Republish: How Much Can You Learn?

Posted on September 1, 2025 by way0utwest

It’s Labor Day in the US and I’m likely tackling some chores around the ranch during a stretch at home.

I grabbed this editorial as many of us are labor. We work most of the week for a paycheck, trying to help our organizations and support our families. I re-read this editorial and thought about how I feel about How Much Can You Learn? I wrote this in 2016, nearly a decade ago.

Andy and I still talk about this at times, not so much for us, but for people we work with. A surprisingly large number of people struggle to improve themselves. For a variety of reasons:

  • laziness
  • lack of motivation
  • lack of direction
  • busy with life
  • unconcerned about future employment
  • ??

I don’t know why people wouldn’t be working to improve their skills. I need to rewrite this editorial for the modern, AI age.

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Data Sovereignty in the Cloud

Posted on August 29, 2025 by way0utwest

I remember the court case years ago when the US government wanted to access data in Azure that was physically stored in Ireland. I wrote lightly about this and linked to the article back in 2020. This has typically been more of a concern for the EU (and other countries) than the US, but I’m sure there are organizations in the US that use the cloud and don’t want their data accessed by other countries’ governments.

Recently, a Microsoft executive was asked about this in the French Senate. The Microsoft response was that they  (Microsoft) cannot guarantee data sovereignty for French customers. If the US government served a warrant under the Cloud Act, a US corporation would have to turn over the data.

While the Internet is fantastic in many ways, especially the ability to communicate and collaborate with others all around the world, we still have physical countries and governments. The rules, regulations, and more vary across different countries, but apparently, those rules aren’t going to be enforced if the company doing business is based in the US.

This might be good for the US, but not for customers in other countries. In my mind, it’s somewhat amazing that many other countries haven’t had organizations build clouds that work inside their borders. I’m especially surprised the EU hasn’t subsidized or assisted a company in growing as a cloud provider, though likely any organization that grew to a significant size was purchased by Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.

This access apparently hasn’t happened to date, at least not in a way that is disclosed publicly. Proponents point out that this access would only be allowed with some level of evidence of a crime and a probable cause to access the data in question. That might be true, but we know from the past that a lot of government access to information is kept secret from public disclosure.

The longer I work with data, the more I find that few organizations truly care about data privacy and protection. They give lip service to the idea, and despite employees sometimes wanting to treat data with care, profit (or other) motivations often override other considerations. I’ve mostly given up on worrying about strong data protections and accepted a significant amount of my data is likely being used by more organizations than I’d like.

Steve Jones

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

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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The Book of Redgate: Meetings

Posted on August 29, 2025 by way0utwest

I think we might have forgotten this a bit, but on one of the pages, we have this title: A Meeting without an Objective is a Chat.

You can see it below, with a few funny things.

2025-05_0113

I don’t get too many meetings, at least not too often when I’m working remote. When I’m in the office, I’m usually there for meetings, and if I get 5, 6, or more a day, that’s fine.

I do think that most of the meetings I’m involved in (outside of sales) are worthwhile and helpful. They tend to focus on topics or work that needs collaboration in real time. There can be a few that get scheduled and aren’t needed, but I find lots of people quick to end meetings early and not trying to draw them out for the scheduled length.

I have a copy of the Book of Redgate from 2010. This was a book we produced internally about the company after 10 years in existence. At that time, I’d been there for about 3 years, and it was interesting to learn a some things about the company. This series of posts looks back at the Book of Redgate 15 years later.

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Ghostworkers

Posted on August 27, 2025 by way0utwest

Ghostworking is pretending to be busy at work. According to this article, it’s on the rise with a number of people looking for other remote opportunities at other organizations. Some employees might be just wasting time at the office, though I suspect there is a minority that are actually working at another (second) job. Maybe they are growing a side hustle or maybe they’ve even accepted another job, and they’re spending part of there day on those tasks.

This might be part of the reason that many managers want to get people back into the office. I think that’s flawed as a)  most managers aren’t great at their jobs and b) people still ghost work in the office. I’ve had numerous “clipboard carriers” alongside me in my career who spend an inordinate amount of time at the water cooler, coffee machine, or walking from place to place and are happy to engage in hallway chats. I’ve seen plenty of managers also not know how to hold people accountable for their work (or lack thereof). Especially technical people who find many reasons why problems are hard to solve.

I wonder sometimes if we’ve created a culture of looking busy. Many employees schedule lots of meetings, often with managers, to provide updates or create discussions about what to do or how to do it. Often the meetings seem reasonable. However, a lot of those meetings, updates, or decisions could be cut short, and more actual work could be finished. The number of people engaged in meetings all day is crazy. That happens to me when I come to Redgate offices, but I am there for meetings, and I try to have substantive discussions. I also know I can’t do have that many meetings every week because I do need to actually get something done that helps the company.

This quote in the article is disturbing: “The workforce is currently under immense pressure to appear productive, even when it’s counterintuitive to actual productivity…”. I wonder how many people feel this way in the modern world, and if this is a reaction to concerns about layoffs/AI replacement/something else or is it just slacking off?

My career has been successful in part because I’ve always worked hard. I might not be a good example for many of you, as I likely work too hard, but I can say that being efficient and effective, getting tasks done on time or sooner, and not just agreeing to more work to please others has helped me. I agree to timelines that I can meet, and I work hard to get things done on time. I would say that constantly learning, finding better ways (and quicker ones) to do your job, will help ensure you have a good career. Especially if you work on things that the organization finds important, rather than those you want to tackle.

Steve Jones

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

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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