Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • A Break During a Long Trip

    It’s a day off for me, so why am I blogging?

    I actually wrote this a couple weeks ago as I was prepping for this trip. I’m in Amsterdam today, taking a few days with my wife.

    I came over to the UK on 1 Sep and I won’t go home until 16 Sept. With a very long trip, I decided to break this up in the middle. My wife joined me on the 7th, and she will go back on the 14th. It’s a vacation for us both from work, and taking advantage of the work trip means that I don’t feel quite so worn out from a long trip.

    If I’d stuck around this week in Cambridge and worked, which was something I thought about, I’d be pretty tired when I went home. Plus, I would really be missing my wife. We are rarely apart for more than a week, and it’s hard when we are.

    Not everyone travels for work, and many of us have other family commitments. However, my wife and I are always looking for opportunities to travel, and when things line up with work, we try to take advantage of them.

    Hopefully your day is going as well as mine.

  • A New Word: Vulture Shock

    vulture shock – n. the nagging sense that no matter how many days you spend in a foreign country, you never quite manage to step foot in it – instead floating high above the culture like a diver over a reef, too dazzled by its exotic quirks to notice its problems and complexities and banalities, while drawing from the heavy tank of assumptions that you carry on your back wherever you go.

    I guess not technically a word, but two. However, as someone that has enjoyed and loves traveling, this hits home.

    My wife and I have made it a point to visit other countries, aiming to see a new one each year. In the last five years, despite the pandemic, we managed 11 countries outside the US, perhaps 5 new ones.

    As we travel, we’ve tried not to do too many tourist things. We do a few, but we’ve enjoyed renting an AirBnb in a neighborhood and living for a week like we might if we resided there. It’s been neat to walk around, to shop in groceries, to experience life in small, quiet sections of cities and towns.

    At the same time, I often feel foreign. I’ve grown up as an American for most of my life, and its culture is very ingrained in me. My habits, my languages, my preferences, my food, it’s very colored by my US upbringing. While I do try to experiment and try new things, everything I do is compared against my American-centric thoughts.

    An example. In Seattle recently, we went to a Filipino diner for breakfast, where I had Sinangag and Longganisa with eggs. I enjoyed it, and I need to make some, but it was strange not to have a more American breakfast, to not have something sweet, to not have a more salty sausage. I was in the culture, but not in it.

    I’ve felt the same thing in Greece, in France, in Portugal, in India, and other places. Even i the UK I feel somewhat immersed in and outside of the culture. Floating above it like a diver over a reef.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • The Team You Want

    Brent wrote about what a good DBA looks like and challenged people to write a testimonial for them. There are some great comments on the post, and some funny ones. It’s worth a read when you need a break from other work. I especially chuckled at the picture Brent used. I think ours was better.

    That got me thinking: what do I want in a team? Or maybe, who do I want in a team?

    I have a great team now, but we are fairly distributed and work independently. I have great co-workers at Redgate, though I don’t often work that closely with any of them. I work often with some of them, for specific things, but usually it’s coordination rather than the tight, back and forth I’ve often had with technical teams.

    I realized at some point in my career that I was often being asked to do the same work. I needed to manage systems. I needed to write and tune queries (or rewrite those for others). I needed to manage security. Most importantly, I needed to find solutions to the constant set of questions, problems, and demands from others in my organization. I learned how to teach myself things, how to research, how to test, and how to talk to others. I became good at clarifying what people needed and then finding a way to meet those needs. I think I turned into part of the Incredible DBA Team, even though often it was a team of just me.

    The characteristics Brent talked about were important to me.

    A little. I have always felt that I could work with others if they want to learn from me and teach me things. They have to want to collaborate and get things done as a team. That led me to worry more about who I worked with than what the job was. If the compensation was good, then the decision to take a job often came down to who would I work with. After all, the work was often very similar.

    Think about your situation. What do you want to see in your coworkers? I’m sure you want people that you get along with and carry their weight. Maybe you want to learn from them. Maybe you want to be able to teach them. Maybe you have specific skills you wish were stronger on your team.

    Leave a comment and let us know what your ideal team looks like. As always, if you want to leave an anonymous comment, send me a PM on the site with what you’d like posted in the discussion.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Future Data Driven is Coming Sept 27 for FREE

    The Future Data Driven 2023 virtual conference is coming on September 27. Register today and save a note in your calendar.

    I have been honored to speak at this event in the past. I’m not speaking this year as I’ve been buried with work and travel and need a break. However, I see a great schedule (scroll down) with some sessions that I will try to watch. A few on my mind:

    I can get information in other ways, but a conference is a good chance to hear what someone else has learned and shares with me. Even if I listen in the background, I’m learning some new things.

    There are lots of other great sessions, so register today.