I expected… apparently change controls are too hard to complete.

    I am disappointed… I previously worked with these people, got on well with them and now I can’t stand.

  2. Getting along with AppDevs is generally quite easy on the social level. We’re all nerdy, mostly all like technology and building software. However, the applications and the process don’t necessarily get along with my job duties. For example, AppDev team has app design discussions that don’t include the DBA and you get an operational impedance mismatch. Or an AppDev team wants to use an ORM(no biggie in itself) but doesn’t want to learn how to use the ORM or thinks that the simple examples they see online will translate well to our existing system that isn’t meant for an ORM(worst case scenario). Another relationship killer is the seemingly omnipresent scope creep that comes with poor planning. They say they want it one say, you and the AppDevs build it that way, then the request comes down to make it another way. At that point you and the AppDevs start the Technology-Rock Paper Scissors match for who is going to compromise on this new request that leaves both the AppDevs and the DBA frustrated. There are also the days when someone is just phoning it in but I classify that as just a people/workplace thing and not directly related to the general AppDev vs DBA relationship.

  3. The developers think the DBAs are a bunch of idle boneheads, and the DBAs think the developers are a bunch of cowboys with little regard for the availability of the live servers. I am in both groups, so share both views.

  4. I said it’s “mostly good” now. I am well respected for my skill set. However, at the place I used to work, it was hostile. That’s where I started to become a DBA. I was a .NET software engineer at the time and, due to the hostility between the software engineers and the DBA group, my team lead decided that we needed a covert DBA so that we could expose our data to different groups under the radar so those groups could do business. That’s where I came in. I showed a lot of promise in the ways of SQL Server and ETLs and I had a generally dismissive attitude toward authority. Luckily, the DB change scripts were run by a separate team and the DBAs didn’t believe in monitoring. I loved it so much I went from covert to overt. As I remember the complaints from my old team lead, I try to keep the servers clean, fast, and secure without being arbitrary or obtuse. That seems to serve me well in my current position.

  5. I’ve recently started at a new company as their DBA. Prior, I was a .NET developer and BSA for 13 years. I am currently reporting to the App Dev manager and have a great relationship with the dev teams. However, I am pushing to move my position to report to Operations as that’s a better fit. I find that while I have great information and work with the dev team when they are coding and designing, I have little feedback and input with the operations team on architectural and planning.

    It’s a toss up where a DBA should fit, but I feel for the larger picture, a DBA needs to have a very tight relationship with operations and planning of the overall infrastructure first and then with application development teams second.

  6. It’s good to read these comments because the DEV team thinks the world (Technical) revolves around them and think DBAs are not technical enough to understand what they are doing. But they have yet to figure out how to use a DB correctly and over normalize and use so much procedural code. I hate talking to DEVs because they try to talk down to you, but in the end I end up saving the day for the end users and get the nice thank you gifts.

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