Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Spending Time in the Office

    I’ve visited a number of customers in the last few years who require most people to work in the office. Recently, I had the chance to go to Epic Systems, just outside Madison, WI, USA. They are a medical records software provider that was very reminiscent of Microsoft in some ways, and quite different in others. I published a blog with some pictures, so you can see how cool this office is in person.

    Epic has all their employees coming into the main office every day. They are flexible if you have needs, but the expectation is that employees go in every day. I believe this is also their policy, and culture, in various offices around the world.

    This is somewhat rare these days, but not unique. I’ve worked with one other (10,000 people) large company and a few small ones that have similar policies and expectations. Their offices aren’t as fun, but they are still neat. I love working at home, but I miss the camaraderie of being in an office. JD Edwards was probably my favorite place to work, and I enjoyed going into the office with friends, having lunch, going to movies together, and especially our Friday afternoon Nerf battles.

    I’m lucky in that I get to split my time. I’m at home much of the time, but I do go to the Redgate offices 4-5 weeks a year. Usually, I visit Cambridge, but I have visited the offices in Austin, Pasadena, Brisbane, and Amsterdam. I’ve yet to get to the Berlin office, but I’m hoping to fix that later this year or next.

    I know many tech professionals, and even those in other areas, prefer to work at home and can do their jobs effectively. We saw this during the pandemic, but I also think that many of us are missing something by not being in the same room with others. I find I build better bonds, better understand the way others communicate, and we can go back and forth with brainstorming, debate, discussions, and other collaborative actions more effectively. This can work remotely, but for many organizations that didn’t start this way, I feel like something is missing. We’re struggling to communicate and work as smoothly together.

    I don’t want to give up my ability to work at home, but I’d also hate to never visit an office either. I think I have a great balance, I enjoy both environments, and I appreciate the ability to change my location on a regular basis. However, if I got another job and had to go into the office every day, I’d be happy to do so (provided the commute is reasonable).

    Steve Jones

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

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  • What is the Cloud?

    Last week we had a training session at Redgate Software on the Cloud. One of the first slides from John Q Martin asked the question, “what is the cloud?” The next slide had the answer: it’s just someone else’s computer.

    I mean that’s true, but it’s not Grant’s computer. He’s got a creaky, 4 year old HP that I don’t want running my workload.

    The cloud is many things, it’s hard to define, it does so much, and at the same time, can do so little for you. Except cost a lot. We certainly find no shortage of people spending a lot of money in the cloud and not necessarily happy about it.

    John was trying to educate others on the IaaS v PaaS, the challenges of cloud migration, giving them a perspective on what the cloud changes, and how customers think about the cloud. Apart from the basic details of what the cloud entails, he said an interesting thing (I’m paraphrasing here): the cloud does things that 95% of organizations couldn’t do themselves.

    It’s not just someone else’s computer. It’s a whole bunch of computers someone else owns and has put a lot of security, infrastructure, planning, tooling, and more to enable you to flexibly create systems at a pace you would struggle to match inside your organization.

    For most people.

    The cloud is amazing. It’s is someone else’s (large rack of) computers that you can rent. They will charge you for the flexibility, and they’re not doing all your work for you, but they give you the ability to configure things the way you want them. Or you can ask one of your buddies, Claude or Copilot, to set up the configuration for you.

    The cloud is a set of Lego bricks, some pre-built Lego models, a surface on which to place them, and a few rules to keep you from going too crazy, but you still have to do some work.

    The cloud is a great enabler for many things. Not all, and not always for those things, but it’s up to you to find where it works, where it doesn’t, and where it’s worth the money.

    That’s the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears

    Change is inevitable for most of us. The jobs we hold, the places we work, the people we know, even our families grow and change over time. As I get older and live longer, I’ve learned to accept, appreciate, and flow with changes. I might resist, delay, embrace, or anticipate tomorrow, knowing there is always a positive and negative side to things.

    This week, one of my colleagues retired. Annabel has been a part of Redgate nearly as long as I have, and we’ve worked together for many years. If you’ve ever attended a Redgate event, live or online, she likely had a part to play in the planning, organizing, execution, financing, and every other part of the process.

    My colleague, Allison, made a wonderful post yesterday, on Annabel’s final day with memories and thoughts from their time together. I wrote my own post with pictures and memories of our time together. There are so many more, and every time I think about our history, I’m touched, blessed, thrilled, and sad.

    At PASS Europe last week, we said goodbye to Annabel at the last event she’s worked on. We toasted, laughed, and cried. She shed tears, which is a rarity, but Grant and I probably cried the most. She’s been a part of our lives and careers for many, many years.

    Even typing these words brings tears to my eyes.

    The future brings opportunity and excitement. It also brings sadness and wistfulness of the past. I can enjoy the memory of what I’ve experienced, miss the way things were, balancing those feelings with the my view forward to what is coming.

    I can also think about what didn’t go well previously. We’ve had some issues at events, challenges, stressful times. Both at events, and while working with others in technology. I can learn from the past, be proud of the war stories, be glad we got past the failures, celebrate our successes, and plan to do better tomorrow.

    The thing I miss most about growing older and moving forward are the people who I enjoyed spending time with. Those are the memories that stick with me more than the projects, the successful tech solutions, the elegant and fast code, the awards, bonuses, and achievements.

    I miss the humans who have touched my life, and hopefully, whose lives I’ve touched.

    I wish Annabel the best in retirement, I’m excited for where she journeys tomorrow. I hope those of you reading this make, cherish, and enjoy the great friends in your life.

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Follow Your Hunch

    For a while, I kept seeing that the cost of writing code was approaching zero. So many people felt that with an AI LLM, the costs would go way down to produce software. I’m not sure that’s true. In fact, some companies are finding they spend more on AI tokens than salaries.

    However, the ability to produce more code, experiment with ideas, or generate proof of concepts has gone up. Whether it’s worth the cost or not depends on the engineer, but some organizations are finding that they can try more things than they would ever had time to try in the past. The time of engineers was the constraint, and if you can afford the cost, AI LLMs can relieve that time pressure.

    Maybe the ability to get more done with agents means you should follow one of your hunches in software. Maybe you should try something.

    Be thoughtful in your approach, use the LLM wisely, and learn to guide it efficiently, but use it to try an experiment that you might not think you have time to explore. Try an alternative. Implement something in a new way. OR implement it yourself and set the AI loose, asking it to work in a different way. You certainly could tell the LLM not to use your approach and try something different.

    To me, the big advantage of an AI agent is it gives me time, something that I see as the most impactful constraint in my life. I’d like to get more done, but I’m not willing to work a lot more. Using an AI agent with a measured approach lets me tackle things that I might not otherwise get done. Certainly not as quickly as I get them done, and certainly not without stealing some personal time.

    I get more done at work, without working more. I’m not working less, but I’m more effective. That’s what I’ve always aimed to do.

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.