I stopped interviewing for SQL skill about 15 years ago. It is an easy skill to learn -- at least for the most useful topics. If one were to take a course in SQL it would be a ~1 week course full time (another couple weeks to include the basics of RDBMS). If i had a candidate with all the other qualifications (smarts, edu, domain knowledge, passion, curiosity, other skills, etc) but did not know SQL I would still hire her. The rationale being that I could send her to take the SQL class and in one week have the complete package.
> It’s made even worse if you happen to use more esoteric databases like Oracle that are well represented in some situations but aren’t nearly as popular in the broader data community.
Yikes, I have some bad news for you about what big companies in big industries use overwhelmingly. Startups use Postgres or NoSQL (or fancier, trendy stuff), enterprises use Oracle or SQL Server. Yes, we've all seen exceptions to that, on both sides, but in general it's still true: the core transactional systems that run the mission-critical applications at large enterprises almost invariably use Oracle, or SQL Server... or they never got off their mainframe.
Benn Stancil made an excellent post a few weeks ago about an analogous situation, about how people making cutting-edge analytics tools don't just underrate Microsoft, they tend to consider it laughable that they should learn anything from PowerBI or think about integration with the existing tools that dominate at enterprises - and fail to recognize just how big the install base is, and how ingrained market leaders like that are. Maybe I'm overreacting (because it's a sidenote on a larger point about interviewing that I agree with), but I think I'm sensing the same sort of thinking here, and it jumped out at me.
I stopped interviewing for SQL skill about 15 years ago. It is an easy skill to learn -- at least for the most useful topics. If one were to take a course in SQL it would be a ~1 week course full time (another couple weeks to include the basics of RDBMS). If i had a candidate with all the other qualifications (smarts, edu, domain knowledge, passion, curiosity, other skills, etc) but did not know SQL I would still hire her. The rationale being that I could send her to take the SQL class and in one week have the complete package.
> It’s made even worse if you happen to use more esoteric databases like Oracle that are well represented in some situations but aren’t nearly as popular in the broader data community.
Yikes, I have some bad news for you about what big companies in big industries use overwhelmingly. Startups use Postgres or NoSQL (or fancier, trendy stuff), enterprises use Oracle or SQL Server. Yes, we've all seen exceptions to that, on both sides, but in general it's still true: the core transactional systems that run the mission-critical applications at large enterprises almost invariably use Oracle, or SQL Server... or they never got off their mainframe.
Benn Stancil made an excellent post a few weeks ago about an analogous situation, about how people making cutting-edge analytics tools don't just underrate Microsoft, they tend to consider it laughable that they should learn anything from PowerBI or think about integration with the existing tools that dominate at enterprises - and fail to recognize just how big the install base is, and how ingrained market leaders like that are. Maybe I'm overreacting (because it's a sidenote on a larger point about interviewing that I agree with), but I think I'm sensing the same sort of thinking here, and it jumped out at me.
https://benn.substack.com/p/case-for-consolidation