?!?! DBA Salaries--Interesting

[BuezaWebDev]

DB2 ($73,500), Sybase ($72,900), Oracle ($72,500), SQL Server ($69,100), and finally MySQL ($67,800).

http://www.dbazine.com/blogs/blog-cm/craigmullins/blogentry.2005-10-10.1522825688

How does this work out? How does a MySQL DBA earn almost as much as an Oracle DBA? Oracle is for large enterprise, and MySQL is...open source. :|

[NogDog]

Supply and demand?

Once a company purchases their Oracle license(s) and maintenance contract, they don't have any money left for salaries?

The survey's sampling is not big enough and/or scientific enough?

Companies following an open-source paradigm have higher profit margins?

None of the above?

All of the above?

I have no idea what I'm talking about?

[chazzy]

I find these results questionable at best... I know that Data Architects make a very large amount, and if so then they make much higher than some DBA's that I know. Also, if you look at the payscale and yearly growth rate, it could take 2-3 years for a MySQL DBA to move from 67,800 to 72,500.

[BuezaWebDev]

Would you say that going for 67800 to 72500 a big leap within 2-3 years?

Perhaps NogDog is correct--supply and demand is playing a huge part in the salaries of MySQL DBA's--Apparently, an Oracle license costs $40,000 USD per processor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_database --> "Pricing" subheader.

[chazzy]

Which oracle license? They come in 5 varieties. The highest one was about $35kUSD, per processor. But no one pays the full price. Most places receive heavy discounts off the top based on quantity purchased, so suddenly your $35-40k license is now $15-20k. In my last company, we found we didn't need most of what enterprise edition offered in a lot of the systems so they downgraded to se1, I think. The biggest issue I see is that a lot of small businesses get suckered into buying EE licenses when all they need is SE1. Sure it has a 4 cpu max, but I haven't seen any small businesses buying anything bigger than 4 cpu's anyways.

Edit: Also, here's the biggest difference. With Oracle (like MySQL), you can download and install an unlicensed copy on your systems, for proof of concept or the like, I personally wouldn't see the need to do this (especially w/ Oracle XE). They just won't support you (thus making this unfit for any development/qa or production database).

No, I wouldn't say that $67,800 to $72,500 is a big leap, it's merely cost of living increases, because you know, IT people don't get paid much more for better performance.

Then again, none of this can include bonuses.