Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Goal Progress for September 2021

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2021.

    Not a lot of progress in September. I think this is a bit of a symptom of life for me, as I find myself in a career lull as I get near the end of summer each year. Perhaps a learning item for me is to tackle more things earlier in the year, or later, as I find the end of the year slow.

    I’m also starting to think that my goals should be for part of a year, with a re-assessment at some point. Perhaps 2022 ought to be six month goals, or even 4 months goals and then create new ones, or leave some off.

    Current Grade: C-

    I’m leaving the same grade. Minor things accomplished. Mostly I think September was time away from work spent on life. A new car, chores before winter, and some time with my wife. No regrets here, other than my career stalled.

    Reading

    I did finish Lights Out, and I purchased Thanks for the Feedback. I opened it and got started. I also write a Lights Out review.

    Here’s the current progress:

    Technical Skills

    No real change here.  I have done much coding outside of work.

    Projects

    No real changes here. Minor updates, but not enough time spent on these items.

  • Daily Coping 29 Sep 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to try something different for exercise today, however small.

    My exercise routine for the last year has been roughly this:

    • Yoga 2-3 times a week
    • Weightlifting 1-2 times a week
    • Walking 2-3 times a week, often with weight lifting
    • Swimming 1x week
    • Snowboarding 1-2 times every couple weeks in winter
    • Hiking at times
    • yardwork/chores

    As a change, I decided to do a do some pilates. I had done some years ago, but haven’t done a class at all. My boss used to talk about doing some YouTube classes while traveling, so I decided to try this.

    I found Move with Nicole online, which was similar to yoga, but not quite the same. I did this 30 minute workout. Holy @#$!@#@!#, that was hard. I had to break a few times, and I found some muscles I don’t use enough.

    I may try to add one day a week of Pilates to my movement, but certainly I’ll be sticking with 20-30 minute sessions.

  • Daily Coping 28 Sep 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to extra water day. Drink a bit more than you usually do.

    I try to drink a decent amount of water, but I’ve gotten out of the habit at times. When the pandemic first locked things down, I started to fill 4 water bottles and leave them on my desk, with the goal of drinking them all each day.

    Slowly, I’ve gotten away from that. Today, I’m going back to that. Three large water bottles on the desk this morning.

    20210925_120402

    I’m going to try and rebuild a good habit of drinking more water.

  • Making Software Decisions

    I work for a company that builds software. At Redgate, we are constantly debating what to build and how, and more importantly, how to structure something that is easy for our customers to use. There’s a lot that goes into the process of building software, way more than I thought was important a decade ago. Today, even when I don’t like the decision or the final result in a product, I know our process often produces good results.

    Recently Netflix started a new series on how they make decisions for their software. It’s interesting in that they note that of all the ways they can make decisions, most of these involve few people. This leads towards their premise of using lots of A/B experimentation for helping to make decisions, and I look forward to future parts of the series that might explain the weight that they give to the results of A/B testing versus the opinions of developers and management.

    How do you decide what decision makes the most sense for your business? I often see technology professionals being very passionate about how or why something should be implemented. I also think that sometimes we lend more weight to the passion of the arguer, rather than the merits of the particular thing being examined. It’s easy to give in and go with the group, or not care, about many software decisions.

    For me, I’ve learned to try and give feedback, justify this with some rationale, and then trust the process. No matter how “right” I think I am, we are a team, and if the decision is made to go a different way, I support that. I’ve also learned that building software involves a lot of tradeoffs, especially with regard to the prioritization of work. There’s always more work to do than can be completed by our staff, no matter what the size of the team.

    I find the process of building commercial software to be fascinating and I’ve learned a lot in the last few years about how to make the process successful. I’ve also learned what Netflix talks about. A small group has a very limited viewpoint and it’s worth gathering more data whenever possible to ensure you make a decision that has a positive impact on your software.

    Steve Jones

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