Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Achievement Unlocked: Balance 0

    Earlier this week I got a notice that I hadn’t completed a task this year. It’s one that I’ve rarely finished in the past, and probably not in any year in the last 10. However I decided this year that I should buckle down and get this done. I’m proud to say that I spent about an hour working on the task and got it done.

    What was the task? Taking all my vacation.

    I’ve got some amazing benefits from Red Gate Software, and my holiday allowance is one of them. However I’ve often struggled to allocate out my time, and with travel and my concerns over keeping this site running, I usually carry over a few days. I often sell a few back as well, and I’m actually glad that there are limits on both of those actions. If left to my own devices, I might become much more unbalanced than I have been in the past.

    I had a couple of weeks left, but to keep SQLServerCentral running in top form and ensure that you are getting information to help you improve your SQL Server skills, I can’t disappear on short notice. As a result, I’ve spread out my time off across the rest of this year and will be absent a number of days in December. Some is real vacation, some are days off that where I’ll have to decide what I want to do with the time.

    I know far too many people in technology skip vacations or don’t plan enough time off. I’ve been trying to get better at this each year, and I’m happy to say that I’ve finally managed to use up all my holiday for 2014. Don’t be like me. Schedule your time off and take it. Recharge, refresh, and enjoy the rest of your life. Remember that you work to live, you don’t live to work.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Continuous Learning

    It was a simultaneously busy, and also relaxing Tuesday for me recently. I attended Allan Hirt’s A to Z of Availability Groups at the PASS Summit. I’ve set up an Availability Groups before, but I was never sure that I completely understood everything happening in my lab, so this was a good chance to add some depth and color to my skills in this area. I met a few people surprised that I was spending time in a pre-con learning. They seemed to expect that I’d know most of what Allan was talking about.

    I know quite a bit about AlwaysOn and the related technologies, but I wouldn’t consider myself anywhere near an expert like Allan. I’ve fumbled through settings, but it’s a complex topic, and more importantly, it’s easy to misunderstand or confuse the subtleties of the technology. I went because a good, solid grounding in the technology, being led about in an organized fashion by an expert, is a good way to expand and solidify your knowledge. I saw other “experts”, MCMs and talented speakers in different pre-cons, each trying to continue to learn more about SQL Server.

    SQL Server is a big platform, one that’s wide in the number of features, and deep in complexity. No one knows everything about SQL Server, and most of the people I know that are extremely talented in areas of the platform, continue to grow their knowledge on a regular basis in a variety of areas.

    It’s the mission of SQLServerCentral to help you do the same thing, with our daily newsletter that brings you educational information about SQL Server. Hopefully you look forward to regularly growing your knowledge, just as I do.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. 

  • T-SQL Tuesday #60 – Something New Learned

    tsqltuesdayIt’s been five years, and that’s amazing. Not many things last for a year, much less five, but the T-SQL Tuesday party, started by Adam Machanic (B|T)., has been amazing and lots of fun for me.

    This month, Chris Yates hosts and his theme is Something New Learned. It’s a great topic, especially given the aims of T-SQL Tuesday to spread knowledge out in the world and share it with others.

    AlwaysOn

    This is good timing for me as I took a one day class last week. At the PASS Summit, I spent Tuesday in Allan Hirt’s A to Z of Availability Groups, which tries to help you understand AlwaysOn and the Availability Group portion of the technology. It was a great experience, and Allan did a fantastic job of walking through an overview, and then details. BTW, I can see how this would be amazing, and while I haven’t been, I’m sure that Allan’s Mission Critical SQL Server classes are valuable ways to learn this stuff in a hands on environment in a way that should help you be productive quickly on your own systems.

    The most interesting part for me is that this wasn’t an all day class where I listen to lectures, follow along in a workbook, and then move on. There were actual labs, and not labs that meant I downloaded scripts onto my machine and worked on them. Actually 3 node labs, dedicated to me, with instructions on how things were configured.

    What did I learn? Quite a bit, but for me the big mysteries that I’ve struggled with on AlwaysOn setups have been some of the permissions. Going through the labs, and getting the permissions necessary in the AD domain. The few places I had issues in the lab exercises were almost all related to a permissions issue I missed or had set incorrectly.

    I also went through the advanced versions of the labs, specifically to practice using Powershell for some config items. This was the chance to practice some skills and try to learn a bit more about how I can use PoSh for real world tasks. While the GUI might work well, I know that if I wanted to ensure I could build and create a lab in short order, or on demand, I’d really need PoSh scripting to ensure it was done correctly, and repeatedly. The lab reinforced that.

    I also learned a bit about a better way to teach. I’ve been in a few classes and lots of sessions across the last few years, but this dedicated lab environment really made things much easier for me. The hands on work was valuable in actually working through the concepts. In fact, I’ll be going through it again today as I have access to the labs for 10 days, and the workbook, so I can set up another Availability Group today and see the things I’ve done wrong in my own lab setup.

  • Pay It Forward

    There’s been a joke for years that responds to this question: what happens if I train my developers and they leave? The answer (and the joke) is this: what happens if you don’t train your developers and they stay?

    It’s rather stunning to me that companies don’t want to invest in the people that build their software. Software is one of the most valuable assets a company can create. However it’s not free, just as an investment in better machinery requires capital.

    I blame the MBAs in America (and possibly elsewhere) who started to look at the world very closely with a factory and accounting mentality, seeking to minimize, rather than just lower, costs, and treating far, far too many resources as homogeneous. That includes people, and the ill-conceived notion of human workers as “resources”.

    However I think that our industry has grown up with this idea that we are all tinkerers and like to learn on our own. We can learn on our own, and perhaps we can do so more efficiently than in a class. Classes far too often built and taught by a vendor that builds a product, but doesn’t use the software in the real world. There’s this idea that building software is easy and that we should be able to “pick it up” in our spare time.

    However many other industries invest in their employees, and spend time training them to work better. Doctors and nurses learn from other doctors and nurses. Accountants and lawyers attend continuing education, though often because they must do so for licensing reasons. Engineers study new techniques in their fields, but in these and many other industries, companies often give their employees time, funding, or experimental time in which they can improve their skills. Managers in other fields often recognize that people must continue to learn, or they will see their skills wane.

    Perhaps that’s where we should start. Let’s train managers to understand that training is important to produce higher quality software, faster.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.