Oracle Database Discussions

This might not be the right place to post this, but I found no better.

I am a production support DBA working for a huge financial firm. We, a team of 3-4 DBAs, support 8 production deployments of a critical application. Each of the production applications have a stack of associated non-prod deployments which we also support.I am an application DBA and do not support core database activities.

On an average, I work 10-12 hours on the weekdays and then 3 out of the 4 weekends in a month. I am on-call for a weekend in a month where I am usually called 3-4 times. And atleast two of the other three weekends, usually have some production deployments that I need to support because of me having worked on them in non-prod.

For instance, I was on-call the Christmas and New year's week and had to be under house-arrest to be able to respond quickly to issues. And, there were several issues due to year-end processing.

Because of the amount of work we have, we cant afford to be given any time off as compensation for our extra hours. Even if I am given time off on the weekdays as compensation, what should I do alone at home on the weekdays when the rest of the world is working?

I called my friend who is an Oracle DBA for a huge insurance company and he said he had similar working conditions.

I am 27 years old and these years wont come back. I love Oracle DBA but this is too much of a sacrifice. Do you have similar lives? If so, Why did you choose them? In my case, I never emphatized with an Oracle DBA's life and sacrifices before considering this career. Therefore, I made a bad decision.