Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Do You Want a Meritocracy at Work?

    The best tend to rise to the top in sports. Do you want that in technology?
    The best tend to rise to the top in sports. Do you want that in technology?

    Professional sports tend to be a meritocracy in most cases. If your natural athletic talent lets you run faster, jump higher, or perform some other skill better than others, you tend to get more time to play, more money, more recognition, etc. It’s not absolute, and at those high skill levels other factors come into play, but for the most part we find bars of skill that a person must exceed to make money at their sport.

    In the technology business, I’m not sure that’s true. However I want to know how you feel about the idea of skills being used to determine your career advancement.

    Do you want to work in a meritocracy at your job?

    Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean the harder or longer you work, the more money you’ll make, or the more promotions you’ll get. It may mean that the newest, youngest person at your company might rise much faster than you simply because they’re a better DBA or developer.

    This doesn’t mean you never get a raise, but if you’ve settled in your job, if you’re a Dead Sea technologist, then you might be limited to cost of living increases and the dreary, less exciting work that no one else wants to do.

    I know there are problems with determining “better” in many jobs, and it’s hard to measure the productivity and value of people in relation to each other in an objective way. However, if we could, then I’m asking if that’s what you’d prefer. Would you like to work in a place where the more talented people rise faster than the average worker, regardless of seniority, friendliness with management, or any other non-skill based measure.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • The Five Year Plan

    18954IT departments won’t exist in five years. A bold prediction from the CITE conference last week. It’s not so much a prediction of an increase in cloud services, but more the idea that the centralized IT department is struggling with the consumerization of technology, the increasing demands of the business for faster turnaround on projects and prototypes, and the flexibility being demanded by an increasingly technology savvy workforce.

    Like most predictions, I take this one with a grain of salt. I don’t think five years is enough time to change the face of the enterprise IT groups. Five years ago the first iPhone had been out for a year and was being demanded by users to replace their Blackberries. These days many corporations support iPhones, along with other smartphones, and Blackberries have disappeared from many organizations. However IT has adapted, released some of their control, and even integrated some of their policies into new technologies. When I enabled corporate mail on my smartphone recently, I had to allow some remote management features to get mail, which was fine with me.

    I do agree that we will start to see some of our IT functions, especially small projects and POC (proof of concepts) increasingly being driven in departments. There are too many projects, too many different technologies, and too little time to work on them for central IT departments to tackle all these projects. Departmental management won’t wait for IT that is stretched too thin, especially if they have existing staff that have some technology skills. That latter factor is something becoming more and more common all the time.

    However I can’t see central IT disappearing. There are often quite a few systems that are complex, that are too large, too important to let someone manage part time. There are projects that cross departments, or even the entire company, and coordinating tasks and resources between departments is complex. Add to all of this the problems and hassles of hiring good technology people, and I can see projects rising in departments, but being turned over at times to IT to manage.

    I do think that central IT groups need to be more flexible, and reduce some of their rules, or adapt them to new technologies and platforms. I expect people working in central staff to be “lent” to departments for projects, perhaps even multiple departments at the same time to help get projects completed, while also gaining some training on the various systems in order to provide support when other staff isn’t available. Such as weekends.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy. Due to technical issues, we have no podcasts today. Actually, Steve’s camera died and he is in the process of replacing it. Hopefully we’ll be back tomorrow with the podcast.

  • Data Vision

    Will computers "see" more in the future and help us with new tasks?
    Will computers “see” more in the future and help us with new tasks?

    One of the things that I often do when analyzing data is examine visual representations. I don’t ignore data, but often a graph or picture of who the data is distributed or organized gives me a starting place for more details examination of the actual numbers. It has worked well for me and going back and forth from numbers to graphs allows me to better understand the ways in which patterns and tendencies are embedded.  Humans are visual, and we are expanding that capability more and more to machines.

    Years ago I worked for a company that imported wood and sold it in the US. In one of our plants we sorted and organized wood pieces using a combination of human and machine efforts. Conveyor systems moved wood along and humans examined the individual piece as they traveled by. Using chalk marks, they were able to mark items as better or worse quality than others. A computer system scanned for chalk marks and was able to separate the wood more effectively and efficiently than in the past.

    That type of human and machine analysis is being used more in many industries. However instead of using humans to do analysis, computer systems can now do that in some cases. I ran across a piece about software that examines physical parts from a manufacturing process, looking for defects. The computer system can do a better job, faster than most humans. There might be a verification step from humans, but for many parts, this means a higher level of both quality and productivity.

    I could imagine this type of computer examination has a place in data systems as well. We could train an algoirthm to look for patterns in a visualizaiton, and perhaps highlight them for more examination by a human. We could even have some secondary systems that examine error outputs from something like an ETL process and direct developers to the potential issues in their logic, or in the source files, pointing out data or formatting problems. A little more checking, or real time testing, might help improve the overall quality of our processes, whether in the real world or embedded in software.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy. Due to technical issues, we have no podcasts today. Actually, Steve’s camera died and he is in the process of replacing it. Hopefully we’ll be back tomorrow with the podcast.

  • The Watson Service

    Let's hope Watson isn't susceptible to SQL Injection
    Let’s hope Watson isn’t susceptible to SQL Injection

    The Watson project from IBM continues to grow and expand in new ways tha twe might never have thought of a few years ago. After winning Jeopardy, the compuer software moved into the medical fields and was sent to college last year. However now Watson is coming to the masses, or at least a portion of them. The Watson Engagement Advisor is being put to the test as a customer service worker. From banks to cell phone providers to insurance companies, the Watson service is poised to advise and interact with consumers by providing advice, troubleshooting and more.

    Perhaps the age of the machines is really upon us. If the Watson service can do as good a job as humans, on average, then it becomes a matter of time before many companies decide it’s more efficient to replace large numbers of their human staff with the service. As the text to speech engines improve and computer power grows, we might not be able to distinguish these machines from many of humans they replace.

    I don’t know if I think this is good or bad, but it’s likely to come true in some sectors. While Watson may not have the creativity or flexibility of humans, it also won’t have the memory lapses, bad days, and inherent prejudices of people. I suspect some people will have poor experiences with the service, but most will not and at some point it will becomes more likely to interact with a Watson-like service than a human for many service oriented tasks.

    I can even see that affecting us in technology. How long before Microsoft has a similar service that might troubleshoot issues with products, perhaps even working with developers to find bugs and workarounds. I’d imagine that this service would be a much better way to actually triage and route issues to Microsoft developers than the Connect system.

    I don’t know that such a system would replace many developers, but I suspect it could easily learn over time to give you advice, such as which SSIS component might best improve a particular workflow. From there it might not be a large leap to have many CRUD applications generated by an interactive Watson programmer. I’m not sure what would be more scary then. That the machines will take some of our jobs, or that they have the intelligence to do so.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.