Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Road to Success

    I heard this quote recently from Dan Wood of Northwest Cadence. “The road to success is paved with cobblestones.” The meaning is that as we get better and gain success in those things we attempt, it will be a bumpy road. If you’ve ever driven (or walked) down a cobblestone road, you know what I mean. It’s not a path you’d want to take every day in a wheeled vehicle.

    In other words, we will make mistakes.

    In talking and teaching about software development practices, I think far too many people, myself included, become too concerned about mistakes. We worry about our code being perfect, or we struggle to implement newer features because we lack the confidence to try something new.

    This is one of the reasons I think moving to a well engineered software delivery pipeline is important. The ability to make changes to code quickly, run tests, and deploy smoothly is important. We will make mistakes in our programming. We will have bugs. Even as we improve our ability to write better code, we will make mistakes that we want to fix quickly. Having a smooth process that allows us to deploy new changes, as well as prevent old ones from re-occurring, will separate the great development groups from the average ones.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Your Portfolio

    I believe in managing and working on your career regularly. Early in my life, I randomly went from job to job. I looked for new opportunities when I lost old ones. I took the first job I was offered. I really let my career happen, as opposed to actively trying to move it in a direction that was best for me.

    One of the things I have suggested to many people is to build a blog and chronicle their career. This is a way to showcase your knowledge and allow a potential hiring manager to perform some due diligence on who you are.

    However the front page of your blog, with the last 5-10 posts you’ve written on some random topics might not be the image you want to present. Perhaps you can better show yourself off and control the image that you present to the world.

    I thought about this when I read a piece about a photographer assembling a portfolio of their work. I thought, this might be a good exercise for a technical person as well. Perhaps there are specific skills, posts, software that you want to show. Put the links on your resume or cover letter that build the impression you want to make. Maybe send someone to a landing page that contains the projects that you are more proud of.

    Certainly this might not work, and a manager might just randomly look through your blog, but I think it’s worth a bit of time, especially for a developer. Showcase the things you are most proud of, or perhaps most applicable to the positions you’re seeking.

    Above all, it might be a good chance to re-evaluate what you think of your career and relive some of your proud accomplishments.

    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. feed

  • Catch up with T-SQL Tuesday

    T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party where we get an invitation the first week of the month to write on a specific topic for the second Tuesday of that month. Adam Machanic came up with the idea and he chooses the hosts.

    If you’re interested in hosting, contact him.

    While there’s a sense of community and participation here, and certainly the chance to showcase some of your knowledge for others, it’s also got another benefit.

    It’s the chance for you to learn something.

    Not by reading other’s posts, but by writing your own. This is your opportunity to bolster your own skills, and teach yourself something new.

    Don’t Worry About Timing

    I know many of you are worried about the pressure of producing something good. I know many of you will find that the first weekend of the month is really busy and you can’t write.

    That’s fine.

    I’ve got a list of all previous invitations and topics. Go back and pick one of them and write your own post today. Start working on it, teach yourself something, and put some thoughts down. Research what others have done by looking through the roundups. Get a friend to review the work and see if it’s readable and makes sense.

    Do that ten times. It might take you ten months, but I’m sure you can write something down about SQL Server once a month.

    When you get ten, start a blog and publish them. Use the T-SQL Tuesday tag, but I’d also encourage you to use the #SQLNewBlogger tag as well. Start showing your boss that you’re improving your skills. Be ready to impress you potential next new boss with a series of posts on SQL topics.

    Your career will be better off, and the world will start to see better software being written.

    Start improving your skills this weekend, or start documenting the learning you already do. Either way, start building a better brand for your career.

  • The Tally Table

    I saw a someone post a question recently about solving a T-SQL problem. One of the answers given used a tally table, which the original poster didn’t understand. A few follow up links pointed them in the right direction, but it got me wondering.

    How many of you know what a tally table is and how to create one? I bet a few of you don’t, which might mean you’ve never had the need. Or it might be a hole in your skill set and you didn’t realize that a tally table can be very useful in solving a number of problems. Anything from generating dates to splitting strings. There are plenty more ways to use one, and feel free to mention more in the comments that others might not have tried.

    I’m not sure the tally table is a core T-SQL skill, but I think it’s an important one you should learn as you grow your skills. After you’ve mastered the basics (Insert/update/delete, aggregates, outer joins) Adding in an understanding of window functions, the APPLY operator, and CTEs are also important to allow you to become better at solving the problems you run into with more efficient T-SQL.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed