Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Personal Investments

    I’ve written a lot on various aspects of your career, and I mention training often. I try to encourage you to seek training dollars from your employer to go to things like the PASS Summit or SQL Connections.  I think that your boss out to invest in you and that it will pay him or her back over time with better quality work overall.

    I know there are plenty of managers that don’t have a budget for training, or they are resistant to just spend it on requests from employees without some sort of guarantee. There are no guarantees in life, and managers should get used to that, but you can help them gain some confidence that money spent on you is not money wasted.

    There are a couple ways to do this, one of which is to make your own investment. I think that you ought to be spending some time on building your skills on your own. Document those efforts, and then show your manager that you are trying to learn more when you ask for money. So for this Friday’s poll, I wanted to see who might be doing that. This week I’m asking:

    What are the investments that you are making in your career?

    Right now, what tangible things can you list that you have done in the last year that show you are making an effort to improve in your job. I realize that some of you might not want to post directly, or too specifically, but if you can write something, perhaps you can inspire others.

    For my own career, which is only somewhat technical, I’ve been making an effort to improve my skills by working more with the new aspects of SQL Server, blogging about them, and then building additional presentations that I can give at events. That is a way that I’m looking to improve my own skills, as well as gain additional exposure for my company. Hopefully that pays them back and it means it’s worth investing in me by sending me to more events, or even a few training classes.

    Hopefully you’ve done something in the last year that shows an investment in your own career. My own investment has been mostly limited to time, but I have purchased a few books to help me learn. Let us know this Friday what you’ve done on your own. And be sure to let your boss know as well.

    Steve Jones

  • Beyond Automation

    Are there some processes in an organization that are beyond automation? In this blog, the author talks about how some processes might be so embedded, or so complex that you could not automate, or change them. I think that example gets a little off track as it examines left hand driving v right hand driving, but it’s still something to consider.

    In my experience, there are many ways to use automation to assist people with work, and reduce the load needed, but ultimately we always need a human in the loop. Someone should be available to check that the calculation or the change in process is the correct one. Someone also has to be able deviate from what seems to be the rule for some process and override it.

    I’ve seen this in the past in a few places. Once where I worked with a chef trying to automate his ordering process. He was sure that he could input recipes, make guesses about usage, and then inventory constantly, adjusting his predictions and a well designed inventory system would calculate purchase orders for him. I don’t know if his predictions were poor, or if the logic wasn’t correct, but he didn’t ever seem to have as good a hand on his inventory as he needed. I used that as a basis for a liquor inventory system when I was bartending, but took the “recommendations” from the system and adjusted them based on intuition. That seemed to work out much better.

    Real life if messy, and often I think we try to simplify it so much with our models that we don’t build a system that really works well. I’m of the opinion that technology is here to assist us, not do the work for us, and we need to keep that in mind as we design software. Allow for the experienced professional to override things and use their experience to make the final decision.

    Steve Jones

  • Can Wives Shorten Work Hours?

    Or spouses in general, to be fair to all. I saw this piece that commented on long work hours and that spouses withholding attention, love, whatever, might help to reign in those crazy work hours.
    I guess it depends and I know that finding a balance between home life and work is a hard thing to do, and it’s a very personal thing. You have to really work at it and make those tradeoffs that work for your family. I know that executives are sometimes in a different situation than most of the rest of us, but it does seem that with people in technology, there is this tendency to work any and all hours, treating many situations as a crisis that has to be resolved immediately.
    I know it’s not just technology, doctors, lawyers, and other professions seem to attract and require long hours for success. Starting young, with no family, it’s easy to get sucked into long hours, trying to “outwork” the next guy and get ahead, get more experience, show that you are a great employee. And with that build up a good salary, get yourself set for life. I know I’ve often seen younger people try to get ahead at the expense of those with families because they’re willing to work more.
    Perhaps that’s just the nature of the beast, and I know that we do need people like that. Those that work the extra hours, that spend more time on problems, are more devoted, are often the ones that really can drive a business forward.
    But lots of people contribute to success and can make a difference. Not always with long hours. There are lots of people that put family and downtime at a higher priority than work and their careers. Not that they are less professional, or that they are less valuable, but they have their own agendas and their own lives to live. A good manager, a good leader, will work with those people’s strengths and use them to the best advantage of the company without requiring them to work crazy hours and be connected all the time. Something that would likely drive them away.
    Most professionals will stay late, pull the all-nighter, really help out when it’s needed in a crisis. Just don’t ask them to do it everyday.
    Steve Jones

  • Should You Write Down Your Passwords?

    According to Jesper Johansson, senior security program manager at Microsoft, the security industry is giving out the wrong advice by forbidding people to write down their passwords. Strong passwords are impossible to remember and lead to people picking easy passwords or using the same password across all the systems that they access.

    And using the same password across all systems us poor security. I tend to agree with that in most cases because if one system is compromised then all of them are. However, for the administrators, it’s problematic if all systems have different passwords. Then the cost (in time) of administering these systems goes up. I admit that in most of my jobs I’ve used the same sa password on all servers and the same administrator password on all systems. The caveat is that we change those passwords often, usually every 30 days and always when an administrator leaves. While a security breach would leave all systems vulnerable, the window of opportunity is fairly small.

    Bruce Schneier says that it’s impossible to remember strong passwords. And now password cracking programs are hip to the 3 for e and 0 for o replacements (and others). Plus with distributed cracking programs and cheap hardware, it takes less and less time to crack passwords for anyone that truly wants to get at your systems.
    That’s quite a quandry for people. To me there are two problems we are trying to solve. One is protecting systems for the administrators.These are more techincally competent people and should be required to build stronger passwords. The system that I liked the best over the years was the central storage of all our administrator passwords (Windows Admin, SQL, Exchange, service accounts, etc.) in a central storage file. We used Password Safe for this on a network share accessable to administrators only. We changed the file password periodically and scripted changes of the various passwords every 30 days. Usually we’d solicit some theme and assign an administrator to change the passwords.

    The other problem is how to get users to create and deal with complex passwords. Of all the suggestions that I’ve seen, I think writing them down is a good idea. Make stringent requirements, 12 characters, mixed case, numbers, etc., require changes often, but allow them to write them down. Not on sticky notes, not posted, but maybe a card that they keep in their wallet or purse. Or these days, maybe their cell phone.

    Now if we could just somehow secure your cell phones. Maybe outlaw Bluetooth

    Steve Jones