Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Book Review – The Checklist Manifesto

    77693778[1] Andy Warren recommended The Checklist Manifesto to me and after seeing his review, I decided to grab it. It’s written by a surgeon, and starts with a few stories of how people were saved in the ER by some amazing teamwork.

    The book then goes into a discussion on how complex the world is and how we have so much knowledge that we constantly struggle to apply it correctly. Many mistakes in medicine, law, and other fields are often the result of the inability of professionals to apply this knowledge at the right time. We have a data deluge, and he proposes a solution.

    A checklist.

    Not a step by step process, but more a few simple things that you should be sure to do when an event occurs. Using the complex processes of flying planes, building skyscrapers, and even investing, he shows that this doesn’t just apply to medicine, and really makes you rethink the way complex systems should be implemented.

    It’s a great books, and one that I highly recommend you read, especially if you deal with complex systems.

  • Do You Talk Salary in the Interview?

    This is a reprinted editorial from August 2, 2005. It is being republished as Steve is on vacation.

    A friend recently interviewed someone in his company for another position. The internal candidate knows the salary ranges and the position in relation to their current spot. There was a screening by HR and an interview and then a follow up from HR with the candidate. During the follow up, the candidate told HR that the salary wasn’t high enough and that they weren’t interested unless the position could be moved.

    Suffice it to say that my friend was rather upset. He’d spent quite a bit of time on this person and all of it could have been avoided if the salary question had been brought up informally before the interview in the screening or in the hallway. However, he didn’t think the interview was the place to bring it up.

    I’ve felt, or maybe just learned, that I want to bring this up early on in the process. Knowing the salary range on an initial phone interview or contact is something I need to get out of the way because it has at times impacted my decision to proceed. I’m not sure that bringing it up in the interview is a bad thing, however. If there’s no phone interview and someone brings you in, ask at the end of the interview.

    My thought is that if you’ve impressed someone, they might move the range. If not, then you both know this is going nowhere.

    Money is a strange addition to an interview. Lots of times the person making the hiring decision has to make some decision on the offer, but it’s not something they relish doing. Making a decision that affects the person’s life is tough and trying to balance the value you perceive in this candidate alongside those existing employees is hard. I’m sure that’s why most people like having definite ranges that they can fit a person into.

    I never enjoyed making a financial decision for someone, especially determining their salary. My preference is to interview them and give my opinion to someone else to make the offer.

    Steve Jones

  • I’m a Midnight DBA

    Well, not really. However when I was recently up in Seattle, Jen and Sean McCown contacted me about being on their show and doing an interview. I agreed, and we met late, as in starting around 9:30pm one night, to do a sit down and interview.

    It was totally off the cuff, and I had fun with it. You can check out out here: Steve Jones in the House

  • Windows Phone 7

    The Windows Phone 7 (WP7) devices are out, and recently at conferences all around there were a  number of people sporting the new devices and blogging, tweeting, and more about their new toys. Since I tend to know many people that work in the Microsoft world, there was a lot more buzz about the phone at recent events than I’ve seen elsewhere. It seems that finally Windows phones are a worthy competitor to the Android and iPhone devices.

    A good friend of mine, a Windows infrastructure guru, sent me this early review of WP7, with the idea that it might convince me to switch from my iPhone and give it a try. That’s not likely to happen anytime soon as I like my iPhone and don’t really see a compelling reason to change. To me the important thing is the platform and the coverage. While I get decent, not great, coverage from T-Mobile, I am tempted to switch to Sprint or Verizon. If they had an iPhone, I’d move tomorrow.

    The platform is the bigger deal for me. I had an Android phone, and while I liked it, the platform wasn’t mature. There were relatively few applications that I wanted and many were not stable. Things have changed, but I’m still not sure it’s quite mature enough for me. WP7 might get there, but right now I am sure its platform is much less mature than the others. We’ll see if Microsoft can change that.

    One thing in the review that I found very, very interesting was in part 9 of the review. The author mentions that WP7 is changing the game by understanding that the user is the center of the device, not the applications, and it seeks to better blend the core data, the information the user has across different applications. It’s an interesting idea that the data a person has (photos, music, contacts, etc.) should be overlaid across applications. The data is the most important thing to me and finding ways to better integrate it is important to me.

    I don’t know what many of you think of WP7, but it might be worth taking a look if you want a new smartphone. And if you don’t have a smartphone, I’d encourage you to look at them. I know that all the major platforms (WP7, Android, iOS) have made me much more productive over the last few years.

    Steve Jones