Category: Editorial

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.

I write a lot about growing your career. I think it’s important to find a good career, but also learn to be good at whatever you choose to do for employment. While I do think that learning is a skill and each of us ought to sharpen our saws, I sometimes find people chasing new things all the time. In this interview, I saw a great quote:

“… while it’s important to be informed about the latest frameworks and best practices, learning this at the cost of developing fundamental skills is a bad tradeoff.”

That’s something I imagine Jeff Moden saying about all the new technologies that get incorporated into database work. Often I find there are a lot of DBAs and database developers that want to implement PowerShell or MDX or Python because they can and not because it’s a good choice. Or perhaps more often because they aren’t as skilled in SQL as they should be.

I am a fan of experimenting with different methods and determining if there is a better way to solve a problem. However, I am only a fan of using new techniques when they are better. Either they have to perform better (less resources or a lot less time to run), simplify the situation, or they save a ton of developer time. And not just your time, but for all other developers.

One of the things noted in the interview above, as well as something I’ve seen, is that many younger people want to constantly try something new, without developing deep skills in any area. They often move in new directions because they can. I also see intermediate or senior engineers getting bored with their work or excited by something they read about and looking to shift everyone to a new platform/language/framework/etc.

New can be better, but isn’t necessarily better. Instead, I might try to answer these questions from the article:

• how can I make every code change great?
• how can I be as good at X as someone on my team – For SQL, can you be as good as Jeff Moden or Itzik Ben-Gan? Or maybe closer to their level?

The goal is to become better at your craft. Like the woodworker who improves their skills in shaping wood, or the chef becoming better at creating more tasty recipes, or maybe the weekend race car driver who learns to shave seconds off their lap times with improved driving technique.

If it isn’t important to you to become the best in your team, maybe this will help. The cloud, AI, and competition from younger people will ensure that if you don’t improve your skills at all, you’ll slowly fall behind and your current manager, or the one that takes their place, might find a way to replace you with someone that does the job better, faster, and cheaper.

Steve Jones

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

Do you feel stagnant in your career? Or maybe the better question is do you care if you feel stagnant in your career?

You might need to define what that means to you, as what might feel stagnant to one person could be comfortable to another. Apparently, there was a study of tech professionals, who despite a tight labor market, are citing lack of salary increases and dim promotion prospects as reasons to leave their jobs. The survey was across a number of larger technology companies, and likely answered by more talented employees. After all, good talent can usually find jobs and is less worried about leaving. Less talented people usually cling to their jobs.

A lack of salary increase could be a problem. Everyone, or most everyone, wants regular raises. However, depending on where your salary bracket is and your living expenses, you might not rate this as a very important criterion for sticking with a job. Someone making USD$40,000 might be more concerned about a raise every year than someone making USD$200,000, but perhaps not.

Having a career progression was more important to me at 30 than it is after 50. Again, the varies among people, but I find a lot of people like their jobs and don’t really want to change. Many of them would likely be happy to keep working at their level as long as they can get raises. I see people complaining about their current position when they’ve bumped up against a salary limit for that position, but otherwise, they’re satisfied.

The work matters. I do think there are plenty of people who are unhappy with the work they do and want to be challenged, or at least interested, in the work. At the same time, lots of people are happy to just do a minimal variety of work day after day. I think this is why I encounter lots of people who seem to have 4-6 months of experience repeated 10+ times.

My view is that you ought to make your career what you want, and that means actively managing it. Spend time thinking about what you want, ask others about their work, and make plans to move in the direction that matters to you. Implement those plans and find a balance between advancing your skills and living your life. It’s easy to do too much of one or the other, but often that’s not the problem, it’s the motivation and effort to actually improve yourself.

I can’t tell you how to structure you career or what to learn or what to improve. You have to decide what is interesting to you and what fits in your life, and then make an effort to move in that direction. Sharpen your saw, improve your craft, and learn those soft skills that help you work with others. That’s how you find the career you want, which will never be stagnant.

Note: We do have a career forum on SQL Server Central. If you want advice or have questions, post something and I (or someone) is happy to answer.

Steve Jones

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

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.