Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Great IT Shops

    This was originally published on Jan 11, 2009.

    How many of you think you work for a great company? Hands down. Now how many of you think you have a great IT department? Would you recommend it to a friend?

    That’s a great test for me if you work for a great company, if you’d recommend your company to a friend as a place to work. If not, then why not? Recently I found this article on the 10 signs of a great IT shop, and it got me thinking about some of my past employers. I think I’ve been fortunate to work for one great IT department in my career and a few more that were not so hot.

    I’ll note that people always ask me what it’s like to work for Red Gate Software, my current employers and do I like them. I do, but I’m like 5,000 miles away so I don’t get to experience much of the company. So I can’t really judge them as an IT shop to work for, especially since I’m not in IT anymore!

    There was one company I worked for that was amazing, and it was the largest IT department that I was a part of. Almost everyone liked the company, liked their jobs, and really worked together well. At times it felt a little surreal to me that this large group of people, literally hundreds in IT, were working together. Sure there was bickering and people that didn’t get along, but they were the exception, not the rule.

    This is opposed to a few other places I’ve worked where bickering and infighting were the rule. Or a few jobs I’ve had where IT wasn’t really recognized as an extremely valuable part of the company, despite the fact that it was in a few cases. I think that is not as common these days as we incorporate more and more technology into businesses, but 10 or 20 years ago IT was not seen as valuable, though it might have been important.

    I don’t necessarily agree with all the signs listed in the article, but I do think that there are few things you need to do to build an IT group that people want to work for, that they’ll go above and beyond for, and that they’ll stick with you over time. A career path is the first thing and it is important, as is the ability to keep people moving on those paths. That might include training, self study, etc, but you have to show a commitment to your people. I’d also say that the company should take advantage of IT as a strategic part of the business and use to gain competitive advantages. And recognize IT when it does so.

    So do you work in a great IT shop?

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are now available atsqlservercentral.mevio.comto get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

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    Today’s 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 Value of Your Time

    Today’s editorial was originally published on Feb18, 2009. It is being re-published as Steve is on vacation.

    I was talking with a friend the other day that’s in sales and he was working with a client on some new software upgrade. This is a long term relationship and my friend manages the client’s use of his company’s products, which are custom software programs. There was a mismatch of expectations in the presentation of a new product and the client wanted my friend on site for a day right away. So my friend sat around for a few hours waiting for approval to book travel and fly across the country for a two day trip to the client’s site. Since this was a trip being made with less than seven days notice, the CEO had to approve the travel.

    The CEO of a 3,000+ person company had to approve a $1,500-2,000 trip for a sale worth tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

    Now I might be exaggerating a bit how silly this seems because who knows how many trips get asked for each week. And having a policy around travel is sensible since people might abuse the company a bit in trips. But should the CEO be doing this? How much time and money is wasted by having the CEO look at these? Either he spends time on them, which is an incredibly wasteful use of time for someone that should be strategically thinking about running the business at a macro, not micro, level. Or he rubber stamps them, in which case he’s trusting his subordinates to do their due diligence. In which case he shouldn’t rubber stamp the approval; let the subordinates handle the decision making.

    As a DBA, I’ve always been relatively well paid in most companies. Not $365k a year well paid, but making more money than a good portion of the IT staff. And I’ve always recognized that there are things I could do that waste the company’s money, and my time, if I’m doing them. You wouldn’t want me to take a part printers to figure out why paper is jamming any more than you’d want me to empty the trash cans every night as part of my daily work. You want me tuning SQL Servers, testing upgrades, writing code and more. That’s not to say I can’t refill a printer with paper, make coffee, or help someone solve a permissions problem, but it shouldn’t be something I do on a regular basis.

    Each of us provides value to our companies, and while we should be willing to pitch in and help with most any job, we also should recognize that we are most efficient if we do those things that are the best use of our time.

    Trust your people to do their jobs, and deal with things later if they don’t, but trust them up front.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are now available atsqlservercentral.mevio.comto get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

    Overall RSS Feed:  or now on iTunes! 

    Today’s 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.

  • Stunned

    I’m stunned, and I’m not releasing many details here. Not because I condone this, but because the who did this isn’t nearly as important as the message and the behavior. I didn’t press for more details when I heard about it and I’m not interested in learning specifics.

    A user group leader responded to an inquiry with: “We don’t want female speakers. Our users only want to hear technical content.”

    First, what the <insert your own expression here>? Second, seriously? Third, WTF? I’m actually stunned that in 2013 we have someone that doesn’t believe that female speakers can deliver technical content.

    We will never eradicate prejudice and bigotry from the world. As humans, we all have our own beliefs, likes, dislikes, and our prejudices. We form impressions of people, of groups, even of events, and those impressions influence how we view the world and interact with others. Some of us change our minds over time while some of us cling stubbornly to our stances. There will always be some friction in our dealings with others, depending on how we view the person.

    When I see quotes like this, I know we need groups like the Women in Technology that advocate for more participation and fair treatment of their members. I had someone express concern a few years ago that this type of group might fragment our SQL Server community. What happens if we have Black Men in Technology, or Chinese Women in Technology, or any othe=r subset of our members. I think those groups would be fine, and necessary, whenever we have a group of people that struggle with their place in the the community. Organizations can help their members to improve their own skills are handling situations and improving the way they work within the larger community.

    I firmly believe that we are all better off when we have a diverse community, with all types of people, a variety of thoughts, ideas, opinions, and most importantly, teachers. It takes some effort from all groups to consider and incorporate that diversity into our user groups, conferences, and other events. There are so many talented, technical people around. I’d encourage organizers and attendees to choose and watch a wide variety of speakers. Take a chance on someone that you might not normally consider. You never know when the person you prejudge will surprise you in the end.

    Steve Jones

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    Today’s 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.

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  • Lost in the Noise

    I’m glad I have well water. Not that it protects me, but it provides some insulation in the event that the local water company’s systems were hacked and unclean water released. That hacking could happen, and the person in this piece speculates it is happening after a water authority honeypot attracted hackers from all over the world. It’s scary to think how the world may change when any individual, as well as any country, could attack our digital systems. It means security is more and more important all the time.

    As I read the article, I looked for a positive in the experiment. Was there something to take away from this research? The thing I thought of was the way in which hacker traffic was drawn to this system. Not that hackers were not also investigating other systems, but if honeypots existed, perhaps in enough places, would the additional targets provide more security?

    That’s an interesting idea. What if you had CRM/Sales/Inventory systems that were available for port scans, and hacks, but didn’t connect to banking systems and had test/dummy data? Would a few of these provide some security by luring hackers into spending their resources on these systems instead of real systems? What if you had 4 or 5 instances of SQL Server, probably Express, responding to port scans and providing a relatively easy target. You could monitor these systems, and perhaps be more prepared for real attacks when they occur.

    I have long felt that we can’t completely eliminate threats and secure our systems from any unauthorized access. What might be worse is that we may not be able to separate real queries from fake ones. What we need is better monitoring and awareness of the traffic to our systems. Perhaps if we had honeypots that we could monitor, we would be able to draw some hacking traffic, identify users that were unauthorized and then use that information to better protect, or audit, our real systems.

    Steve Jones

    Video and Audio versions

    Today’s 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.

    Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.
    Steve Jones Windows Media Video ( 15.5MB) feed

    MP4 iPod Video ( 18.3MB) feed

    MP3 Audio ( 3.8MB) feed

    Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

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