Pre-con one at the PASS Summit. A busy day for me, so I’m re-running Custom Schemas
Author: way0utwest
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A Mindset Shift
I’ve been working with people at Microsoft for nearly two decades in different circumstances. It’s been interesting to me to work with developers, Microsoft consultants, and community people across the lifetime of SQLServerCentral, especially the last 5 years. For a long time, I never wanted to work there, but I’ve started to think I might find it to be an interesting company in the last couple years.
There are two good articles that talk about the ways that Microsoft has changed. The first is from the high level culture perspective and tries to explain how the mindset has changed. If I hadn’t been witness to it, I wouldn’t believe it. These changes really happened, and they were amazing to me. I’ve been going to Redmond for 15 years, often working with a couple groups and since Satya Nadella took over, I’ve seen these changes get implemented. I’ve watched teams grow and change, and learn to re-frame the way they look at their work. I think it’s been a change for the better.
The second one is a little more technically detailed, and perhaps more interesting to anyone that would like to get their organization to adopt DevOps. There are some specifics with tools, but really read about the mindset changes and the feedback they use to improve software. I think too many managers think automation and features are all you need to implement and forget that quality, experimentation and learning are keys to this working well. Make sure you point those out to managers if you pass this along.
Not everyone at Microsoft made the transition. Some left, some were probably asked to leave. New people came, but plenty adapted, altered their mindset, and have bought into the way that the company has evolved. They’ve certainly gone from a company I wouldn’t want to work for because of the stacked ranking and competition to an organization I’d now consider employment within. That’s if they want someone remote in Denver.
I’m proud that Redgate is also moving in this type of direction. We’ve learned a lot from DevOp and we’re learning that culture is important. We hire those that work well with us and help us build better tools for software developers in a team culture. Those that don’t want to work with a team, work in a DevOps flow, and be accountable for their autonomy will probably move on. That’s fine. We’re learning who we are and implementing that into our staff. I’ve tried to do the same in my life, know who I am and be that. I hope you can do the same.
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.
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Good Resume Examples
I talk about resumes, enhancing your career, and finding your dream job at various events. This might be one of my most popular talks, and I’ve been lucky enough to give it to many audience across the years. Quite a few people have taken my advice and used it to further your careers, and I’m always pleased when I hear from them.
I don’t give any great advice, but I do try to get people to think about how they present themselves. Your resume (or CV) is often the first way that you present yourself to a potential hiring person. Even if you’ve used your network and someone gives a recommendation for you, your resume is the first way the interviewer sees you.
In the Brent Ozar newsletter a few weeks back, he had a link to a “how to write a resume” guide. There are a lot of tips, but I agree with Brent that the layout in a number of these samples is really nice. At least, it’s well spread out and easy to read from an organizational standpoint.
A couple things I’d disagree on. First, be careful of colors. Personally, in the “reverse chronological resume format” example, the blue is hard for me to see, even on my 26” monitor. Be careful about colors that don’t provide enough contrast. Plenty of people hiring are my age.
The other thing I disagree about is the skills being too prominent at the top. Remember, I won’t spent a lot of time looking at the resume, so be careful of drawing too much attention away from your summary or work experience. I usually search for skills, so take advantage of the 30s of my attention and impress me with a well written opening.
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The Costumed DBA
It’s Halloween today, which is a day when children typically dress up and go looking for candy. It’s supposed to be trick or treat, but I’ve seen relatively few tricks and lots of treats with my kids. No Halloween for me, and likely a quiet day as I get ready for travel to Seattle and try to relax at home for a few days. My kids are grown and no others come to my house out in the country.
More than a few adults will dress up in costume today. Some will come to work in an outfit, which is something I’ve done in the past. In my 20s, I’d wear a gorilla mask and hands, frightening more than a few people who weren’t expecting a hairy hand to fall on their shoulder or hand them a report. I haven’t done that in years, and I think those days are behind me.
Some people will dress up at night, going out to have fun at a party. Surrounded by others that are enjoying themselves, or competing to see how creative you can be is fun. Perhaps you dress up to take your kids out and enjoy the night with them.
Many of us do need to work today, as Halloween isn’t a holiday in most organizations. We’ll have various experiences at work, maybe a horrific day when we break something with the wrong click or poorly structured code. Maybe we’ll do something heroic that saves the day, or at least helps someone else.
With today a costume day, I want to ask you which character, hero, icon you’d like to emulate in your daily work. Is it a computer scientist like Alan Turing? Maybe Iron Man that flies in to rescue a disaster? Maybe you’re the fireman that shuts down a problem. Let us know what costume you’d like your work to wear.
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.
