One DBA's Ongoing Search for Clarity in the Middle of Nowhere


*or*

Yet Another Andy Writing About SQL Server

Showing posts with label HostingDotCom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HostingDotCom. Show all posts

Monday, March 31, 2014

We Are Hiring!

My employer Ntirety (a division of HOSTING) is currently looking for multiple SQL Server DBA's.  As you have probably seen from me on Twitter (or on this blog) previously, I joined Ntirety last November as a 100% work-from-home Senior SQL Server DBA.

Ntirety is based out of Boston, but we have WFH employees across the country.  We provide MSSQL, Oracle, and mySQL services, both as a managed service provider that works with clients for day-to-day production support and ongoing architecture work and as a professional service provider that works with clients on a project-by-project basis.  My group is the Managed Services group (and this is where all of these positions are.)

In Managed Services, we provide 24/7 support to clients of all shapes and sizes on things as simple as failed backups and maintenance jobs and as complicated as transactional replication and failover clustering.  We consult with our clients on plans to expand their infrastructure, implement Disaster Recovery, and migrate from one SQL Server version to another (just to provide a few examples).  While we generally work 8-5 local time, we do provide 24/7 on-call with a regular DBA rotation and a service desk in front of the on-call to handle basic items without paging the DBA.

Some of our clients have their own DBA teams, and we partner with those teams to provide expertise and extra hands, while other clients have no local DBA at all, and therefore use us for all of their database needs.

In the interests of full disclosure, Ntirety was recently acquired by HOSTING.  HOSTING is a networking and infrastructure managed services provider out of Colorado that saw Ntirety as a strategic acquisition since they did not have any database services in their portfolio.  We have been told that Ntirety will function "business as usual" as a division of HOSTING.

The MSSQL Managed Services team currently has the following *four* openings:
  • Mid-Senior SQL Server DBA (must be within New England area) - 5+ years experience (prefer 8+ years experience) with the ability to travel to Boston weekly.  Technically this position can be WFH, but there is a need to travel roughly weekly to the offices of a new Ntirety client located in South Boston, so you would still need to be located in the general Boston area.
  • SQL Server DBA - 8+ years experience, with the ability to WFH from anywhere in the United States (we do not explicitly exclude outside the US as far as I know, but a large majority of our clients are in the US time zones so there is a limitation in that way.) << NOTE - it was pointed out to me that we do indeed have a few clients outside the US, so I changed this from "all of our clients" to "a large majority of our clients"
  • SQL Server DBA - 8+ years experience, with the ability to WFH from anywhere in the United States (we do not explicitly exclude outside the US as far as I know, but a large majority of our clients are in the US time zones so there is a limitation in that way.) << NOTE - it was pointed out to me that we do indeed have a few clients outside the US, so I changed this from "all of our clients" to "a large majority of our clients"
  • SQL Server DBA (Dedham MA) - 5+ years experience (prefer 8+ years experience) - this position is required to work in the Dedham (Boston) office daily.
One of these positions is a refill of a previous employee, and three of them are new positions due to company growth.

The links with the positions above will take you to jobvite.com, the site our corporate recruiter uses.  You can apply through that site or by passing your resume to me.

Please contact me via Twitter message or DM (@DBA_ANDY), LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/dbaandy)  or via email (agalbraith@ntirety.com or andyhusker@gmail.com) with any questions you may have about Ntirety, about our Managed Services team, or about any of the particular positions.  The duties of each position are basically identical other than the point of whether you can WFH or not.  The mid-level DBAs and senior-level DBAs perform basically the same client work other than the Seniors performing mentoring and assistance for the Mid-levels.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

A New Day at #Ntirety

We - the rank-and-file employees at Ntirety - received word yesterday that we had been acquired by Hosting, a cloud and network services provider based out of Denver, CO.  Apparently Hosting did not have a database services division and decided it made more sense to buy one than to build one.  Ntirety had been looking for a partner or a purchaser and liked what they saw at Hosting.


 As always, the employees in the middle of such a change are the ones who have to make the day-to-day operations appear as seamless as possible to each other and to our clients.

While I have never been in this situation myself, (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night)  I have had many friends who have gone through this scenario, and most of them have ended one of two ways:

Mass Carnage, where the purchasing firm becomes a conquering overlord and dismembers the purchased firm in a quick and painful fashion
http://www.flickr.com/photos/topcat_angel/2166383816/
Friendly Cooperation, where the purchasing firm basically leaves the purchased firm alone and the two companies help each other succeed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vblibrary/8471702001/
Unfortunately, for many corporate partnerships/acquisitions, the first option seems more common than the second, but in our case it feels like we are actually in the second scenario.

The most comforting thing we learned yesterday in the "Congratulations - you work for someone else effective last Friday!" presentation is that our CEO, Michael Corey, is staying on as president of "Ntirety, a division of Hosting."  Another positive thing is that there will be no staff reductions *and* that all currently open positions will remain open and be filled. (I had to ask that during the presentation because I have seen that first-hand before - divisions juggle and while no one gets cut suddenly all of the open positions disappear, leaving you just as short-handed as if people had been cut!)

I am always cautious (a good trait in a DBA, right?) but looking back the morning after I think this will work out well for all involved - and as an employee, I am betting my career and my family's well-being on it.