Over the last year, I’ve been asked numerous times when I’m plan to retire. This question has come from friends, parents of kids I coach, coworkers at Redgate, and even from Microsoft. A few people have asked about my succession plans for leaving, as I have a public site at SQL Server Central, and the charity in SQL Saturday. I’d like those things to continue past my time, so I am thinking about how to do that. I already have plans to hand off T-SQL Tuesday next year to someone else.
No worries, I’m not retiring soon. I have quite a few years left, though a decade is probably the outer range for me.
Randolph West retired from Microsoft, and perhaps from tech. We’ll see, and I hope his writing efforts go so well that he makes that a new career. I love reading, and we always need great writers. I wish him the best and hope his endeavors are successful. However, I’m going to miss him, as he has made the docs for SQL Server so much better, and we’ve corresponded about my PRs many times over the years. I have a hit-and-miss acceptance rate, and often, Randolph made my edits better.
In any case, making a big change in your life is hard. Whether this is career or personal, I’ve seen many people struggle with big changes. I’ve seen many, many more people be afraid to make a big change, often wishing they could but continuing along their current path anyway. That continuation often involves a lot of stress and many complaints, which is why I constantly advise people to make a plan, build their skills, and then make a change.
Whether you’re planning for retirement, a new job, maybe even a vacation, it pays to ensure your world is set for someone else to take over. Even if you don’t leave, having things organized, scheduled, planned, maintained, etc. makes your job easier every day. This doesn’t mean everything is automated, though automations are helpful. Routines that are documented, protocols that catch and handle exceptions (automated or not), clean boundaries between tasks, even clear communication- these are the things that ensure that your job runs smoothly. Often we create these habits that we internalize and (mostly) consistently execute, but we could be better and smoother with a little effort. Especially with AI agents (helping and watching, with approval, not doing all the work independently).
I saw someone say recently that it’s not just death and taxes that are inevitable. Change is also something you can count on. I think working with the idea of change helps us prepare for it, whether it comes sooner or later.
I’m working on setting up continuity for the things I want to live past me, which are both inside of work and outside of it. Especially things for my family, where I want to document how things around the ranch work in case they need to take over.
Steve Jones
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