How do you evaluate a DBA? Can you pick someone that will do a good job? History says that most of us don’t do a great job in picking candidates to offer a job.
I wrote Evaluating a DBA in 2021 and it’s being republished as I’m at VS Live today. Does it still make sense? Have we learned anything?
Let me know, and by the way, this applies to “hiring” (using) an AI.
I had to run out of town, as noted in my other post. So you get to read An Azure Outage. Are things better? The cloud more reliable? You happy?
Every job is a job on some days.
I’ve said this to my kids and others I’ve mentored over the years. I’ve probably written that here, and I truly believe it. When you work at a job, some days are bad days. There are always days you don’t want to do the work. There are also likely some days that you dread starting. Whether you work for someone else or run your own business, there will be times you aren’t completely in control of the work and wonder how you ended up in this situation. Even if you’re self-employed, you have clients that sometimes dictate your day.
I’ve worked for myself in the past, and I currently have an amazing job as an advocate/architect with Redgate Software. I get to travel all over and talk about AI readiness, DevOps / Database Change Management, Database Intelligence, and random SQL Server stuff. Usually it’s a lot of fun, but at times it can be hard. If you see me not engaging at an event, it might be that I’ve been on the road a lot while still having lots of other work commitments to manage. I might be worn out and need a break. Those often are tough days. (FYI – We always need good people and have a few spots open.)
Lately I’ve been hearing people talk a bit about AI and how it sometimes takes the joy out of work. That might be because it’s doing the stuff you enjoy doing. This conversation with Casey Muratori on using AI is revealing. He’s not using AI because he loves programming. He doesn’t want to have AI doing his coding.
That’s interesting, and it got me thinking about daily tasks, the things we do and what we might send off to be handled by an assistant.
What things do you not want to do at your job?
That’s the question today. Let me know what things you wish you could get someone else to do, or some robot to handle for you. I know lots of people wish they had a robot to do the laundry or dishes at home. What tasks at work would you want a trustworthy helper to handle?
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.
Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.
I ran into an interesting post that noted the modern data platform can have a bunch of different systems underlying it. The example might be that your “software” could use PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Clickhouse, and something NewSQL (Spanner, CockroachDB, etc,). Some of you might think that’s not reality, but keep in mind that for a lot of your organizations, the “software” is what the customer uses. I’m sure my bank has multiple systems behind the mobile app I use to pay for things, move money, check balances, etc. I would guess there is some DB/2, SQL Server, and some analytics or No/NewSQL stuff in there. Hidden as different applications that make up the “app”, but they are still in there from my perspective as a user of the app.
No one intentionally designs software like this, but we still see it. They might not even have 5 or 6 platforms in their organization, but almost none of the customers I work with have less than 3. Somehow, somewhere, someone added a PostgreSQL server to an Oracle/SQL Server environment. MongoDB crept in when someone thought it was a better store than DB/2 or MySQL. An article written about how Facebook or Spotify or some other high tech company used Cassanda or Snowflake inspired a developer to add that to their toolbelt and build it into their application.
And the ease with which the cloud makes experimentation quick and cheap causes a spread of your database estate.
There’s a cost to having all these systems. Either an organization hires separate sets of experts to manage Ops, or they try and train lots of individuals to run multiple systems. It can be done, but those lightly trained people who have to focus on remembering the differences between SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB will work slower. They’ll solve problems with a higher MTTR. Even if they have a single pain of glass, like Redgate Monitor, they still won’t be as effective as the number of platforms grow. It’s just human nature. And if you hire separate teams, that’s a cost as well.
Heck, I’m a pretty good DBA and a good volleyball coach, but I get confused. When I got voluntold to manage DB/2 systems in addition to SQL Server, I got less done every day. When I coached two volleyball teams at the same time, I was less effective with each. It’s hard to keep focused on multiple similar things. Add in the complexity of not only separate paradigms, but different ways to manage things in the cloud or on-premises and the operational cost is high.
I’m not sure it exceeds any licensing cost or the cost of limiting what platforms developers can use. I would argue only allowing 1-2 platforms just makes you more efficient and your staff more effective.
However.
That’s not the world. Even if I mandated that, often some external even changes my world. Companies get bought and integrated. New COTS software is needed, and it will, of course, run only on a database platform we don’t run.
There’s a serious operational cost to adding new platforms that few consider. Even if they did, I’m not sure anything would change.
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.
Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.
