Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Taking Stock of Your Career

    We’re almost a quarter into the new year. Think about these statements: “Imagine you lose your job tomorrow.  What would you like your next job to look like?  Start acquiring the skills for your desired next job today!”

    That’s a quote from Jan 2, when I saw someone talking about their struggles. It was a statement that resonated with me, and it’s one that I think everyone should be thinking about on a regular basis. Not worried or concerned about losing your job, though maybe that’s not so far fetched right now, but more, are you moving your career forward in some way that’s a) valuable to your company, and b) valuable to someone else.

    Both of those are important. Certainly you want to deliver value to your current employer. That’s why they pay you and keep you around. Being skilled in your position is good, and improving that skill matters. This could keep you employed, and perhaps until you retire. That’s my plan, and I continue to work on skills that will help me make this job the last full-time job I’ll have have.

    I feel confident in this plan, and I think I do a good job for Redgate. Some of the skills I work regularly on might help me with work elsewhere, but many are likely specific to this role. I don’t know that I could find this same type of job again at another company, but if I did need or decide to change jobs, I’d need other skills.

    That is one of those things that keeps me learning and moving forward. I dig into various technologies, trying to better understand how they work, and thinking about where I might use them. I might not need them in my current role, and they may not be useful at Redgate, but they do ensure that I am building some skills that someone else might find valuable.

    I see lots of people that feel stuck in their jobs, and without support to grow and learn from their company. They struggle to find time and energy to learn about the cloud or AI or containers or anything else. I get that. Life is busy and hard, and (hopefully) you have plenty outside of work to occupy yourself.

    Take a minute and read that quote above. Now imagine you need a new job. Do you want to try and update your resume tomorrow and hope you have some current, modern skills that lots of companies need? Or do you want to hope someone values your experience already? Those aren’t bad plans, but maybe having a few new tricks you can talk about, things you’ve started to learn about, is a plan worth considering.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • A Data Controversy

    Quite a bit has changed since this article about airlines and the US government.  Since very few people are flying, or even can fly, perhaps this disagreement is moot, but I bet it comes up again. Now, separate from the idea of the actual disagreement here, there is an interesting discussion about the data involved here. In short, the US government wants airlines to collect data about passengers to help track the COVID-19 virus. Airline executives say they can’t easily get this data, other than on paper, without spending a few months on development.

    Certainly having a way to gather additional information in a digital form can require some development work. There are all sorts of software decisions to be made about when, where, and how users might input information. We have mobile devices, kiosks, laptops, and more, all of which might require separate interfaces for software changes. There is also the testing, validation, and verification we want to ensure the software works well and doesn’t introduce instability.

    In today’s world, with growing legislation, there is also a question of privacy. These requests may or may not conflict with other laws that airlines are bound by. There is likely to be more conflict here as the world changes and laws are slow to change and converge in some type of consistency. Rapidly changing requirements, as have been pushed during the COVID-19 pandemic, can potentially put us technical people in a difficult position. We have to balance the urgency of meeting requirements with the potential liability of violating privacy. I’d hope we could find some balance there, especially in a crisis.

    We do need to be flexible and ready to adapt to changing requirements. If regulations change, our organizations ought to be able to prioritize these changes and rapidly deploy them. In today’s world, where many high performing DevOps companies can get new software out in hours or days, governments may expect large companies to be prepared to follow suit. In that case, especially where new data is needed, having a software development process that includes the database is critical.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • The Challenge of Contracting

    For most of my career I’ve been a full time employee (W-2 in the US) or worked for myself with my own business. I’ve rarely been a consultant or contract (1099) employee, and what experience I had with those situations didn’t suit me. I don’t like the lack of security and certainly don’t like being responsible for the sales portion of finding work.

    Many people like contracting, and in fact, some make a career of it. There are companies that help you find work, and many large companies employ people for years as contract workers. There’s an interesting article on the impact of this at Ars Technica. It looks more at hotels and other service work, but this is common for technology workers as well, especially at many of the large, common names. If you look through the comments, you’ll find a few examples.

    I do think this is starting to be something that workers have to contend with, and it’s been obvious how hard this is over the last month. This might be especially true as companies can find ways to better specify work and hire people for their expertise at less than full time hours. This does save them a lot of long term costs and commitment, which is a change from what I expected when graduating from university.

    I’ve said this in a few talks, but ultimately I believe that each of us should be treating all jobs as temporary, ensuring that you take care of yourself and plan for your future. While a company might provide benefits and some retirement help, you should ensure you are paying attention and saving where you can. In the US, healthcare is a mess and expensive for contract workers. Outside the US things are better in some places, but you should still ensure you plan to take care of yourself if the company doesn’t.

    It has always been hard for workers throughout history. Many companies exist to make profits for their management and owners, often at the expense of workers’ treatment. Despite that, there are some amazing companies out there that do a better job of existing as a partnership with workers than others. My employer, Redgate Software, is one of those, and I’m lucky to work there. We’re hiring, good luck if you apply, and tell them I sent you.

    I hope all of you reading this can find a good employer that treats you well and gives you work you enjoy doing each day. If you don’t  have that, invest in yourself, work on your tech and soft skills, apply for jobs, be diligent in your questioning of the hiring team, and cross your fingers. There are great employers out there, and best of luck in finding one for yourself.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • What’s the Cost of an Hour?

    In 2017, we had a number of high profile downtime outages from companies. The British Airways fiasco, United airlines being grounded, Starbucks, Amazon, and more. There was a survey that noted 98% of respondents said an hour of downtime cost their organization over US$100,000. A third put that figure over $1mm.

    This week, I’m wondering if you have any idea what downtime costs your company. If you do, and can let us know, drop a figure in the comments. Maybe you can give us a range, or maybe you can say it’s a large amount. If you don’t know, maybe let us know if it’s not important to your business.

    I haven’t often calculated this, but when most companies look at lost revenue from customers, lost ability to conduct business, and potential losses from employees sitting around, it’s probably a large number. Then again, many companies might just force employees to work extra to make up the work, so perhaps some companies don’t care.

    This certainly isn’t a simple answer. Modern systems are often distributed, with many moving parts, and complex network connections. With modern software development using caching, micro-services, and feature flags, it’s entirely that an application is down for some clients and not for others. Or perhaps, a portion of the application is broken while other parts work.

    Downtime can be disruptive and expensive, and it is something most system administrators plan for and work to avoid. If you know what it cost for either the loss of a system or in your preparations, it would be interesting to know today.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.