What a helpful comment. Yes. How dare someone wish to maintain the work/life balance they have worked hard to attain. They must be lazy like your anecdotal associate.
Just a counterpoint to consider: Start-ups are a dirty fraction of the private sector. They burn through people to achieve short-term goals and reach IPO or takeover. They offset this wear and tear with direct remuneration and options. Most private sector work isn't X10 gigabros, it's real people doing a job, developing themselves and adding value to a long term business in a 9-5 setting. These jobs still exist.
Telling someone to stack shelves because they don't want to work at a start-up is contemptible.
>> 20 years of experience with Oracle SQL. She's an expert in that, but not in other dev stuff
I'm not so sure how much of an expert either. Everyone's parent is a hero to them so one has to take the statement they make with a grain of salt.
Is she "an amazing DBA"? If so she probably has little problem finding another job. If she just knows SQL or worse only "Oracle SQL", meaning little experience with other types of databases, well then she sounds like the kind of person of which there are aplenty who wants to learn one trade and do it for life, with little desire to diversify or re-qualify.
I'm not saying I've got a burning desire to "diversify or re-qualify" and the "churn and burn" characteristic of the software development sector is dear to my heart but I'm a professional, veteran soldier that knows very well what he's gotten into. This "job" isn't for everyone and there are different jobs where you get to re-use the knowledge that you acquire: law, medicine, accounting, teaching, cashier or stackshelver at Target etc. Only not the cruel slaughterhouse that's software development, in a war analogy I'd equate this mom's job with something in intendance versus brutal front line battles that most soldiers are forced to fight. But since she's in the army nevertheless, mustn't be surprised if at some point she finds herself sent to the front line.
>> How dare someone wish to maintain the work/life balance they have worked hard to attain. They must be lazy like your anecdotal associate.
I'm not making value judgements about her desire and in fact I'm sympathetic to her. Just pointing out the cognitive dissonance of having such desires and fantasies in the sector where she works.
20 years of being a DBA on a single system is about fifteen years longer than you'd need to be an expert. I'm not sure why you're suggesting she might not be "amazing" (your word, not OP's). This rhetoric is unhelpful.
And I don't think your comparison fits. DBAs aren't software developers. They're analysts, operations, runtime support and debug. Their job is inherently long-term. There isn't the churn of frittering between framework-des-jours because migration is expensive.
The complaint isn't that she might have to learn something new, it's the quality of work. It's not lazy or unrealistic to resist a transition from planned workloads to no-notice scrotwork without respect for your personal time.
And even in software development, there are companies that respect their developers, even work hard at that to retain them. It's a skilled position where domain experience counts for a lot. More to the world than the Bay Area FAANGs and wannabes.
Per every other comment, there are jobs for DBAs at all ends of the intensity spectrum.
Just a counterpoint to consider: Start-ups are a dirty fraction of the private sector. They burn through people to achieve short-term goals and reach IPO or takeover. They offset this wear and tear with direct remuneration and options. Most private sector work isn't X10 gigabros, it's real people doing a job, developing themselves and adding value to a long term business in a 9-5 setting. These jobs still exist.
Telling someone to stack shelves because they don't want to work at a start-up is contemptible.