Staying Employed

Posted on April 21, 2025 by way0utwest

The revolution with GenAI has been quite the ride since 2023 and quite a few people have been concerned that their employment status might be in jeopardy. I can certainly understand that, especially in light of the tight budgets, widespread layoffs, and executive views on AI technologies.

There was an article recently talking about AI taking over some jobs with a few tips on how to stay employed. While tech workers weren’t mentioned as being vulnerable, repetitive data-heavy jobs, such as data entry clerks, telemarketers, and cashiers were. That last one is interesting. Lots of companies have tried to use automated checkout stations, but this hasn’t necessarily eliminated cashiers. Maybe there are fewer, but lots of companies in the US have rolled back some of these efforts as fraud, mistakes, and slower checkouts have been an issue.

The data-heavy group might include ETL developers for sure. I suspect this is an area AI is well suited to help build flows, map data, and handle updates more easily. This won’t eliminate the need for an ETL developer, but it might reduce the number needed and certainly reduce the skill level required to code data movement scripts.

There are lots of jobs that might not be vulnerable, including tech people who work on AI, cybersecurity people, and others. I think DBAs aren’t likely to go, though perhaps we will need fewer DBAs and developers over time as AI models become more capable of repeating work.

The tips for navigating this new world aren’t anything different than my advice for years. Improve your skills, both technical and soft. Learn new technologies, but more importantly, show that you add business value with your work. Don’t depend on someone else to tell you what to do. Learn what things are important to your boss and organization and tackle those things early and often. Work to be an effective and efficient worker wherever you can and learn about your business. Those skills and that knowledge make you more valuable than most AI models.

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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Republish: Upgrading Your OS

Posted on April 18, 2025 by way0utwest

Two Fridays in a row. Last week I was in Dallas at a volleyball tournament. Today I’m flying all day, returning from the UK. It’s the Easter holiday there, and some of you might be taking off today as well.

Hopefully it’s a smooth journey for me, but you get to re-read Upgrading Your OS, which is an interesting one for me to look back on. I’m still on W10 on my desktop, but Microsoft is again pushing an upgrade, this time to Windows 11.

I didn’t love the upgrade on my previous laptop, but the new one I got late last year seems OK. Some weird things with W11 have me hesitating to upgrade the desktop, but I’m torn. I certainly don’t want to get away from security updates.

How do you feel? Leave a comment in the editorial.

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A New Word: Immerensis

Posted on April 18, 2025 by way0utwest

immerensis – n.  the maddening inability to understand the reasons why someone loves you – almost as if you’re selling them a used car that you know has a ton of problems and requires daily tinkering just to get it to run normally, but no matter how much you try to warn them, they seem all the more eager to hop behind the wheel and see where this puppy can go.

Most people likely go through this, unless they are very self-centered and narcissistic. Come to think of it, maybe “most” is the wrong description. I find too many people being self-centered already.

In any case, I think lots of us wonder why someone really loves us, especially early in our relationships. We have some self-doubt, we always want to make a great impression on our dates/partners, avoiding showing them the “crazy” inside of us. I know lots of woman who avoid being seen without makeup. I know men who want to be sure they are showered and clean, avoiding having a date see them at the gym.

I think it’s natural as you get closer to someone, as you let yourself be vulnerable to have some fear. Hopefully it’s not the maddening inability of immerensis, but just a manageable “I wonder if they’d like the whole me.”

You should let them in. If they don’t want all of you, they don’t deserve you.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

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Database First or Application First

Posted on April 16, 2025 by way0utwest

One of the challenges in software development is coordinating database and application changes when one depends on the other. I find many software development teams struggle with this, especially in today’s environments when no one wants to take a system offline. While some companies can stage and manage deployments, many of us find our systems need to keep running 24×7 with minimal outages (if any).

Lots of you work in environments where your software is changing on a regular basis. Plenty of you will either be developing those changes, or managing the systems to which those changes are deployed. You likely will be coordinating with other people (in either case) to deploy a software artifact (C#, Java, Python, etc.) and a set of database changes in order for your clients to use whatever new functionality is being delivered.

My question today is do you deploy database changes first or application changes first. Certainly you can deploy both on the same day or in the same pipeline. However, even if you use parallel pipelines, likely one side will finish first, and you likely have some preferred order for deployments. My question today is what order do you prefer (or is mandated to you).

Maybe you don’t care. After all, with modern coding and feature flags, you can deploy either side first (front end or back end) and not disturb your clients. I’ve seen many successful deployments from organizations both ways. Some like letting application developers deploy their code with expected database changes hidden behind flags. Others want the database to get patched and the software changed later to use the database changes.

Lots of people want everything deployed at once, but if you assume that is the case, I hope you have downtime scheduled, as you can’t usually get everything deployed simultaneously.

I tend to prefer database first, with dark deployed changes that don’t affect the front end. Of course the front end needs to support these dark deployed changes, but that’s easy by just following good coding practices, which aren’t that hard.

Let me know today what you prefer and why. Or if you don’t care and can deploy in either order.

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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