I had eerily similar experiences from an older DBA guy, who was going through college in his 40's while working away. He knew his stuff, helped a lot optimizing the ETL process, but could turn nasty in an instant, and had a major chip on his shoulder about younger analysts with college degrees.
Only thing, was this guy had zero programming experience outside SQL and Bash. Anytime he had a question in a meeting about some calling Java process, he used to wait until the meeting was finished and then grab five minutes with me privately to ask about whatever. So there was this perceived weakness that his professional persona "knew everything", which meant he couldn't ask fundamental questions or try to (publicly) learn things outside his domain.
In the end, we moved to Amazon Redshift, and he was progressively moved into a smaller and smaller role, where now he just curates 2-year old JIRA tickets. Probably knows he can't get a similarly well-paying gig elsewhere now.
Only thing, was this guy had zero programming experience outside SQL and Bash. Anytime he had a question in a meeting about some calling Java process, he used to wait until the meeting was finished and then grab five minutes with me privately to ask about whatever. So there was this perceived weakness that his professional persona "knew everything", which meant he couldn't ask fundamental questions or try to (publicly) learn things outside his domain.
In the end, we moved to Amazon Redshift, and he was progressively moved into a smaller and smaller role, where now he just curates 2-year old JIRA tickets. Probably knows he can't get a similarly well-paying gig elsewhere now.