Database administration - is not a fire and forget task. It dismays me greatly that so many developers do not see beyond the code in their IDE, and think they can just bring a DBA for a few days, and all will be well. It may also surprise some developers just how much return on investment a good DBA can bring - they can and do learn about the business, the data, the processes and can then help get the best from the database as a result of that knowledge. But they can also serve as an SME on the database engine technology, perhaps pointing out where it is not being used in the right or optimal way. The biggest gains in performance generally come when they help a team of developers who were treating the database as a dumb data store and not making any use of the features offered.