Voice of the DBA

I enjoyed my time in college, and I learned a great deal. While I do think that the time helped me grow, I also recognize that I was always a good student and the cost of my working through that degree was far below what today’s degrees cost at many universities (even accounting for inflation). What’s more, I worked most of the time I was at university to pay for my living expenses.

These days I am torn on the value of a degree, especially when the total cost can easily exceed USD$50,000. Even more concerning is the fact that many people have to drop out with substantial debt and no degree. That’s the worst of both worlds. While it’s easy to point the finger at people for not finishing or working harder, it ignores the challenges of the real world, which can throw curve balls at all of us.

For a lot of my college time, I had to work to support myself because I didn’t have enough scholarship funding, and I was worried about loans. I was worried about post-college, and in the 80s, I was able to work 30+ hours a week and earn enough to pay rent and buy food. Later in my time, I was able to secure an internship that paid me, which was nice. Then I wasn’t spending 80+ hours a week trying to learn and support myself.

I saw a note recently about degree apprenticeships from Purple Frog Systems. The idea is that someone is part-time in university while working for an employer. This might require more than 40 hours a week of combined work, but I like the idea of someone learning about both the academic and practical views of an industry and getting mentorship from both co-workers and academics.

While many of us who work for an organization might get tuition assistance, it’s not always easy to work out school and work. Managers may or may not work with you, and there isn’t really continuous support to help you complete your degree. The quality of your manager often determines if this works. However, the bigger issue is that many people struggle to find jobs in the first place and not many organizations I’ve worked for have any programs to find people who might be suited for an apprenticeship program.

I don’t that our industry, or many industries, really need to require degrees. That being said, I do think there are things universities teach well, and they give a good perspective on a variety of topics. Employers can benefit from motivated individuals who learn their business, learn different skills in school, and bring about energy and fresh perspectives. Plus, employers learn how to train and grow new people at a lower cost. We all struggle to hire well and train people to be effective quickly. Working with interns or apprentices is a good way to embed regular mentorship and training into the culture of your company. That’s something everyone can benefit from.

I hope to see more apprenticeships in the future, not just in technology (or marketing as in the post), but in a variety of industries. I don’t know if we will, but I do think this might help us get better at finding and training new staff.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

I find there to be a lot of value in actively managing your career. I’ve been a technical individual contributor, a manager, a business owner, and a cross-team supporter in my various positions. Each one has challenges, and in each case, I’ve found ways to build a better career position that not only suits me but makes my life more enjoyable. I hope to inspire others to do the same, and this is part of a series of editorials based on advice I’ve read from Raylene Yung (Facebook and Stripe) on your engineering career.

One of the first things I read was that engineers ought to aim to be valuable, but not critical. This is similar to the advice from others that good tech staff try to work themselves out of a job by documenting and sharing everything. Not everyone is a great, or even good, engineer, so I understand why it can be scary to share knowledge. However, many of us find ourselves doing something that few, or no one else, does anyway.

Viewing this as being valuable is helpful. However, if you are critical and the only one that can do something, you might find yourself on-call, or under a lot of pressure from management when something goes wrong. Instead, if you have the detailed knowledge, but you’ve shared that in some way, you can be the consultant or advisor rather than the person everyone expects to be doing the work in a crisis. This is a mistake I’ve made many times in my career.

You want to provide value in some way to your organization, but not be a single point of failure. In the short term, your manager might feel you can’t be replaced, but often I listen to managers talking about their plans to find a way to remove those critical people who don’t want to share their knowledge from that position. Usually, removal also is accompanied by termination.

Good engineers find ways to be valuable, partially by gathering tribal knowledge, partially by developing solutions, and partially by sharing with others. Document, explain, train, and assist others, but ensure that if you want to go on vacation, sleep all night, or celebrate life away from work, you aren’t the critical person during a crisis or even normal, daily work.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.