Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Hit Refresh

    thI read Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh recently, and it was a very enjoyable book. He’s had an interesting journey and I do think he’s dramatically transformed Microsoft. The book is recommended.

    Anyway, the Microsoft MVP Program asked is MVPs would share a refresh moment from their lives, so here’s mine:

    Hitting Refresh, Over and Over

    I think I’ve started to wear the finish off the refresh button, but it’s been a great life and career.

    When I entered university at 17, I expected to study computer science and spend a career writing code for some organization. This was the era before the Internet when terminals were hardwired to mainframes, printers were housed in a separate room (with a page budget each semester), and my 300 baud modem allowed me to watch the screen slowly fill with characters. After two years of learning new languages and solving relatively simple problems, I hit refresh and decided finance and business were the direction for me.

    I completed a degree in economics, but injured myself playing rugby during my final year. I hit refresh again, not wanting to spend most of my life draped in a suit and tie, pouring over financial documents at a bank. I took a year off, working, playing volleyball, and surfing at the beach. Midway through this year, I became bored and hit refresh a third time, returning to school to study computer engineering.

    A year later, after securing an internship writing code and managing a Novell network, I hit refresh again, abandoning my schoolwork and going to work fulltime. I discovered SQL Server and hit refresh yet again. I moved into the data world, spending the next fifteen years working with SQL Server in a variety of industries and positions.

    I hit refresh again after starting SQLServerCentral.com and having that become successful enough to support me in a fulltime role. I left employment for my own venture, which was a completely different type of work from writing code for an employer. I became an educator and journalist, seeking to help others grow their SQL Server skills. I was honored to be recognized as a Data Platform MVP by Microsoft for my work here.

    Finally, I hit refresh one last time when Redgate Software purchased my business, and I became an evangelist for them. Today, I continue to educate and train others in Database DevOps, and hopefully won’t hit refresh again until I retire.

    This post is part of the collection of #HitRefresh moments. Read more at
    www.hitrefreshbook.com

  • Certifying Schools

    We’ve debated the value of schools in technology careers plenty of times on this site. I have been torn on the value of schools, and I tend to go back and forth as to whether I’d recommend them for many people. Right now I tend to shy away from schools, mostly because I think the ROI is hard for a college. Working in technology can be a great job, one that pays well, but the cost of a degree seems high. Especially when there are plenty of ways that you can learn the same skills.

    I’m not saying that university makes you a better or worse developer or IT professional. I think that really depends on the individual. Plenty of smart people go through a university curriculum and go on to build great systems and applications. The same is true for self-taught individuals that learn on the job. Ultimately, you need to take responsibility for your own career, your knowledge, and your education, both in getting started and continuing as long as you work in this field.

    However, I do think that your responsibility also extends to researching and learning about the way in which you choose to learn. If that’s a school, be wary of their claims. I ran across this piece about a school that was fined for their marketing. They didn’t quite lie about the results from the curriculum, but they were deceiving. I think everyone should understand that finding a job can be hard in your area, especially when you are getting started. Whether you come out of a school of some sort, or you’ve been building your own projects. Ultimately, you need to convince someone you can do the work they need done in a competent manner at some reasonable price.

    Education has become a business, one where the profit and loss seem to be more important than the results experienced by their graduates. Some of the lack of success by schools is because students don’t make enough of an effort to become good at their craft. I see plenty of evidence of that, even in professional places, where workers aren’t learning to become better at their craft over time. That’s something we can all do, and it’s something I ask you to do on a regular basis throughout your career. However, some of the issues are inherent in modern curriculums.

    As we look for more secure coding practices, ask for more testing, and still see frameworks and platforms continue to advance, I don’t know if schools can keep up? I’d like to think that there are enough professional teachers that could update and alter curriculums on a regular basis, perhaps even every semester, to adapt to the changing workplace. I’d like to see more practical projects, still taught using basic, well known principles in computer science, but using modern platforms. That might change the nature of the professor in colleges, but perhaps groups of colleges should jointly develop curriculums and keep them current over time. There’s still a place for teachers to learn and bring their skills to teaching, but using information that is evolving too rapidly for one person to manage.

    I don’t know if we’ll get there, but regardless, each of you needs to look to improve your skills over time. Don’t expect that what you knew last year will be good enough for next year. Continue to learn, grow, evolve, and question the ways in which you build software and systems.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Pluralsight for Another Year

    One of the ways that I try to keep current and learn is through Pluralsight. I’m lucky to get a subscription as a Data Platform MVP, but I’m sure Redgate would pay for one if I didn’t.

    My subscription ran out last week, but the support staff at Pluralsight was kind enough to renew me in minutes. Amazing service and greatly appreciated.

    If you haven’t tried online learning, I’d give it a go. Pluralsight has some great courses, but there are other choices as well. No matter what you choose, making some regular time to learn something fun, or improve those skills you use every day is a great way to keep your career moving forward.

  • Practice Until You Don’t Get It Wrong

    I wrote recently about a bad first day for an intern. He/she was fired, without cause in my opinion, when a production database was damaged while following a document for developer setup. The situation felt like a mistake, and one that wasn’t necessarily the fault of the individual. To me, this was extremely poor handling of the situation from a CTO.

    In the discussion for the piece, someone pointed out that it might not just be a new employee that makes a mistake that causes downtime. Certainly an unexperienced employee could have caused the issue, but I know there are people with lots of time in a position that make similar mistakes. It could be that someone that has been there a long time followed a poorly documented procedure, or applied the procedure to the wrong situation.

    In sports and the performance arts, I’ve heard a saying that says: amateurs practice until they get it right, but professionals practice until they don’t get it wrong. It’s the difference between just gaining a skill that you complete and continuing your learning to ensure that the execution of that skill is ingrained into your being. You internally build the muscle memory and skill to complete a task correctly over and over with practice.

    In the database world, this might be the difference between someone that has restored a database (the amateur) and someone that regularly practices restores of not only full database backups, but differentials and logs, tail log backups, filegroup restores, and more (the professional). The former has a skill, but the latter is confident and likely to complete the skill in a variety of situations without error.

    Practice won’t prevent mistakes, especially under pressure, but lots of practice does help us learn how to perform better. We learn what options are available, what issues might arise, and which choices we should be making. Just as professional athletes and musicians can make mistakes, we can as well. However, those mistakes should be rare. We should get most things right as the product of numerous hours of working deeply in, and understanding, our craft.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.