A database chum recently told me that he was giving up the drudgery of being a front-line DBA in order to become a database consultant. My face contorted in the rictus of polite grief. ‘That’s very sad for you; I’m so sorry that you are being ‘transitioned”.

There is an established set of advice given out by HR people when they hand people their cards. I was about to quote from it such gems as “Care for yourself by eating well, exercising, and resting when needed. Avoid stimulants (such as caffeine, chocolate and nicotine) and depressants (such as alcohol)”. 

He then surprised me by protesting that he had resigned, and he was looking forward to his new career.

Why my concern? Surely, this is a glorious career progression?

I should start by defining what a database consultant is. Nowadays, the process of job-title inflation has progressed to the extent that even my barber calls himself a Hair management consultant. There was a time that ‘Consultant’ meant a professional person who provides advice and assistance to his or her colleagues in a particular area of expertise. Sounds great doesn’t it?

No real IT consultancy is as glamorous a job as you might imagine, though. Many a child has watched Superman, Emergency Ward 10 or the Lone Ranger, and dreamed that, once they are grown-up , they would sweep into the site of a crisis and make things right. The life of a database consultant would seem irresistible.

Tonto: “Well Kemo Sabe, you sure told them of the consequences of using the GUID datatype for a primary key didn’t you?”

The Lone Ranger: (Solemnly patting his trusty white stallion) “Sometimes, a man has gotta do what a man has gotta do. ”

(At this, the Lone Ranger leapt on the saddle and departed, shouting,) “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!”

DBAs and Developers (in wonderment): “Who was that masked man anyway?”

Like Little Red Riding Hood, the simple moral tales contained in such epics as The Fugitive, the cowboy B movie, Spiderman or Star Trek make few nods to reality.

I have to admit that there is, for example, fun to be had in discovering that a production database has its MDF file on a network drive, but generally the life of a consultant isn’t a shoot-em-up. You will have an urge to whoop with joy, gloat about how easily you found the problem, and then cast aspersions on the intelligence of the person who did such a thing. Don’t do it, since your actions will have catastrophic consequences to someone, probably yourself. A cast to the face much like the solemnity of the undertaker is required. Laughing at the footling nature of the errors you identify is as tasteless as laughing at the predicament of the late departed lamented loved ones.

The other misconception of a consultant’s role is that he needs extraordinary intelligence or knowledge. In reality, any form of smartness is a handicap to the job. I once pointed out to the owner of an exceptionally successful IT consultancy that his foot soldiers dressed impeccably in charcoal suits and black shoes, and could give faultless Powerpoint presentations, but they were completely lacking in any understanding of IT, and proceeded to tell their clients what they knew already whilst charging exorbitantly for the privilege. He smiled bashfully and proudly, thanking me for the compliment, saying that this was by far the best way of doing it: the client got a consistent quality of service, and he never had to deal with prima-donnas who became a nuisance by threatening to leave unless they had a pay rise. His consultants were never tempted to irritate the client by bragging about their knowledge and expertise, since they didn’t have any, and, more to the point, consultants were always told what the technical problems were, and they just had to tackle the over-riding one: that the organisation was too gridlocked by vested interests and fragmentation to be able to decide how to tackle the technical issues: What they wanted was a smooth and socially-aware arbitrator to un-freeze the decision-making process without ruffling feathers. If they needed technical support, the consultancy always plenty of geeks back at base to help over the phone. These geeks were never let anywhere near a customer site, since they were mostly entirely socially-inept, bad-tempered and quarrelsome. More to the point, his clients didn’t want heroes.

There is some truth in what he said. For a start, everyone generally knows what the problem is before you get there, but someone from outside the organisation must tactfully arbitrate amongst the various factional interests within the organisation to put matters right. All you really need to do is to interview all the people who are involved with the problem, write a learned-sounding report that identifies how to put it right, and who should do it, whilst tactfully ascribing the blame to fickle fate, or a contractor. Nobody will then shake their heads in wonderment, asking ‘Who was that masked man anyway?’ Once your task is done, the curse is placed on you, and you must leave for the next job.

What is this curse I mention? It is the curse upon the bearer of bad news. If you steer too close to the truth, you will inevitably make parts of the organisation look ridiculous. It doesn’t make good commercial sense to make your client look ridiculous. It is difficult to reach such a state of conflict over technical issues that warrant a consultant’s arbitration without some closet foolishness within the management. In order to retain the client, you have to borrow techniques from psychotherapy in order to rebuild the self-esteem of the management. My technique is to drop in phrases such as ‘It is very difficult for someone within an organisation to get a broad perspective on their technical decision-making process’, or ‘It was a bold and perceptive decision to choose a NoSQL database, which could easily have paid dividends’.

Whenever I have made a good relationship with a client, it has been because I’ve taken the time and energy to work out how they came to find themselves in the predicament that precipitated the crisis. This can help to avoid all sorts of embarrassment. I remember one guy who started out work as a consultant who was carried out of the headquarters building of a major computer company, struggling vainly between two security guards, legs thrashing impotently in mid-air. I suspect that he’d read too many Marvel comics as a youth, and bought into the dream of the underwear-over-the-trousers approach to consultancy. When he’d come across a ridiculous-looking technical problem in the first week, he’d expostulated to the CTO ‘Who the hell was the daft idiot who did this?’ ‘Me, actually’, replied the CTO, reaching for the phone.

If you work full-time as a consultant, you will eventually lose the edge of your technical skills. Technical excellence is hard-won through struggle with recalcitrant technology under pressure. It can’t be picked up purely from reading. Most of us retain, especially, the knowledge that is gained through the sweat of purposeful activity. To work as a consultant, you are on a slow and easy downhill descent, with your feet off the pedals.

Most professions have been able to provide career structures that allow for technical excellence to be rewarded and encouraged. Information Technology hasn’t yet come to grips fully with the idea of offering a good technical career path, despite the blueprint offered in the brilliant, and well-reasoned book ‘The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering’ by Fred Brooks. Until that time, we’re in a quandary. Unless we, who enjoy doing technical stuff , are able to swim against the tide, we are faced with either playing career ‘snakes-and-ladders’ in IT management, or hitting the road as an IT Consultant.