It’s a Good Time to be Involved with MySQL

In many parts of the world times are uncertain. I live in the United States and we are in the middle of a financial meltdown that many fear may be as bad as the Great Depression. Because the world’s economies are so linked it is causing severe distress in many other countries as well. I just read that two trillion dollars have been lost from nest eggs in the last 15 months here in the States.

I am not going to turn this into a rant about who is right, who is wrong, or  what should be done about it to resolve the problem. This isn’t the place. I probably don’t even have the right answer. I have a different angle.

If you are involved with MySQL as a database administrator, or if you work directly with MySQL in some other aspect, you can probably breathe a little easier. Why is this? MySQL Server has grown in market penetration for a long time. It is now a significant section of the RDBMS pie.  I predict that this market penetration will only continue to grow. As this economic downturn/recession/whatever continues, companies will look harder for ways to save money. What better way to do so than replace your proprietary RDBMS that can cost you significant amounts of money, with MySQL Server? For all intents, the same functionality is there, the speed and flexibility is certainly there, and there is a giant company behind MySQL now, providing “enterprise-ready” support.

The market is crying right now for MySQL database administrators. We don’t cost any more than Oracle or Microsoft DBAs, you know. Just a couple of years ago, very few companies hired MySQL DBAs. They hired developers who also did database administration, or a system administrators who also managed the MySQL server. Now, as the number of database servers increases and the amount of data grows they want real, honest-to-goodness database administrators. If you have production experience with MySQL server in any significant amount you will not have any problems finding a job. I don’t think this is going to change anytime soon. So, even if your company succumbs to the times, there are others out there who need your experience. Don’t be dismayed! (more…)