Tag: career

I often hear the technical staff in many organizations complaining about the amount of work they are tasked with managing. Plenty of technology professionals view their jobs are stressful, and I’ve had no shortage of people say they would never recommend their job, or even this industry, to others as a career choice.

That’s unsurprising to me, which is a little sad. I’ve felt that we face a dilemma in this industry. Our skills are easy to acquire, with any of us able to learn new skills and gaining knowledge as quickly as we are able. Often, our ability to learn is limited only by the time and effort we put into understanding a skill, not any external factor.

However that also means that our employers seem to expect that we can learn without training, quickly, on our own, and that we can instantly be experts that make computer systems do our bidding. When we can’t respond quickly enough, or as quickly as we did for the last request, our managers feel that we’re just being lazy this week.

Perhaps we do respond quickly, and get tasked with even more work. This might not be the case for most of you, or even many of you. I’m sure plenty of you are in situations where your managers understand the complexity of your jobs, but I wanted to ask about your situation:

Do you have too large a workload at your current job?

By this I mean, do you feel you’re not able to get enough work done in a reasonable work week and you feel pressure to work longer hours. Are your managers asking you to do more than you think they should? Or do they appreciate that, like many endeavors, working with technology takes time.

Certainly I think many of us could work more efficiently by automating tasks, but depending on the variety and complexity of tasks, as well as the amount of time you can invest in completing future work quicker, you might be stuck in situations that just require more hours. If that’s the case, I hope your workload isn’t too large, but let us know.

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.

I was chatting with a friend recently about our careers and how much we have learned over time. We are both interested in continuing our education in technology and debated how we might proceed. I mentioned that I was thinking to spend some time following Colleen Morrow’s journey to pass the 70-463 exam, which is one exam I need to complete a certification. I think that it is hard to work through a topic without having some plan for doing so, and I prefer to follow a book or another person’s plan to guide my learning.

My friend talked about their experience with Pluralsight, which I’ve also used. They mentioned that it’s exciting to get started, and you certainly can work through a number of courses over there, but at some point you’re just going through courses. You really need to stop and practice the skills you’ve listened and to and been quizzed on, otherwise much of that knowledge won’t be retained.

I’ve found that to be true as well with classroom training. A week’s worth of knowledge is too much to learn at once, and only with a lot of practice, and substantial documentation available after the training, does the class really do you a lot of good. However, that’s the way that so much training is organized in the technology space.

Ideally, I think that the best way to actually teach someone a skill is the way that many college classes are organized. Learn over time, slowly, with a few skills taught and then practiced. Repeat that for months and you’ll gain knowledge. However who has time to spend six months learning something like SSIS, a skill at a time.

You do, and I do. In one sense, our Stairway Series provide this, as does Pluralsight. These methods give you the ability to work through a subject slowly, in a guided way, at your pace. What these methods don’t do is push you to keep moving, which is perhaps the most difficult part of learning a new skill for most people.

Email reminders, pings, and all the possibilities available with technology likely won’t work for most of us. However I might suggest the best way would be to find a few friends or co-workers looking to acquire the same skills and press each other to stick to a schedule. It’s worked for exam study, and I bet it would work here, applying some pressure for you to keep up with your friends, and continue your learning.

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.

Working for one company for your whole life. Spending your career with a small company that engages and lives in the local community. Seeing your management and co-workers around town and at leisure events. Being a part of, and loyal to, a company doing business around the globe.

This sounds ideal to me, as I prefer working for smaller companies, and I want to work for a company that respects my time. In fact, I do work for a company like that. Red Gate, is in many ways, like the German Mittelstand described in this article on work life balance in. We work hard, we do need to respond to issues outside of “normal hours”, but for the most part employees treat others in the company (and our customers) with respect. That’s the key to managing an around-the-clock, global business that you are proud of.

It’s unlikely that most companies will change their view on how employees should be treated, and what amount of work is expected. Certainly many companies in the US have had lots of success by driving employees to work harder and longer, especially requiring this of their technology staff. Many of us that do work with computers have been well compensated, but the time lost and stress induced are high prices to be paid and many employees struggle with these requirements. There is numerous evidence that long work hours don’t result in more productivity over time, but when companies want to move forward, or systems are broken, companies expect that staff will work.

I don’t think laws like the German Anti-Stress law that limits contact after work hours can help things. The culture of work really needs to evolve to find a balance between getting work done and respecting employees. I’m not sure I’ll see that change at any scale, but I do know there are more companies, especially smaller ones, that do want to retain and invest in their employees, respecting their time and efforts. They don’t guarantee lifetime employment, but I do think they make life better while you work for them.

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.