Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Balanced Technical Manager

    I find there to be a lot of value in actively managing your career. This is part of a series of editorials based on advice I’ve read from Raylene Yung (Facebook and Stripe) on your engineering career.

    In the last few years I’ve started to see a number of organizations find ways to build technical career growth paths that don’t require someone to become a manager. A lot of technical people don’t want to manage others, and I’d argue that making the best technical person the lead or manager isn’t often the best decision. Those are two different skill sets and success in one doesn’t predict success in the other.

    There are technical people who would like to move into management. If you are one of those people, then you ought to tackle building skills in that area just as you might tackle learning Power BI, SQL window functions, or any other skill.

    Management requires a few different skills. Project management is important, as you will often be balancing a variety of work tasks for your direct reports. Another set of skills is people skills: leadership, listening, evaluating, and having hard conversations, none of which are easy.

    Part of the advice for technical people wanting to be managers is that you have to work on your emotional equilibrium, as the way your job works as a manager is different from that of an engineer. Your view of success, happiness, and your emotional takeaway from daily work is different. You also have to view the workings of your team at a higher level, understanding that your focus and goals can be slightly different than those of your engineers.

    I think you also have to learn to make hard decisions on what to prioritize or how to distribute your staff among the competing demands you face. Learning to make decisions and move forward, as well as apologize and change course when you realize you’ve made a mistake is something relatively few people do well.

    It’s also important to recognize that as your team grows, something will always be wrong. In any size organization, you’ll have a birthday every month and likely some sort of illness or other negative action. Have a large enough organization and someone will die on a regular basis. Keeping yourself balanced when something is always wrong (and something is always right) can be a challenge.

    Having done these jobs, I do think that one way to test the waters is to ask to lead a team on a small project. Getting a feel for balancing work, and learning that management is work that needs to be done differently, can help you decide if you want to go down this path. It’s not for everyone, but becoming a manager can be a good career path, though not necessarily easier than writing code or managing infrastructure.

    If you want to consider this path, ask others for advice, read books, and learn like you would if someone assigned you a new technology. I’ve enjoyed my time in some companies as a manager, and if I hadn’t been looking to move earlier in my career, I might still be running the technology organization at a previous company. It was one job I really enjoyed.

    Steve Jones

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

  • A Lack of Privacy in Smart Cars

    I own a Tesla, and I love having a bunch of data about my usage of the car. I can see how much I’ve charged it, what it costs to power, where I drive, aggregates of my monthly usage, and more. It’s especially cool when my wife is coming to pick me up, and I can see where the car is, so I know when to go outside if the weather isn’t great. I also like the ability to cool or heat the car in advance of going outside in extreme temperatures.

    However, all that data also means there are potential issues with privacy and certainly security. I am well aware that location and other data are being captured by Tesla as I use the car. However, it’s not just Tesla. Lots of modern cars are collecting lots of data. Mozilla had a report on data privacy in cars, and all the manufacturers failed their data privacy test. There’s also a summary at Engadget of the results.

    Reading through the report, it seems that many of the manufacturers of cars are covering themselves from liability. Cars are sold and used in many jurisdictions and often there can be a wide variety of regulations about data, even inside of a single country. It seems that the policies are often written just in case something happens and they collect data from your use of the car (or they record you using the car).

    A point I hadn’t considered in the article dealt with the deletion of data when a car is sold. That could get tricky as not only is your usage data in the car, some data might potentially be in a manufacturer’s database. Or it might be stored in devices at a service center. Who knows what gets stored and copied in modern cars as they are serviced. Will we potentially have issues with mechanics or other workers stealing and selling data from entertainment or other information systems in cars? The possibilities make my head hurt in this modern world where everything can, and often does, collect data.

    I don’t know what data is stored inside modern vehicles or other systems. In some sense, I think that companies ought to disclose what they collect, and include examples of what this data looks like. Even when I read policies, like this one from Microsoft, I’m not completely sure if I know what data they may be collecting.

    The world of data privacy is complex, and as I’ve written before, I’m not even sure exactly how I would like my data handled. I think the GDPR is a good start, but I hope that we continue to evolve protections that ensure humans have more control over their data than the companies that collect it.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Data Security and AI

    I ran across an article on the best AI meeting assistants, which can help you with note-taking and summarization tasks. Most of these cost money, but there was something that struck me about these tools.

    They aren’t allowed for a lot of my meetings.

    At Redgate, I’m not sure if these are allowed. Our policy is to seek permission before using a tool, so I’ve sent a query off for more information. In many of my customer meetings or in Microsoft meetings, I’ve been told these tools aren’t allowed as there isn’t sufficient data security to allow their usage.

    I think a lot of people are concerned about their data when these AI LLMs (large language models) are involved and if their data is being used to train future models. If it is, then that could be a security problem. Already many people and organizations are upset about their data sets being used for training without their knowledge. Not everyone agrees.

    I don’t quite know how I feel about this issue, but I do think there ought to be guidelines and discussions about how data is used, and where data is stored (or where it transits a network). Certainly, organizations might need to set this in place to ensure their employees aren’t exposing confidential or internal data in ways that could increase their risk of a breach. After all, without any guidelines or rules, you may have no recourse if employees just use tools and data escapes your network.

    At Redgate, we’ve begun experimenting with SQL Prompt and AI. As of now, we’ve had quite a few queries about how customer data is being used. Our EAP EULA notes that schema information will leave your network, but not data in rows. That might be a problem or might not, but it’s important to disclose that, which we’ve done.

    I’d like to think that as hardware power increases and models become more mature, we’ll stop having to send data for many AI-related tasks away from a device that might perform a task. At some point, I hope your mobile phone or laptop can process the AI model without a network connection, which would be helpful for data security.

    AI is here to stay, and we have to learn how to work with it, and where it works well. It feels a little like we haven’t really answered many of these questions as an industry or inside our organizations. That’s something that needs to change and quickly as the number of places AI is being used continues to rapidly increase.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Black Friday 2023

    It’s Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when many people kick off their Christmas shopping with big sales at various retailers. That’s seemed to get quite crazy at times and a number of companies are not running big sales or events on Thursday. Most are still open on Friday, but hopefully, they aren’t running too many early morning, low prices that get people to behave poorly.

    I’m not a big shopper, and many of my Fridays after the Thanksgiving holiday have been spent running volleyball tournaments for the 10-15-year-old kids. I’m hoping that’s the plan today, as it is a day off from work.

    However, it is the Christmas season, and no matter how you feel about gifts and shopping, there are often presents to be bought and exchanged. In the last few years there hasn’t been much tech that I’ve been looking to purchase for myself, as it seems the quality of many devices has them lasting a long time and I don’t find myself craving many of the new devices. I did get a new pair of Bluetooth headphones earbuds recently as I lost a previous pair (that were a gift). Other than that, I haven’t purchased any tech in quite some time (other than charging cables).

    Is that the case with any of you? Or are there devices, laptops, or other technology items that you are hoping to receive this year, or maybe something you’ll purchase for another. I find myself a little jaded at the state of technology these days and not too excited by any products, but if there is something that’s on your list, let me know. Maybe you’ll help me get excited about a new advance in some type of technology. The only thing I’m looking at is a new Nest camera. We’d like to get a little more coverage around the property, so I’m debating adding in more outdoor cameras, maybe even a battery-powered one.

    Steve Jones

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