10,000 hours to expertise or why senior DBAs normally have 6 years experience

Watching this video presentation by Malcolm Gladwell at New Yorker 2012 conference.

Interesting. As a contractor you normally work on a 220 day working year.

220 x 8 hours = 1760 hours per year.

If you use the 10,000 hours to expertise that is 5.68 years. This is interesting given that most jobs roles advertised as "Senior DBAs" want at least 5 more like 6 years.

Now I would argue that no DBA does studied DBA work for 8 hours, 220 days per year, unless you are working at places like Pythian, which provide more exposure to DBA work, should mean you are going to become an expert sooner.
The other way to get exposure to different work is to change jobs every couple of years. Normally when the job gets boring as you have been proactive and solved all the hard (and easy) problems.

I was listening to another version of this loosely based on the idea of compounding interest. Essentially if you spend some amount of extra time your area of focus compared to another in your field for example:

if you spend 1 hour extra per week per year, your calculation looks like this:
(220 x 8) + (52 x 1) = 1812 hours per year, reaching expertise in 5.5 years.

if you spend 2 hours extra per week per year, your calculation looks like this:
(220 x 8) + (52 x 2) = 1864 hours per year, reaching expertise in 5.3 years.

This might not seem like much, but as you become better at your focus, your training should remain challenging, pushing the envelope. So the expert level you are handling more complex problems and solutions quicker and more easily.

This raises some interesting questions,

1. Is the burnout, churn in senior DBAs leaving to become landscape designers related to the Alexander factor "no more worlds to conquer"?
2. Do some people realize what it takes to be an expert and jump between roles because they won't invest the time for whatever reason?
   
3. Once you reach the level of being an expert, in most occupations that means you are normally very well paid, in the top x% of salaries for the profession. Are you there yet?

The other interesting point made by Gladwell in his presentation was the underlining factor of stubbornness. Maybe stubbornness is a trait which we should interview for, in tandem with the ability to make jumps when we reach a dead end.

Are you stubborn?

Have Fun

Paul

p.s. this means that I have a long way to go as a writer, given my blog production is one article per month.