Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Mentoring Experiment

    The Mentoring Experiment
    http://thementoringexperiment.org/

    As I have progressed through my career, I’ve worked hard, read and studied constantly, and asked lots of questions of others. All that has helped me to improve my skills and better understand my craft. However there is more to growing a data professional career than just learning to better work with the technology.

    One thing that helped me a few times was the ability to talk to other people in my companies that were more experienced in life and business. These were people that I reported to, directly or indirectly, who were willing to listen and offer me some insight and advice on my career. They were mentors, but unfortunately they were few and far between in my career.

    It made me wonder if I might have made some better decisions, or made different decisions earlier in my career if I had been able to call on a mentor more regularly.  Andy Warren (LinkedIn | Blog | @sqlandy) and I talked about this being a problem that we both shared in our careers, and one that we see many people struggling with today. Our discussions led us to wonder if there might be a way to develop a mentoring framework that would help people grow their careers in a way that is better suited to each individual.

    The Mentoring Experiment is our initial attempt to build such a framework. It’s a short cycle, with the idea that we are seeking to learn some lessons about mentoring while helping people with advice and insight from mentors that we respect.  We hope that we can find some patterns that allow us to facilitate the bonding of mentors with mentees.

    We are taking applications until Apr 30, and while Andy and I will be mentoring people, we have a list of mentors from the SQL Server community that we respect and think will be good mentors for data professionals looking for help in better understanding their careers and where they want to go in the future.

    We’ll be blogging about the process, respecting everyone’s privacy along the way, and we hope to expand and grow this experiment over the next few years into something that gives back to the community, and hopefully helps many data professionals grow careers that they benefit from and greatly enjoy.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Careful Blogging

    Be careful about what you blog.

    There are official blogs, like Jonathan Schwatz of Sun and others that are corporate preaching/marketing/promotional efforts. Not that this blog or others aren’t what the authors think, but I feel that they are probably checked and monitored by someone at the corporation to be sure that the message doesn’t bring any liability or unexpected issues out.

    Then there are unofficial blogs, like the guys at MSDN that are handled by employees, they are asked to post, but they are not really monitored. I’m sure there are guidelines and regulations, however, that have been posted, emailed, snail-mailed, etc. to everyone.

    I ran across this article on potential legal isues with blogs on eWeek. It doesn’t appear the courts have been involved yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. At some point there will be someone that sues or gets sued over a posting and then we’ll really find out how “private” those blogs are.

    I made a note on the SQLServerCentral blogs page, but it’s something to think about whether you use a corporate site or your own private one. Be wary of what you post in a blog. To me the same rules that apply with you at Happy Hour apply on the blog. If you don’t want it getting back to your boss, don’t post it.

    Steve Jones

  • Analytics or Flying Cars

    Boyhood dreams of flying cars

    When I was a kid I read a lot of science fiction books, all predicting that we would be driving in flying cars or have regular trips into space.  There was this anticipation that we’d have robots helping us with many of the chores of our everyday life and that computers would be much more intelligent that they are now. That hasn’t come true, but the world has dramatically changed since I was 12 years old.

    Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn gave a talk recently that looked at the future. He acknowledged that we didn’t have flying cars, but we have had something that has changed our world: data. He looked at the early web, anonymous and slow and the 2.0 model of social interaction and offline identities moving online. It’s hard to know where the next evolution of the web will go, but I think that the dramatic explosion of data will be a part of it.

    We collect so much data, and there is a tremendous call for the analysis and aggregation of that data. We seem to be fascinated, and driven by the regular presentation of information. For a long time that involved numbers, but there is tremendous growth in new presentation techniques that blend data, using colors and shapes to help us understand. It’s amazing how much people even want to manipulate the data, especially when some gesture-based, iPad-like interface is involved.

    For the data professional this is great news. Our skills will be in demand, and there is tremendous opportunity in learning how to better gather, store, analyze, and present data. Our RDBMS systems have grown to encompass an amazing array of tools to assist us, and if you need something that isn’t built in, there are so many vendors providing tools and utilities that make almost anything possible.

    We live in an age of data, one that I find very exciting.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Tax Day

    I hate taxes

    In the United States today I usually Tax Day, or the day that personal income taxes are due to be filed with the government. In 2011 you get an extension to Apr 18, but for all practical purposes, this is the day that most people have planned on filing your taxes.

    With that in mind I thought I might take a break from technical discussions and polls  and ask a question that might be let us know how many of you feel about your career this year. The poll for this week is:

    Are you better off today in your career than a year ago?

    Supposedly the economy is doing a little better worldwide, and companies are making more IT investments. I have even heard of a few friends getting bonuses in the past year for performance by their employer. If you look back to 2010, or even 2009, do you feel better about your job and your career? Do you have more security? Do you have better compensation? Are your prospects looking better for the future?

    I am not a technical DBA right now, but my employer is doing well and I think my position is more secure. As I survey the DBA market, it also seems the are more positions available in my area with a wide variety of companies. If I did need to change jobs, I have a lot of confidence that I could find something else.

    Hopefully most of you feel that your career is doing better this year than last, but let us know this Friday.  If it’s not, perhaps someone will give you some advice to help you improve the situation for next year.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts