Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Where Your Value Separates You from Others

    I ran across a post that discusses what makes you a senior engineer (via Brent Ozar). The main point of the post is that there is a core skill that separates senior engineers from others, which is reducing ambiguity. When a senior engineer gets an ill-defined (or ill-communicated) request, they can deliver a solid, or even great, result.

    When someone says “performance is poor,” what do you do with that? Can you build a plan to identify the issues and solve them? Or do you expect the customer to explain what is slow and why it’s slow? Do you ask what metrics they have showing things are slow? A senior engineer can ask questions to find the problem and then determine how to move forward.

    The post also discusses the way many companies hire senior people, often basing decisions on years of experience and answering specific questions in an interview or on a test. It’s hard to interview and test a person who is given a vague requirement and develops a solution. Most interviewers don’t want to have to wprl that hard and compare what might be very disparate answers to ambiguous questions. How can you judge two people who give very disparate answers to questions with no clear answer?

    It’s hard, and I know this because when I’ve run interviews that lightly describe a situation and let the candidate lead me to the next question, so that I can see how they work and think. It’s very hard to judge the end result and rate the candidate as effective. Often, I find myself deciding if I like the person more and if they fit in our company. That’s if I think they can probe to find information and make decisions when that information is incomplete. If they can’t probe and find a way to solve the problem without direction, that’s an issue.

    And that really is the senior skill. In all fields, not just engineers or DBAs. Managers, customer service, analysts, and more. Can someone handle an unstable atmosphere and clarify, identify, simplify, and present a way forward? If they can, then they are likely someone to consider for a senior role. They still need expertise in their area, but can they get things done when they aren’t being directed?

    Are they self-starters?

    That might be the main thing I consider for senior people. Can they drive themselves and get things done, things we need done, but without a lot of direction and hand-holding? If a senior person struggles to move forward without more direction or supervision, then maybe they aren’t really a senior-level employee.

    Steve Jones

     

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  • Your AI Successes

    Recently, I was discussing AI with a friend, and they asked me to name a great success of using AI to build software. I’ve tried a few things, and I’ve worked with customers who are using AI tech. However, most of the things I’ve seen built with AI are small tasks; they’re utilities or quick wins that change a minor part of the software. The items tend to be tactical and focused in a narrow band of fixes, and they might save a programmer time, but I’m not seeing large-scale team improvements in productivity.

    Yet.

    I think there is a chance for AI to dramatically change our industry, and perhaps help us tackle a lot of small things we haven’t wanted to, or been able to, find the time to build/fix/change/etc. Certainly, in the area of migrating from one version of a platform or framework to another, GenAI can be very useful. This can be a very tedious task, and one where humans can make lots of small mistakes. An AI agent likely can do this quicker, cheaper, and more accurately than humans. The question might be whether this is a huge success, as any single organization might do this rarely.

    The biggest success in many organizations might be the ability of developers, or even business people, who can quickly build out an MVP of an idea to see if there is a project worth pursuing. These often won’t have the robust coding or security practices embedded, but they can perhaps shortcut putting more research into an idea until some value is proven. At least internally, if it doesn’t have good scalability or security, it shouldn’t be exposed publicly until it adds those capabilities.

    When or where has an AI worked best for you? What impressed you about the AI technology interaction that changed how you might work in the future? Or perhaps if you’ve had a big failure and want to share, where did AI not work well?

    I think most of my experience is that AI is still a bit of a toy and useful in small ways, but it hasn’t proven to me that it’s worth the hype we see in so much of the media. Maybe it will at some point, but so far this seems more of a dream than a reality for software professionals.

    Steve Jones

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  • Minimally Viable Security

    Security has been a constant concern for many IT professionals over the years. Many of us are trying to implement better security controls, and yet at the same time, we try to avoid anything that slows us down. Security clearly hasn’t been a big enough concern, as we’ve had more than our share of SQL Injection issues. These often come about from poor practices, lack of education, and too many people not learning to adopt better habits across time.

    We’ve also had no shortage of lost backups, open cloud buckets, and more over the years. While security (or cybersecurity) is listed as a concern for tech management, they are quick to avoid slowing down any development or deployment of software. While it is easier to get time for patching these days, it’s still not easy. There are plenty of organizations that prioritize resources spent on tasks other than patching, upgrading systems, or training developers.

    One of the ideas in modern software development is to often build an MVP, a minimally viable product, where we can test ideas and determine if our solution is worth pursuing. This could be a greenfield application, or even a feature enhancement to an existing system. In the age of GenAI, vibe-coding, and more, this might be MCP or agent-based AI additions to software that are being developed and enhanced rapidly, incorporating feedback from customers.

    If we allow minimal amounts of features to test things, shouldn’t we have minimal levels of security as well? That’s the thrust of a blog post from Forrester that discusses how we might look forward in 2026 to protecting our digital systems. There ought to be a minimum set of controls, testing, and more that ensures we can build software that doesn’t cost more from security issues than it generates in revenue. This might be especially important in the age of GenAI-coding where we can have less experienced engineers or even helpful agents committing lots of code they expect to deploy to production.

    Education is important here to ensure everyone is aware of your MVS (minimal viable security) before they get too far along. It might be especially important in helping others guide their GenAI tools to ensure security is being considered early on. Adding in security requirements as a standard for your tools, such as in a Claude.MD file is a best practice that should be required for all future software development. You never know who might start to add AI coding tools or agents to your codebase, so be prepared now.

    Education isn’t enough. It’s too easy for someone to forget what they learned. It’s also easy to assume many people have learned something when they haven’t. To me, part of an MVS is ensuring you have a framework or platform that can test all code and ensure that your systems are being securely built and deployed. This includes third-party software, especially SaaS products, where vendors might be tempted to sell you their own MVP without any MVS.

    Steve Jones

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

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  • The North Star for the Year

    It’s the beginning of the year, and some of you likely have today off. But plenty of you are at work, moving slowly through this Friday at the start of the year—handling busywork, catching up on maintenance you’ve let slide, or preparing for the tasks you know will start coming Monday.

    At Redgate, most engineering teams work toward a North Star goal: a high-level direction that guides your various tasks. Perhaps it’s growing a customer base or achieving an overarching product specification. For example (this is completely made up), one North Star might be achieving feature parity across all platforms for SQL Compare.

    Many people set New Year’s Resolutions to adjust their behavior for the year ahead. Many of us also need to set work goals—often SMART goals—that support company direction or personal ambitions. I’m setting mine for Q1 right now, though we’re still negotiating the exact items and measures. Some organizations require these in December, others allow January. Some require them multiple times throughout the year.

    As we kick off the new year, take a few minutes to think about where you’d like to be at this time next year. What would you like to accomplish? How would you like your career to change before 2027 begins? Whether you formally set goals in your organization, have them assigned to you, or pursue personal aims, the first Friday of the year is likely slower than most—making it perfect for reflection.

    Think about your career, your ambitions, and your future direction. Let your dreams and desires guide you.

    Set that North Star today and keep it in mind as you move through 2026. It might help guide you toward a better career.

    Steve Jones

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

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