Tag: career

The SQL Server community is amazing. We help, share, bond, and care for each other in a way that is very rare for a large, disparate set of technical professionals. I see and hear validation of this constantly from people that participate in their first SQL Saturday and are amazed by the experience.

I think one of the amazing things about the #SQLFamily is that we do jump in and help each other. I rarely see the RTFM answers to questions, or ganging up by multiple people to pick on someone’s ignorance. In fact, I see the opposite. Most often the SQL community calls out and refuses to tolerate unprofessional behavior.

This seems to be the prevailing view of so many in the community, and I’m not surprised to see John Morehouse call for even more people to jump in and help out. I certainly see plenty of people offering to support or mentor others that are new to writing or speaking, and I think we can do even more.

All of you can share your knowledge. Whether through speaking, writing, even just providing more comments and thoughts on what others do. Many of you have lots of experience and thoughts that can help your colleagues get better at their jobs. Whether inside of your company, at events, user groups, or just with a note posted to a random SQL Server blog on the internet. Jump in, be polite and professional, and make someone else a better SQL Server professional.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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Today’s editorial was originally published on June 8, 2011. It is being re-run because Steve is on vacation.

I think that most of the developers or data professionals out there have been through a variety of types of interviews in their careers. You might have had technical interviews that asked you to write code, or maybe you’ve been quizzed on SQL Server trivia or asked to explain methods and properties. Maybe you’ve had interviews with managers that had you define a few database terms. Perhaps you’ve just had someone ask you the ten common interview questions without requiring you to demonstrate any technical knowledge.

No matter what you’ve experienced, I think that many people would agree that the hiring process needs work. It does a poor job of actually predicting if the new employee can produce quality code or manage servers. Why is that?

Many companies have really tried to solve this. From the famous “How would you move Mt. Fuji?” questions at Microsoft to the common CS type questions at Google. Joel Spolsky has his own guerilla guide, which I assume has worked well for him, though on a much smaller scale. I think, however, that for the most part no one has come up with a good way to solve this issue.

A friend sent me this piece recently: Why the New Guy Can’t Code. It’s a little heavy handed, but there was one quote in there that I thought made sense: “don’t interview anyone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Ever.” It’s so easy to set up your own website, design a database on your personal machine, even put an app out for sale, that there’s no excuse not to make some effort to accomplish something. Craig Farrall talked about building something in Looking for Work in SQL Server, as did Brandie Tarvin in Changing Career Gears. It’s also one of the things I talk about at the Modern Resume: show people what you’ve done.

I don’t know that we’ll ever find a fool proof way to hire great employees, but hiring people that have proven themselves in the past, and can point to something they’ve done, is good start.

Steve Jones

We work in an interesting industry. While I think you can certainly enter many other professions, electrician, plumber, artist, etc. without any formal schooling, programming allows you to earn a very good living with little physical effort. You can also work in any location, even from home. I think the opportunities and requirements open this field up to many more people than previous occupations in the past.

Of course, plenty of people still go to school to learn about computers, though I’m not sure I’d recommend that to people if you want to work in this business. I think you can teach yourself lots of the skills you need, and I think companies are really starting to realize that a college degree doesn’t correlate with a strong technology worker.

I was reminded of this when I saw a piece on a student that dropped out of a computer science curriculum. While I would hope that 3rd year CS students had written lots of code (I had by that point), I do agree that the exercises and requirements of many universities do not necessarily prepare many students for working as developers or DBAs. The most valuable thing you can learn in university is great communication skills, on which most people don’t spend enough effort concentrating.

There is a lot of potential for universities to really train students in very strong ways to solve complex algorithmic problems, but schools need to evolve more quickly. The world is advancing quickly and companies are searching for employees that can learn quickly and adapt to new situations. However for students to learn these types of skills, we also need instructors that are willing and able to adapt as quickly to teaching new subjects and techniques, rather than relying on a curriculum that was built twenty years ago.

Steve Jones