Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Is This a Good DBA Job Description?

    I saw this on one of the syndicated SQL Server Central blogs: Job Description of a DBA. This is mostly a list of things, but it covers a lot of the general types of things that many of us expect a DBA to do. However, my question is whether you think this is a good description for a job opening. Would you ask someone to fill this list of things?

    Maybe a better question is whether you could use this to evaluate candidates, and how would you go about asking questions or gauging a fit based on this. Perhaps you should ask yourself how you evaluate others and if there is a good way to rate them against a list of daily tasks.

    To be fair, I know most job descriptions often include many “desires” along with “needs.” That can be maddening to many job seekers, as they don’t feel qualified. What I’ve found when building descriptions is that a wider variety of people provide input for what they would like in an employee than just the hiring manager. The hiring manager might weigh these items differently and accept someone who doesn’t know replication well, even though replication is used if the candidate is skilled at query tuning. I would say expert, but how do you judge that? Most of us would probably settle for someone who can improve queries even just a little bit.

    When I interview people, I want to know a few things. One is can I get along with them, as well as the rest of the team. This isn’t to discount technical skills, but we need to be a team. If we can’t get along, and maybe more importantly, disagree civilly, it’s hard to work together. We do need to bond, though that doesn’t need to be over a drink or sporting event. However, we might need to share a meal, so I hope we can enjoy a conversation for an hour.

    The other thing is that I need to see some effort and desire to succeed. I don’t need someone to be an expert, but I do need them to show an interest in helping our customers, whoever they are. Part of that is trying; part of that is getting to the end result. I see far too many people that don’t try to solve problems or care that there is someone waiting on a solution. I also see too many people unwilling to try and improve the environment, whether that’s a codebase or server configuration.  They might be good at their jobs, but I like to associate with people who want to make the world better. People who think forward, who ask questions, who under-promise and over-deliver.

    I think the job description I linked above is a good one, fairly comprehensive in scope, but lacking in lots of details. The devil is often in the details, especially in how hard someone might work to complete these tasks, and if they would work to do so to meet their commitments, but also do so in a quality manner. And, of course, under pressure. Most of us know that things break, and when the thing is a database, a good DBA is invaluable in restoring service under pressure.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • A New Word, err Phrase: loss of backing

    loss of backing– n. an abrupt collapse of trust in yourself – having abandoned a resolution, surrendered to your demons, or squandered an opportunity you swore you’d take seriously this time – which resets your expectations and makes it that much harder to guarantee that your word is worth anything, even to yourself.

    Perhaps this is maturity, or maybe it’s giving up some strong sense of integrity. I prefer to think that I’m more kind to myself and accepting of my frailty. I rarely promise anything, to myself or others. I make best effort attempts, but I know that the world is chaotic and I’m imperfect. I can’t predict the future and I know that I might change my mind, circumstances might evolve, or perhaps my initial impetus to do something makes no sense.

    I try not to make too many resolutions, but make efforts to improve. I look for the DevOps way of experimenting and learning, accepting some failure, but not making absolute promises about things. Across the pandemic I also learned that sometimes I have to just take care of myself rather than continuously driving to some arbitrary goal.

    I miss days of working out, when I spent years not doing that. I make poor choices of food. I sometimes work too little or too hard, at least according to my standards. I sometimes need to take a break, and give myself a break, from life and other commitments, so I miss things, cancel plans, or just appreciate the break in life.

    Perhaps it’s age as well, but I don’t feel a loss of backing in myself.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • Book Review: My Effin Life

    This is very off topic, but I’ve been a fan of Rush since I was about 12 years old. Their Moving Pictures

    This is a few thoughts on Geddy Lee’s memoir, My Effin’ Life.

    This is part of a series of book reviews I’ve done on my blog. You can see them all under the book reviews tag.

    Geddy is Jewish

    I might have known this, but I hadn’t really thought about it. The book opens with his thoughts on his parents, who were Holocaust survivors. The chapter of the book looks at his life as a child, memories of parents and sports growing, without a lot of music. The second talks religion and then the book goes into his parents’ journey and meeting in Poland, getting separated into concentration camps and being reunited.

    It’s a tough read for me, as I don’t love the WWII era, but it’s also amazing that they met and were reunited. There is some love there. This story must have affected Geddy, and he talks of going back to visit as an older man, taking his Mother with him.

    Early Rush

    I don’t think I knew how close Geddy and Alex were. They were friends in school, growing up and enjoying the music of the 60s. I didn’t realize how much of an influence some of the early bands (Cream, Yes, Eric Clapton) were for them. I also didn’t realize the forming, breaking, reforming that took place with a different drummer. I certainly didn’t know that the first Rush album was John Rutsey, who quit for various  reasons.

    The audition for Neil Peart is short, but it’s a fun story.

    A Long Marriage

    Like Bono, Geddy met his wife in school, and it’s been amazing they are together still.  They haven’t had, it appears, as smooth a marriage as Bono, partially from all the travel and distance that Geddy had with the band. He freely admits this, and also talks throughout the book about working on his marriage and getting counseling. An interesting admission.

    It also makes me realize I’d have been a poor rock star because I like being at home and spending time with my wife.

    The Journeys

    It’s interesting to hear about these three musicians growing and changing, being influenced, and partying hard. I saw some interviews at some point and thought these guys didn’t party as much as they were sports fans.

    Wrong. They partied a lot, and the book talks about their fondness for drugs, though not with the destruction and wildness (usually) of the Eagles, Motley Crue, Ozzy, etc.  They also found themselves influenced by Neil, who loved to read science fiction and fantasy, which influenced their music.

    They toured with Kiss and Led Zeppelin, things I hadn’t realized. I think most of my discovery of Rush was after Permanent Waves.

    It’s interesting to read how much they are on the road, and at the same time, how few places they went. They were mostly a US/Canada touring band, getting to Europe some, but not many other places. Neil didn’t like Japan, and is the shy one.

    I found the book interesting from a fan’s point of view, and I put some of the albums on as I read different parts of the book. I’d forgotten some music, and honestly, didn’t love the albums after Signals (as a 20-ish yr old) and stopped listening to them, but I’ve gone back and found I do enjoy some of the music, though the late 70s-80s remain my favorite era of the band.

    If you’re a fan, you might enjoy this book, learning a bit about the artists and their journey.

  • Assistants in the Age of AI

    When I started working for a living, there were secretaries in many organizations. These were people who actually did a lot of correspondence (written or verbal) and busy work for managers or executives. Over time, as email and computers became commonplace on desks, I saw fewer of these positions. As more people started to send email, we had to actually alter software to allow assistants to impersonate their bosses and manage the volume of communications that many of us deal with.

    We’re in a new age of assistants with the emergence of Generative AIs powered by LLMs that can appear to respond in a conversational style to requests and perform actions on our behalf. In this new era, will AIs function as old-style secretaries, handling simple, but important tasks? Are they the trusted helpers that secretaries used to be for many executives? Are we all going to have an assistant, and do we want one, or need one?

    There was a post on the role of AIs in this new world, and their ability to not only be a cheap, reliable assistant for many of us, but also a powerful tool for those that still have personal assistants helping them manage their workload. However, it’s not a tool that takes the place of a secretary, for many reasons mentioned in the post. It’s just a tool that can help manage some work, but isn’t really intelligent, empathetic, or able to discern subtleties that come from the context of the humans involved in a situation.

    In many ways, that’s what I see for Copilot-like AIs used by technical people. They are assistants, and they can help with tasks, but with general, tedious, common tasks. They are a better search engine, and they can handle small tasks, but they aren’t replacing talented people, and they certainly don’t always understand enough of the context of a particular situation. If a general or common solution works, AIs are good, but in terms of being efficient and optimal when solving subtle, complex problems, we still need a human to guide the AI and assess whether the response is appropriate.

    I am both enamored by AI, but also very skeptical that the technology will do more than provide faster searching for information and light guidance of options. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but I think that continuing to improve your own judgment while learning through experience will ensure that you not only are more valuable than an AI, but that you can use one effectively as a tool. A useful assistant, but one that you know to overrule when appropriate.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.