Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Advent of Code

    In early December, I ran across a post from Jeremiah Peschka on practicing your coding skills. Apart from the points made about practicing skills, he referenced a site called the Advent of Code. It’s a site that uses a Christmas theme and a little gaming to get people to solve programming problems. I mentioned it on my blog, and across a few weeks, a few people in the SQL Server community started working on the problems in SQL.

    Probably like most people that started this, I didn’t finish in December. In fact, I didn’t work on problems most days because life got in the way. However I haven’t given up. Around vacations and other events, I’ve continued to work on solving the problems in multiple ways, using different languages. I’ve tackled problems in Python, PowerShell, and T-SQL.

    I’d urge you to give some sort of programming challenge a try, mostly just to gain some practice in building algorithms and investigating the ways in which you can solve problems with software. If nothing else, the exercises challenge your brain and exercise your mind.

    I’m considering working on something like this for SQLServerCentral next year, with a series of complex problems that you can work on to practice your T-SQL and SQL Server skills. I don’t think I’ll make it an Advent of T-SQL for Christmas, but I do think having a series of challenging problems is a good way to drive your learning.

    If you’ve got suggestions for other programming exercises, feel free to pass them along.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • 100 Hours

    How long does it take someone to learn to be good at building software in some language? I’m sure many of you have heard of the 10,000 rule that notes the truly gifted in a field need 10,000 hours of practice to become experts and master their craft. There’s some debate about how true that is, but certainly becoming an expert takes tremendous dedication, certainly years of time.

    I ran across a piece that referenced a slightly shorter rule, the 100 hour rule. The rule is fairly simple: “for most disciplines, it only takes one hundred hours of active learning to become much more competent than an absolute beginner.”

    One hundred hours is nothing. That’s a long week or two of active learning to get good at something. But how good? If we look at software development, what can you accomplish in 100 hours? After all, absolute beginner is a low bar. That’s the level my Mom is at and I’m not sure how much I could teach her beyond “Hello, world” in a few hours. Even in 100 hours, I’m not sure she could solve many problems.

    The good thing is that most of us aren’t absolute beginners, especially in software. We have frames of reference for many parts of how computers work. I suspect that 100 hours of deliberate, guided, practical (meaning typing and practicing skills), would turn lots of people into a good junior developer, maybe even a mid level developer. I think many senior developers would be very competent in a new language in a few hundred hours, because they’d learn the syntax translation quickly and then start understanding the tips, tricks, and gotchas that experts in that language might know. The algorithms and problem solving skills are often the same between languages.

    For most of us looking to grow our careers and improve our technology skills, I would guess we could learn a new skill every year, becoming competent, with 100 hours of practice. Reading books and articles is good, but the hands on practice is most important, and that’s what really drives home active learning. That’s something I’d encourage many of you do, with exercises, puzzles, or maybe even start a small project that help you learn. It will help your career, by improving skills, and might even be fun along the way.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Happy New Year 2016

    Happy New Year from everyone here at SQLServerCentral and Redgate Software!

    I do hope you’re not working, and enjoying a start to 2016. If you do happen to read this, I hope you are relaxing and have a big smile on your face.

    This year we’ve got a new version of SQL Server coming, and I’m sure lots of exciting new technologies we’ll see released. It’s a new beginning, and a chance to move forward. With that in mind, a simple question today.

    What new technology, language, or skill do you want to improve in 2016?

    Today is a great day to make a resolution and start growing your skills, for fun or profit, in 2016.

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Are We Suckers?

    I written about learning to say no. I’ve noted that we must find a balance in life with work. I try to encourage you to work hard, get better at your job, and bring value to your employer. I certainly know there are plenty of employees that coast along in their jobs, doing often less than what I would consider the minimum. I’m hoping that more and more of you are trying to do better.

    However, when I read pieces like this one where a CEO wonders why employees don’t work harder, I get frustrated by managers that don’t seem to understand that work is merely work for many of us. We enjoy it, we want to do well, but it’s just a part of our lives. We have other things in life that we love and are more important than work.

    However I also know there are plenty of you that go the extra mile. You routinely work outside the normal business hours to solve problems, or just deploy changes to system. I’ve been there, and I’ve wondered why I’d bother working from 11pm Sat – 4am Sun for “routine maintenance” if I wasn’t being paid an hourly wage. This week, what do you think about this?

    Are we suckers for working extra hours?

    I know plenty of people enjoy the work, and they rise to the challenge of responding in a crisis. One of the hardest things I had to manage was getting people to go home and rest when faced with an extended crisis. It seems I had no shortage of employees that wanted to work 30, 40 or more hours in a row, and I’d argue to send them home to rest because I’d need them to work tomorrow night.

    I think that we should make an honest effort to give our employers value. We should do the work assigned, perhaps do it better today than yesterday, and be flexible when more work is needed. I also think employers should do the same thing. Extra hours at work should be extra time off. Compensation should relate to to performance, but not hours worked. Sacrifice by employees should be met with sacrifice by employers.

    In other words, just like my balance between work and life, there should be a balance between employers and employees with each side respecting the other.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.