As a DBA, you most often have little control over what duties you perform, how much time you allocate to specific tasks, your work environment and, of course, your salary and benefits. Here is what I was thinking: If you could “design” yourself the perfect DBA job, what would it entail? To get you started thinking, here are some ideas:

• Working Hours: 32 – 40 hours a week. No more overtime or working nights or weekends.
• Flexible Hours: You pick when you work.
• Work Environment: Work from home, have a private office at work.
• Location: The ability to pick the physical location of where you work, such as a particular city, or even location within a city.
• Amiable Co-Workers: Everybody gets along well with everyone else, and everybody tries to help each other.
• Job Duties: You can pick and choose what you do every day, focusing your efforts on those areas that interest you most.
• Salary: Enough to cover current expenses, enough extra to have some fun, and enough to retire by the time you are 50.
• Benefits: 100% paid health care for your entire family, 4 weeks of paid vacation.
• Learning Opportunities: 2,3 or 4 weeks of paid training/conferences every year.
• Corporate Culture: A place where all managers understand the value of DBAs.
• Stable Company: A financially strong company that values its investment in its employees and never lays them off.
• Work for Yourself: You work for yourself as a highly paid SQL Server consultant with so many clients you have to shoo them away.

I know these are crazy wishes, but let’s have some summer fun and dream a little bit. Tell us what your perfect DBA job would be like. And you can’t say that you want to win the lottery and not work at all. That would be cheating.  😉