Warwick Rudd lays out the bitter truth:
That has been the problem for as long as there have been database administrators, and I don’t think we’ve ever really solved it.
Here’s what I mean. A DBA doing the job properly produces nothing you can see. The environment is up. The queries return. Nobody rings anybody at two in the morning. And because nothing appears to be happening, the people looking after it start to look like a line of cost with nothing attached to it.
In the traditional sense of how businesses think about this, they’re right. Nothing a DBA does makes money. What a DBA does is save money, which is a much harder thing to put in front of a board.
Warwick’s post moves in the direction of managed services. I’d move in the direction of understanding and vocalizing the benefits you bring to the table as a DBA.