Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Limiting the Ability to Concentrate and Collaborate

    I used to have an office. I guess I have an office now, but it’s not mine; it’s shared with my wife. As I look back at my career, I realize that I’ve often taken a job that switched me from a more open working environment to an office, and back. Early in my career, we had cubes, which a few of us combined into an open 4 desk space at one point. Then I took a job with an office, then back to an open plan (10 developers in a room), then my own office, before ending up with my shared office. Actually, I’m always sharing a space. When I travel to the Redgate offices, they have an open plan, so I get a desk that’s open to a few dozen other people.

    I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I want a shared space. I’ve come to the conclusion that it really depends on my job. When I worked as a sysadmin, where we were constantly collaborating with others, an open, shared space worked well. We could easily talk to each other, which was an efficient way to work.

    When I’ve worked as a developer or a manager, I’ve preferred having my own office. The ability to concentrate for longer periods of time is helpful for me, and while headphones separate me, they aren’t as private, as there can still be visual distractions as people move around. I’ve had people come up to tap me on the shoulder, which can ruin my concentration at times.

    There’s an article at Ars Technica that talks about a study showing that open plans result in much less productivity and even less interaction. That seems counterintuitive, as I’d expect an open plan to encourage more interaction. Indeed, when I’m at the Redgate office, I find that someone will often turn and chat with a friend. Or if two people are talking, it can become a watercooler atmosphere where others join in. There seem to be plenty of interaction.

    When I’ve been at Microsoft, where everyone has a small office and most with a window to the hallway, I find lots of open and closed doors, with the former inviting others in and the latter discouraging it. I do see plenty of workers get distracted if someone stops and looks in the window. At the same time, I also find there are lots of open spaces where people can engage with others and even work in an open space if they desire.

    I don’t know if one way is better or worse than the other. I know that I feel differently at different times about how I work. At Redgate, we do have some pods for private work if you choose, but they aren’t completely closed off. They’re more like a cube or a small space for one person. I do find that having a private space is important for me at times, and if I were to go back to a company’s location on a regular basis, I’d want to ensure I had some sort of private office, even if it were only for a portion of a week and others used it when I wasn’t there.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Fun at Work

    I am lucky in that I get to travel and speak at a number of events every year. As a result, I meet lots of people in a variety of situations. Many of these places have a social component and often result in pictures. I love that because pictures are memories for me, and I look back at them to reminisce about good times in life.  I greatly appreciate having Facebook remind me of images from the past, some of which I’ll share back out as they’re great memories for others in my family.

    This has changed dramatically in the last decade, as everyone seems to have a camera on them at all times in their phone. That means many more memories I can capture. Some of these are silly, and I wrote a blog with some of the funny ones I’ve gotten over the years. In the past, I have relatively few pictures from work. Early in my career, film cameras were rare. We only carried them around for special events, which wasn’t often at work. I do have actual physical pictures of a few work parties, but rarely of workspaces and situations. There are certainly some I wish I’d been able to capture and save.

    For many of you, I’m sure that’s different now. Some of you have grown up with cameras and spent most of your career with them. When I asked about desks, quite a few of you posted pictures, with some really interesting items. Those are likely going to be fun memories for you at some point in the future.

    Today I’m wondering if you have some funny, silly, even head shake photos of yourself or work. Nothing that will get anyone in trouble or be offensive, but maybe you’ve run across a sign on a wall, some wild cabling, or even a snapshot of you and others celebrating some accomplishment. If you can share them. Check out the fun pics on my blog over the years that make me smile, and if any of you have old pictures of me, please post or send them along.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • The Weakest Link

    I noticed another data breach recently. This breach was from PageUp, a firm that helps companies find employees. This means that they have lots of information, potentially PII data, and some of it might be out there. Since they provide job sites for many other companies, you might have used them to apply for a job and not realized it. Certainly if you have used them, you might keep an eye out.

    The company notes that no personal information was lost, though encrypted usernames and passwords were disclosed. These were salted values encrypted wtih bcrypt, which is secure, but all encryption can be broken given time and effort. Some people see bcrypt as secure, but others disagree. However,  the strength of bcrypt depends on how the hashing was set up, and I wouldn’t depend on this to be foolproof. If you used a password to apply for a job that you use on other sites, change it.

    The bigger issue for me is near the end of the BBC piece. A bank notes that a third party supplier had a security issue, so that means they need to check their systems. To me this means one thing.

    Their security depends on the security of their business partners.

    Depending on the level of access and integration, this might mean that your security is compromised by a link much weaker than the weakest link in your internal environment. Or that your security depends on the weakest human link not only inside your organization, but also within your partners. Despite all the work you’ve done to increase the security of your systems, you might have other holes out there.

    It doesn’t appear this breach is as bad as originally thought, but the point is still valid. The more interconnected you are with partners, especially with shared access, the larger your attack surface area. I take away the need from this that I need to ensure a limited API and protected access with minimal privileges for internal systems that are connected to any other networks. Production level security is important not only to public facing systems, but also those that are semi-private with business partner access.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Super Nerds

    I enjoy the game of baseball, playing as a kid and then for a decade as a 40 year old adult. I gave it up a few years ago, worried about the wear and tear of sporadic play. I’m happy now coaching kids and participating in individual sports for exercise, but I still love the game.

    A few years back I read the book, Moneyball. The book is about the use of metrics and analysis in addition to the human scouting evaluation in the Oakland As organization. There was a movie made as well, and both are worth consuming. Since that time,  other baseball teams have adopted some of the ideas, and I’ve been hearing that both basketball, NFL football, and other sports in the US are using more metrics. There’s even a Revisionist History episode that talks about football/soccer and the way that makes the most sense to improve your team.

    Recently I ran across an article with a great headline: Jayson Werth rails against ‘super nerds’ that are ‘killing the game’. In the article, a player rants about the way in which data and statistics are being used to make decisions. Instead of allowing players to just play, analytics become a part of the decision to play a certain way. For example, bunting and stealing have dramatically declined, mainly do to the analytics that show these are lower percentage actions compared to other choices.

    It’s interesting to hear players rant against the user of statistics. I completely get the annoyance at losing control of your choices, and certainly appreciate that the game becomes less exciting at times. However, I also know that players, and even coaches, may make emotional decisions, or base decisions on poor information. Most of us humans can’t remember all the tendencies and likelihoods. In a modern world where skill levels have dramatically increased in many ways, there are often better ways to build a strategy.

    Data is valuable, and certainly can help in sports. It isn’t the end-all be-all, and it can be misleading when applied to individual humans. At the professional level, where more data is available, I think it makes sense to use data more as a significant part of your decisions, though not the only factors. For me, as a coach of younger kids where I have relatively little data, I still use the eye-test for most things, relying on data to double check my thoughts. The world moves fast, and it can be easy to forget how individual players have performed across an event, especially when I’m trying to manage the game as well. Data helps me remember how the day is going.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.