Voice of the DBA

Tag: business

  • What’s a Lot of Money?

    The other day I was talking to a someone about the amount of money their business spent on a particular transaction. This person thought the amount was high, but I didn’t. We had an interesting discussion from there.

    Today, I’m curious what you think is a lot of money that your organization might have spent on some transaction. A piece of hardware, some software, maybe even another company. Are there times you’ve felt they overpaid for some item that you wouldn’t have bought?

    Most of the people I know work for someone else. Their concept of large or small values is often dictated by their own view of personal finances. While we might spent US$1-2k on a computer, many of us wouldn’t buy a $50,000 server for home.

    For friends that own a business, even a solo one, they often have a slightly different view of costs. A business might need to easily invest $10k in a project, a piece of equipment, or something else. They often find that spending money is less about the amount than the time it takes to recoup an investment.

    I wonder how many of you look at a $100,000 purchase and don’t see the value returned. Perhaps you’ve seen your company spend $10mm and you wonder if there was any rationale behind the purchase.

    Dealing with any amount of money is hard when you don’t necessarily have all the information, and you’re not used to spending at that scale. I know each time I’ve bought a bigger house, it’s been a bit of a shock and created anxiety. However, when I look back years later, I often feel differently.

    I wonder how many of you feel that way about purchases by your organizations over time.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Lean Coffee

    I read about the concept of Lean Coffee in Making Work Visible, one of the books I set as a goal to read this year. The idea is to have an agenda less meeting, but nevertheless get some things done.

    It sounds crazy, though the format makes some sense. The group takes a minute or two to write down some ideas on paper. Each person then gets two votes to place against the topics. The top rated items get discussed first for a period of time and at the end of that time, everyone votes on continuing discussion or moving on. This can repeat every few minutes.

    I got the chance to experience this at the recent DevOps Enterprise Summit conference, where there were Lean Coffee breaks every day, with each having a topic that people wanted to discuss. One I participated in was fairly rigid, with the facilitator keeping to time, gently encouraging discussion, and rigorously calling for votes.

    While I enjoyed that, a second one didn’t use timers consistently or votes, and the meeting ended up being a rather free form discussion, which was OK, but it meandered and wandered without guidance in a way was somewhat annoying. It was a surprising experience for me, as I typically like free form discussions.

    I don’t know that I’d recommend Lean Coffee for all meetings, but I do like the format, and I think this can be a good way to focus on a few areas a team finds important, especially when there isn’t a clear set of priorities.

    I would encourage you to give it a try, especially if you get into a meeting without a clear agenda. Maybe it’s something I’ll try as a way to discuss and debate some topics at some event.

    Steve Jones

  • Bean Counting to Burnout

    I was listening to a story about healthcare in the US recently. This was an interview with Vivian Lee, the author of The Long Fix, which proposes some ways to improve the system under which I live. I thought it was a good interview, and I am looking forward to reading the book.

    There was one stretch in the interview that caught my ear, and that was on the struggles of many modern doctors in the US to avoid burnout. A part of the reason for this is the amount of paperwork they must complete, which takes away from many of the reasons they got into practicing medicine.

    I know that many people in IT professions work long hours. We have lots of deadlines to meet, on call responsibilities, and the pressures to ensure that our systems work well for customers and clients. We don’t necessarily have the upside that doctors do, so working harder doesn’t necessarily lead to more compensation.

    On top of the work we do, there seem to be no shortage of meetings in many companies, though I don’t hear too many complaints about paperwork. However, with the move to more OpEx and cloud services, I wonder if we will have to deal with more paperwork in the future, more reporting, and more accountability for the financial side of our departments.

    I would like to think that we will continue to work with technology most of the time, and I hope that after this pandemic that most managers will cut down on meetings and start to trust more people to get work done without oversight. We certainly have enough of a risk of burnout without the added burden of unnecessary meetings and paperwork.

    Steve Jones

  • Investing in Speed

    While most of us might not want to start our own company (or maybe we do), we can learn a few things from those that do. Building something new, being efficient, effective, and quick are skills needed when starting a company. I’ve read a lot about how companies are built and entrepreneurs work. Lately I ran across some advice from Daniel Gross, the founder of Pioneer, a former partner at Y-Combinator (from David Perell).

    Many of us are financially careful. We often are careful with how and where we spend money at home. I find lots of tech professionals frugal at work as well, often being careful with their budgets, or even with the requests they make of managers. That being said, here is a great quote:

    “Overbearing frugality prevented me from spending any money, which creates inefficiencies. Spend like a king on speed, like a pauper on everything else. Faster computer? Go. Faster Internet? Go. Better sleep? Go. Expensive dinner? Stop. Expensive dinner to close a candidate? Go. If you can, use your capital to move faster. Your competitor is taking the shorter flight. Book it.”

    Often I see companies get caught up spending or not spending based on some ideas that don’t have anything to do with efficiency. They don’t invest in things that improve the business, but invest in things they like, or avoid things they don’t like. I see this with choices as well, where a professional or manager may want to change a tool/platform/etc. because they like one over the other. Often without any good fundamental reason.

    Spending money isn’t bad if you are investing in driving your business forward. Learn to make that distinction and don’t be afraid of making good investments. It’s fine to indulge in anything, but in moderation. That might be the key to success for many hings in life.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.