Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Sabbatical

    It’s time.

    At least, it’s the year for me. I’ve worked at Red Gate for 5 years now and I’ve earned a 6 week sabbatical. My boss asked me recently what I might do, and I wasn’t sure. I haven’t really thought much about what I’d want to do with a sabbatical, and so I did what and modern IT pro would do: I asked Twitter.

    It didn’t turn out so well, but perhaps because I hadn’t defined very well what a sabbatical is. It’s not a vacation, and not a 6 week break from work involving the XBOX. Our CEO scored a number of sabbaticals (see the image below from the Book of Red Gate) in terms of what they accomplished. As you can see from the scores, the idea of the sabbatical is that is provides you a break from work, but that break should be spent somehow trying to improve or grow yourself.

    sabbaticals

    Note that this isn’t necessarily based on work, though it could be. For example, I could write a book, or make a serious attempt. I have had a few ideas, such as spending six weeks working for a charity full time. Perhaps I could find an intensive course in some subject that I’d tackle for short period of time. There are lots of choices, but I have a few restrictions as well.

    I can’t travel and leave home for a substantial period of time. My wife’s business is busy during the summer and I need to be available to help manage the ranch and kids. I also travel enough that I’m not looking to be out of town more than I already am. It also isn’t a once in a lifetime event (hopefully), so I’m not looking to spend $10,000 or more for some growth at this point in my life.

    I am looking for ideas from people, as are a few others that have sabbaticals available from Red Gate.  I have options, but I’d like to think deeply about the pros and cons of my choices, and take this seriously as a chance for personal growth. Six weeks isn’t a lot of time, but it’s more than I’ve ever taken at a time away from work in decades. I greatly appreciate the opportunity that Red Gate is giving me, and don’t want to squander my time, or their money.

    Note: lots of companies offer sabbaticals as a benefit, including Microsoft.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • The Holiday Challenge

    It seems as though I’ve seen many protests and complaints this past holiday season about the extra hours the some retailers were requiring of employees. It started in the US just before Thanksgiving with protests about some stores opening on Thanksgiving day, and it continued through the Christmas season as a few brick and mortar companies decided to stay open 24 hours a day until the holiday.
    For most of us that work in technology, the holidays can be a mixed blessing. We could have a slow time, as other people in the office work less and make less demands of us. We could also be more busy as the slow times mean opportunities for maintenance or enhancements. I’ve even had extremely busy times as we worked the New Year’s holiday to get applications ready for use on Jan 1.
    There was a survey recently and a report that said many IT people don’t get a break during the holidays. They find themselves on call, or responding over the holidays when things break. I’ve certainly experienced this, especially when managers have viewed holidays as a perfect time to take systems down that are otherwise being used heavily by our business. I suspect that much of the impact to IT depends on your particular business and how your systems are used during holidays. If you work at Amazon, I wouldn’t expect to have holidays off.
    The one thing that the survey mentioned people wanted to see changed most was a reduction in the amount of fire-fighting that they perform. It’s no fun when things are permanently broken, and even less fun when you respond to the same issue over and over without actually fixing something once. I certainly have found myself looking for other employment when the amount of fire-fighting time exceeds the amount of enhancement time.
    I hope that the holidays were not too stressful or busy for you, and you have a bit of a break. If not, perhaps it’s time to think about how you might want to change things for next year.
    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • DBAs Need to Learn to Develop

    My first exposure to computers was as a child, learning to program in BASIC, Assembler, and Pascal. From there I moved into other areas, such as networking and system administration. I learned about a variety of technologies before focusing on databases, but I found that my knowledge from other areas of computing helped me be a more successful DBA at quite a few jobs.

    Last year we put on a number of SQL in the City Seminars where Grant Fritchey and I talked about development practices. We give a variety of advice and practices that you can use, but one of the best things that we say in our half day event comes from Grant. He says that DBAs need to “Follow the local development paradigm as much as possible.”

    I completely agree with this. I think that many of the practices of building software, as flawed as they might be, are good ideas that many developers use on a regular basis. They know how to work in a flexible manner, tracking their code and keeping it under control, and fixing problems in a rapid manner. As immature as the software development process can be, there are things that we, as DBAs, can learn.

    As SQL Server continues to grow as a platform, there are more and more enhancements, many of which involve programmatic capabilities expanding. I highly recommend that DBAs think about learning more about programming, and specifically a .NET language, if you’ve never used one. If you have, consider brushing up those skills.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • Budget for Training

    I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is refreshed, ready to tackle the new year. Many of you might have made resolutions with the calendar change, and I’d urge you to consider making one more: a resolution to learn something new in 2014 related to your career.

    I’ve been tackling the Powershell Challenge for a little over a month now, and one of the things I’ve found to be problematic is scheduling. With vacation and the holidays, I haven’t had a set schedule in my life. More importantly, I hadn’t scheduled myself specific times to work on Powershell and fell behind in my challenge.

    Andy Warren, co-founder of SQLServerCentral, has a talk about building a professional development plan in which he notes that we need to budget both time and money for our plan. It’s important that you not only commit some time, but that you schedule it. You may also need some money, and you ought not to be afraid of investing in yourself, especially if you are looking to move into a new area, or find a new job.

    I haven’t done a great job of making time for my career over the last month, but I have realized that I need to do so. I am looking to schedule specific times on specific days to work on my skills over the next few months. My plan is to take 2 lunches a week and dedicate that time to working on PoSh. I’m hoping that putting myself on a schedule will help me focus and get through my challenge.

    I would encourage you, on this, the first full week of the new year, to take an hour or two and plan out your learning for the year. My recommendation is you pick at least two six week time periods across the year. During each of those periods, schedule 2-4 sessions a week to learn. They can be half hour to hour slots where you work on a specific skill and improve your knowledge. You could start with one of our Stairway series if you’re looking for ideas. Give yourself at least a week or two, and probably a month, between sessions to recharge. Be sure you are also looking out for opportunities to put your new skills to work throughout the year.

    You are responsible for your career, and today is the first day of the rest of your career.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.