Power

To the rest of the world, a database administrator's power might be compared to a AAA battery: consistent, long-lasting, and low-wattage. But, to their employers and co-workers, the DBAs are wizards. No, better than wizards—they're Google.

Before Google, people had to search through common office files—by hand—to find the facts and figures they needed. The amount of paper cuts sustained in the pre-Google era was mind-boggling.

 
The dark days before database administrators. (Source)

Because those storage and recall processes were tedious, there was an astonishing amount of wasted time. If even one person messed up the alphabetical order when they returned the files that they had used, it took the next poor sucker hours to find the figures they were looking for. It took so long that once they were found, they were pretty much out of date. It's a wonder that the world kept turning all that time.

Database administrators are the Google within their own company universe. They're the only on-ramp to the company's information superhighway. They keep the business hitting green lights at every intersection instead of getting stuck on the freeway in rush hour traffic. When others worry that a large new contract will bogart the bandwidth, the database admin is way ahead of that nonsense with new equipment, new configurations, and larger capacity to handle the load.

The truth is, even though your co-workers are in awe of what you do, they aren't even aware of all the planning, testing, and maneuvering you have to do behind the scenes. To keep the flow of information going, you have to anticipate problems, write code, and fight off hacker attackers of all sorts in order to maintain the mainframe and keep your precious data secure.

Your power is the real kind and you use it for the good of your employer. In this day and age, the company would be nowhere without your 21st-century skills.