Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Every IT Organization is a Snowflake

    I was listening to a presentation on IT organizations and how they can change and improve in the future. At one point the speaker said that “every IT organization is a snowflake.”

    Is this true? Do you think that each place you’ve worked is completely unique? Certainly the names of servers, IP addresses, and plenty of technical details differ. The internal applications are coded differently, colors, shapes, UX, all could vary.

    But do you think that your IT group is a snowflake? That term in some sense means unique, but in a derogatory way. It is used to represent people who are easily offended by something different. While I’ve not always been pleased with the way an IT department is structured or managed, I’m not sure I’ve been offended.

    I do think that every organization has some assembled its staff, process, technology, and more into a unique set of resources. However, I also think there are many commonalities between how the departments are run. After all, managers change jobs as often as technical people, and they will bring their processes and habits with them.

    While every situation is unique, I don’t know I think that many IT departments are snowflakes. As I work with customers, both in development and operations, I find many of them fall into a few broad categories in how they run their business. If you disagree, leave me a comment today.

    Steve Jones

  • Take Care of People

    Many organizations are undergoing changes. The pandemic of the last year has them rethinking their physical spaces, but also the need to hire in their local area only. Add to this the cloud transformation that seems to be a growing trend in many organizations and industries. Then we have the DevOps changes occurring in technology, affecting developers, testers, and operations staff.

    As I’ve learned more about this, listened to stories, and watched presentations, one thing I think starts to stand out for the high performing organizations is their commitment to taking care of people. Not everyone, but most of them giving them education, opportunities, and options.

    As we adopt DevOps, or really any substantial change, we may find that our existing staff doesn’t fit the new paradigm, or we need more or less of them. Good companies work with people, they help them, transition and adapt. They reassure them that change doesn’t mean a loss of a job, even if their current role is going away.

    I’ve seen big companies do this. Microsoft, American Airlines, and Capital One do this, among others. They create pathways and help staff gain skills and find opportunities. Not everyone wants to continue forward, but they do have the choice to do so.

    If your company wants to transform, or you want them to, don’t forget that part of this journey is bringing people along with you. Creating pathways that help both the technology and the staff get to a new place from where they are today.

    Steve Jones

  • Nothing on My Laptop

    I heard this quote at the recent Redgate Summit: “If I drop my laptop in water, I can get everything back.” The context of the quote is that all your work, your IP, your code, etc. is saved in some common or duplicate location. Everything essentially has a backup.

    I learned the lesson early in my career that keeping one copy around of things was bad. On an old Apple II, I formatted the wrong disk numerous times, necessitating me recreating homework multiple times on a very tight schedule. Over the years, I often made sure I had some backup service, but things really changed for me about ten years ago.

    I had a laptop die on me while on the road. I had copies of things in different places, and a backup service, but I had to buy a new machine and get things set up quickly. It was a pain, but I started to adopt the DevOps idea of improving my system and learning what worked. Today’s cloud services, as well as package managers (Chocolatey) helped me. A few years ago my laptop blue screened and I had to reformat the drive and rebuild everything for a presentation the next day.

    It took my about 3 hours, thanks to code, documents, and more stored and available in different services. These days, I think I was up and running on a new laptop in tens of minutes, and had most of my bits available in Explorer or inside an application in a little over an hour.

    These are great habits to ensure I can continue to work, and good for home where I don’t want to lose photos or other digital assets.  These are also good ideas for shared work inside an organization, whether on workstations or servers. Don’t operate without a way to rebuild systems, including configuration and data, if something fails. Cultivate cattle, not pets, as the DevOps people say.

    Steve Jones

  • Imposter or Student

    If you’re moving forward in your career, you’re a bit of an imposter. Actually, according to David Perell, everyone is an impostor. Many of the very successful people in technology built things that they knew nothing about. They learned technology, business, sales, and more on their way to success.

    I posted a note about the video above, and someone suggested that we are students instead. The negative connotation of an impostor, someone that deliberately fakes their knowledge is something that bothers many. I get that, and I do understand the desire to disclose what you know and what you don’t.

    We need to be lifelong students in the technology business, and maybe even in many other fields. The platforms on which we work, the tools we use, they do change. More importantly, the underlying technology we use might suddenly change as our employers shift directions or management moves in a new direction.

    While it’s useful to adopt the mindset of being a student, there are plenty of times when we are asked to work with something we don’t understand. Others may assume we know something and look to us to lead the way or solve problems. While we may protest or let them know that we are learning, we are still expected to produce some results.

    When I coach kids, we often tell them to “fake it until they make it.” They are learning new skills and sometimes don’t do well, but it is important to project an air of confidence, to believe that you will soon learn the skill. That mental projection of your future is important, and it instills confidence. I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of believing in yourself, even when you lack some ability.

    When you tackle something new, do you consider yourself an impostor or student? Either way, I hope you dive into the tasks with enthusiasm and confidence.

    Steve Jones

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