<p>I hear this term coming up a lot and was wondering if someone who has done work with "Big Data" might be able to clue us in on what these types of jobs are like. Is it mostly statistics, programming, etc.</p>
<p>Wiki is always useful for an overview [Big</a> data - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data]Big”>Big data - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Big data is being able to process huge amounts of data and extract the most important information for analytics. Big Data has emerged because the traditional databases (namely Oracle & SQL Server) cannot handle that much data.</p>
<p>Even I had to get on the Big Data bandwagon. As a long time Oracle DBA/Developer, I saw the move towards “big data” technology at NSA…so I went and obtained training in Hadoop and Cloudbase/Accumulo. </p>
<p>Recent developments now have ‘R’ (statistical programming) used with Hadoop to get even better “data streaming” performance. I plan on taking the U-Washington’s Data Science program soon.</p>
<p>Does Big Data involve a lot of programming?</p>
<p>How is it different than being a database administrator? </p>
<p>Is Big Data more like an IT position than a developer/programmer position?</p>
<p>What are the hours like?</p>