Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • What Have You Done Lately Outside of Work?

    I was chatting with someone recently that’s younger than me. They’ve got a good job and had some success learning, but they felt like their career wasn’t progressing fast enough. This person still wanted to grow their career and their income. That’s the place many people find themselves.

    This individual was asking my advice since they thought I’d had some success and were looking for me to share some of the things that worked for me. I asked them this question: What have you done lately outside of work for your career?

    They hadn’t done really anything, which is fine. This person has a partner, hobbies, and has found some balance in life. They were enjoying themselves, which is great. I love people having balance in life.

    However.

    If you want to move faster in your career than others, you have to do more. I don’t mean work 90 hours a week or spend every night on a project. However, I grew my career with work outside of work. Brent Ozar did the same thing. Many of the speakers you see at conferences and Microsoft MVPs did the same thing. They put in extra hours to grow their skills and knowledge.

    I know lots of you work a lot, and you have family/friend/spiritual commitments. I get that. However, I’m sure most of you aren’t working the coal miner’s schedule. If you have hobbies or fun time, that’s great, but can you carve out some time from those to invest in your career? Brent has time management skills advice, and I’ve written about this as well. Doctors, lawyers, even auto mechanics work on their skills when they aren’t getting paid by someone. They do this as an investment in the future.

    As I move towards the end of my career, I do less (especially this year), but I still read some books that help grow my skills in areas Redgate cares about. I do some training for coaching to improve there. I do less for my career than I used to, but I still do something outside of work.

    Answer my question today. What have you done lately outside of work for your career?

    Steve Jones

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

  • A New Word: Aubadoir

    aubadoir – n. the outworldly atmosphere just before 5 am, when the bleary melodrama of an extremely late night becomes awkwardly conflated with the industrious flourescence of a very early morning.

    I haven’t seem 5am from the previous day side in a long time. I just don’t go out much, and almost never past midnight. However, I did have a late night recently after vacation. I flew home on a Sunday night, with a delayed flight. This has become all too common, but in this case it was tough.

    I landed around 1230am. I got bags and drove home, getting into bed between 130a and 200a. I had a 9am flight, so I was up at 6am to pull out some laundry from my bag, throw in a few new clothes, and then head back to the airport.

    Getting home and remembering that I had to be up in a few hours certainly had me feeling some audadoir.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • Webinar: Unlock the Full Potential of Flyway to Achieve Automated Database Releases

    On Aug 22, 2023, I’m co-hosting a webinar with Anderson Rangel, Redgate Solution Engineer in Brisbane. You can register here for the 11am AEST webinar.

    No, I’m not going to Brisbane. I’d love to, but I’ll be in Colorado and hopefully I keep things straight that this is the day before for me. I’ve got a few reminders to keep me on track that I’ll be speaking after dinner in the US.

    We’re going to cover the ways in which Flyway can help you automate your database releases. If you haven’t looked at Flyway recently, or ever, this is the webinar for you in the Australia / New Zealand region. We will look at why Flyway helps and some of the new features and changes Redgate has added with our many releases. If you look at the release notes, we release a lot, often in response to feedback from our customers.

    Join us on the 22nd and learn how Flyway and Flyway Desktop can help you prevent the database from being a blocker to adopting DevOps for your software.

    Register today

  • The 2023 Redgate UK DevOps Roadshow

    Years ago Redgate did some traveling events under the SQL in the City brand. These were a lot of fun and kind of amazing. One of the longer tours also made me realize I would hate being in a musical band and touring.

    However, I enjoyed the events and while we’ve moved on from that brand, we have a new one

    The Redgate DevOps Roadshow

    The UK edition of this kicks off in September 2023 and I’ll be in these cities:

    I’ll be traveling with one of our Sales Engineers (Chris Hawkins, I hope), and doing will day sessions for customers on the Flyway suite of tools. You’ll get some practice, learn how things work, and get answers to your questions. Hopefully that day, but if Chris and I don’t know, we’ll query the brilliant engineers back in Cambridge.

    If you’ve ever attended a Redgate event, you know we put on a nice show, we take care of you, you’ll have plenty to eat and drink, and we have fun.

    Hopefully I’ll see some of you in September in the UK.

    Keep watching as well as we’re working on a US edition of this. I’ll do some of these, while Grant and Ryan will do others. I’ll keep my schedule updated as I get more info.