It’s the last Friday of 2012. If you’re reading this, then I assume the world hasn’t ended and you are planning on starting the next year next week. This is the time of year where we often look forward and make resolutions with the best of intentions. Most people don’t keep many of their resolutions, though I’m not sure if this is because they aim too high or too far from their current path.
As this year ends, I’d like to ask you to think smaller, and think about your career. For the last poll of 2012, I wanted to ask this:
What’s your goal in 2013?
For your goal, I’d like you to think about one thing that you’d like to improve in your skill set in 2013. Is there one area of improvement that you’d like to tackle across 2013? I’m sure there is. SQL Server is a huge platform, and we all have holes in our knowledge.
With that in mind, I’d like you to think about something you wish you could do. Perhaps you want to understand how a tally table works, or you’d like to be able to get the versions for all your instances using PowerShell. Maybe you want to tackle something like The OLAP Sprint and improve your BI skills.
Choose one area, and then make a goal. Give yourself a concrete project to tackle. The project shouldn’t be large, and it shouldn’t take the entire year to complete. Drop a note in the discussion and then set an appointment for yourself that repeats every week, every two weeks, or every month and work on the project. Next year I’ll ask you if you actually accomplished your goal.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
This editorial was originally published on Mar 10, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is on holiday.
If you work in an operational area, especially if you’re a DBA, you typically have a fairly tedious routine. You definitely have work, but it’s often the same types of things over and over. You are checking logs, ensuring backups work, testing restores, tuning servers, and more.
Now this type of work can be fairly boring and many people don’t really like it. They don’t handle the operational routine that well over time. Most often I’ve found that database people would rather be on the development side, solving problems, working on new things, and exercising their brains a little more.
However I really like the operational area and I’ve been much better at it in my career than the development area. I like the routine, much like the daily routines that I have around the ranch when my wife is out of town (check out the podcast for a look at some of what I do). I have to feed horses, muck out stalls, clean up the barn a little and more.
When I was a production DBA, I had to handle daily things on a regular basis, and it becomes somewhat tedious. However it’s not always boring, just like it’s not boring around the ranch.
Last year we had a horse get kicked and hurt by another horse. I wasn’t really sure what to do other than call the vet, which is something my wife has decided I’m qualified to do. When he came over, he wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he had an idea and the first stage was to lock up the horse, give him a few days to rest and re-evaluate. However along with that rest (and feeding/cleaning/etc. in the stall), I had to give the horse aspirin.
Now it’s actually less fun than it sounds. Just like you probably wouldn’t want to eat (as in chew) any aspirin from the bottle, horses don’t like the pasty stuff we give them. So you have to force it.
And it’s not like forcing your dog to take a pill. I have a 130lb dog and I don’t think twice about forcing her to take medicine, but the thought of forcing a 1200 lb animal is something else. Especially when they’re taller than you!
The vet laughed at me a little (and my wife a lot over the phone), but shower me how to bridle the horse, hold it’s mouth and then stick in the tube and squirt some aspirin in the horse’ mouth. Not much fun the first time, but it got easier.
Managing a crisis and learning new skills is definitely part of the DBA routine. If you can remember the first time you’ve had a production database fail and you had to restore it, you know what I mean. Hopefully not a daily part, but it can, should, and likely will, happen to you.
A daily routine however easy, does require a balance. You have to remember that there is life outside of work and that you have to get away and recharge. You have to break things up and remember what else you like in your life besides your career. You also sometimes have to let some tasks go for awhile to get that break.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in a couple decades of working, it’s that the work never ends.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
The podcast feeds are now available at sqlservercentral.podshow.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.
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.
I really appreciate and value feedback on the podcasts. Let us know what you like, don’t like, or even send in ideas for the show. If you’d like to comment, post something here. The boss will be sure to read it.
This editorial was originally published on May 12, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation.
At least at the top. I was reading the Joel on Software latest entry the other day about architecture astronauts and it seemed to make some sense in terms of developers building things they only think people will need, but the tone of the article was quite a rant. It actually sounds very different and a little angry compared to other things he’s written in the past.
It was at the end of the rant that I saw this: “Why I really care is that Microsoft is vacuuming up way too many programmers.” and “…between Microsoft and Google the starting salary for a smart CS grad is inching dangerously close to six figures and these smart kids, the cream of our universities, are working on hopeless and useless architecture astronomy…”
That last paragraphs (there’s more ranting I left out), seem to sum up why Joel is angry. Whether he should be or not is another story. I tend to believe that if someone can pay more and someone wants to work for more and accept the environment, they should be allowed to do so. It might not seem fair and seem to give an advantage to a larger company, but I think we should all be allowed to choose for whom we work and why we go there.
The top graduates in any field are always in demand, really the top people in any field, and they will end up getting bigger salaries, and help to drive up the cost of labor. It happens in movies, in sports, and many other fields, and the top people get the headlines. But for every baseball or basketball player making $10 million a year, there are dozens getting $200k or $300k and that’s not reported quite as widely.
The same thing happens here. Or at least I think it is happening here with the top graduates getting close to 6 figures. While that might push up the cost of the second tier and other CS grads (and other people changing jobs), I’m not sure it means that all programmers will cost this much. I think the salaries might rise a little over time, but overall it takes time for those averages to filter through to the HR departments and raise salaries. So most of us don’t benefit and it’s not worth getting upset about.
In smaller companies this might happen quicker as managers or even owners have the flexibility to quickly decide to pay more for a particular person, but I’m not sure how many companies want to match the larger salaries or perks of a Microsoft or Google. Or even can match that environment. If someone wants to go to work at a large company, with a big budget, lots of resources, the prestige of being in the news, etc., why is that a bad thing?
I guarantee you that for every 10 people that want to work at Microsoft or Google, there are some other very talented people that want to work in a smaller environment, avoid bureaucracy, have a larger impact on the company, or just live in a different place. I’m a good example of this.
A lot of people have mentioned they think I have some talent in the database area and I think it would be cool to work for Microsoft, especially in the SQL Server group, but unless I can work from Denver, there probably isn’t an offer they can make to get me to move to Redmond. There’s a lot more to my career than money or perks.
‘Course I wouldn’t mind them making an offer. Being the “Voice of Microsoft” has a nice ring to it :P.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
The podcast feeds are now available at sqlservercentral.podshow.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.
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.
I really appreciate and value feedback on the podcasts. Let us know what you like, don’t like, or even send in ideas for the show. If you’d like to comment, post something here. The boss will be sure to read it.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone in the SQLServerCentral community.
I hope very, very few of you are working on this holiday Tuesday. I’m off, spending the holidays in the mountains with my family, including my oldest back from Seattle for a week. It’s a tradition for us to spend either Christmas or New Years skiing, and this year we’ve decided to spend a week in Steamboat Springs.
I’ve left you with some holiday bloopers to enjoy and I’ll be back with some end of year thoughts later this week.
Voice of the DBA 