Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Doing a Little Research

    I’ve been very pleased with the direction of SSMS the last few years. As it’s been separated from SQL Server releases and gets updated more often, I think the changes from v17 though v20 have been improvements. There are still issues, but it’s been better. Now we finally have SSMS moving to a modern shell with the v21 preview and I’m excited to see how this changes the future of our tooling.

    However, the PM for SSMS, Erin Stellato, posted a note on LinkedIn recently asking why people don’t read documentation. She also asks what you want to see in 21, so respond if you think there are holes in the SSMS docs. I think this post came about because of many responses that came from people who clearly hadn’t read some documentation.

    I find far too often people struggling with different concepts, some of which I know a bit about and some I don’t. However, for those that I don’t, I can often figure out something about it quickly. A combination of Google, following links in those results, and increasingly, asking CoPilot/Some-AI  a question often helps me solve a problem by giving me direction and knowledge. I still have work to do, but it’s a start.

    In fact, that’s how I solved a lot of the questions on SQL Server Central in the past. I’d read a question in the forums, I’d research a bit, set up an experiment, test something, and then post an answer. And at times, then getting told my solution didn’t work and figuring something else out or correcting my answer since I’d missed a bit of the context.

    These days, I see lots of people struggling and I don’t quite understand why. It seems the art of scoping a problem, doing some research, some experiments, and coming up with a solution relatively quickly isn’t common, but more uncommon. Lots of friends who have colleagues/direct reports say there are plenty of others that don’t have these skills.

    I’m curious for those of you willing to share, how do you go about doing some research when something doesn’t work? When you get asked to do something you don’t know how to do, or asked a question you can’t answer, what is your process? Pick a specific example if you can and let us know how you self-educate.

    If you struggle to do this, or you post online and expect someone else to help you, I’d encourage you to think about how you can become more self-sufficient and teach yourself, using the resources you have. Your employer will appreciate it and it will help further your career opportunities.

    Steve Jones

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  • Grinding Away: Iris Classon

    Iris Classon is a developer and Microsoft MVP. She has had a lot of success across the last decade plus. This is her second career, deciding in 2011 to leave her profession as a registered clinical dietician to learn to program. Here’s an excerpt of an interview:

    “Well, the first few days sucked. I mean—yes, you might want to beep that out. Because our teachers are doing, counting, talking about binaries, and I had forgotten all the math. They’re talking about binary numbers and doing all the calculations. They’re talking about hardware as well, which I didn’t know anything about. I know now, but not then.

    I was so frustrated. On the second day, I was like, “I want to go home.” I was kind of upset and stuff, so my teacher drove me home and we had a long chat, and he said, “Iris, come back. We kind of need a personality like that. You just come back. Give it the rest of the week and you’ll see.”

    On the third day, when I came back—I did come back—we started programming. We did our first little console application, and I just realized I just got it. I would turn around and look at my classmates. Some of them just seemed confused and I was like, “What is the problem? I mean, this is logic.”

    For the first time in my life, I understood what was written.”

    Her first year of programming is documented on her site, and it’s a neat read to me. The important thing is to remember she documented this daily during that year. It’s summarized now, but she was grinding away.

    What I like about this

    This is a story I think shows practically how to improve yourself and get better at something new. I have remembered this story as I tried to learn to coach over the last ten years, and as I continue to work on trying to improve my skills.

    This is also in tech, and it gives you a way to look at yourself and try to improve your skills to find a better position, or maybe the position you really want.

    What I don’t like about this

    Not everyone can take time off to improve for a year, though this is something most of you could do across 3-4 years.

    I also don’t want to make it seem like anyone can do this. Everyone has certain genetic gifts, and they are drawn to certain things. Iris clearly is drawn to very logical work and has a gift for programming. Your experience, raw talent, and understanding might not be as good.

    You can get better, but you walk your path and you have to remember that. Reading other stories can sometimes feel like I can’t do that. You won’t likely do the same thing, but you can improve yourself a lot of you grind away.

  • Grinding Away: Kobe Bryant

    I saw this story from Robert Horry, one of the greatest clutch shooters in basketball. Don’t know it’s true, but I think it is.

    When I got traded to the Lakers in ’97, Kobe Bryant was just a rookie. The dude couldn’t shoot threes. We would play this shooting game every day after practice. It was me, Kobe, Brian Shaw, Mitch Richmond and Kurt Rambis. Kobe would lose every time. We would get to practice the next day and sure enough, Kobe would already be there shooting nothing but threes. Like clockwork, at the end of practice he’d say, “Let’s play the game! I’m ready for you.” And we would beat his ass again.

    He would never stop. It was incredible. He practiced until one day, a couple months later, he finally won. If you literally said, “Kobe, I bet you can’t make five in a row by dropping the ball and kicking it in from half court,” that motherfucker would go out there and practice it until he could do it. And that’s what people don’t understand when they talk about champions — when they talk about a winner’s mentality. Kobe’s dedication to the game is unreal.

    In case you think this isn’t true, listen to Kobe in this interview.

    Why I like this

    To compete against others, you have to work harder. I tell kids I coach that it isn’t enough to get better in sports, but you have to get better faster than others are getting better. That takes work, it takes setbacks, it takes failures. It takes effort to overcome those to get better.

    You might not have the raw talent to be one of the best every in your area, but you can be really, really good, and you can compete with many others.

    The modern world, with jobs being remote, companies hiring everywhere, more tech people wanting jobs, you need to compete well, which means work.

    Work to improve.

    Why I don’t like this

    I do think that Kobe worked in a very narrow domain, playing his sport. His sport didn’t change much, and he just needed to improve his skills, while knowing how to work against others. He was competing in a narrower space, against many knowns.

    For many of us, our world is more complex, with many more dimensions of new technologies, unknown demands or desires from employers (or potential employers), and an every growing set of things that appear in our industry.

    Driving to continue to be better is good, but you’ll never get to be amazing in everything in tech, or even one platform. Keep some balance and remember there are other important things in your life. Not so important you shouldn’t improve, but important enough to require some of your time.

  • Grinding Away: Michael Jordan

    A story from Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan’s trainer when he was with the Chicago Bulls. I don’t know this is true, but I saw this story posted and I like it (and don’t like it).

    “After every game, I used to ask Michael one question: 5, 6, or 7? As in, what time are we hitting the gym tomorrow morning? And he’d snap back the time, and that was it. Especially after a loss, when there wasn’t a whole lot else to say.

    No discussion, no debate, no lame attempt to convince me he needed the morning off. ‘Are you good?’ ‘I’m good.’ ‘See you in the morning.’ And the next morning, at whatever time he’d decided, he’d awaken to find me standing outside his door.

    No matter what happened the night before—good game, bad game, soreness, fatigue—he was up working out every morning while most other guys slept. Interesting how the guy with the most talent and success spent more time working out than anyone else.”

    Grinding away, getting better at your craft, is something that all of us can do. Whether we want to or not is a separate story.

    Why I like this

    There aren’t excuses for continuing to work on your craft and it takes regular attention. It requires some dedication and commitment to improve.

    Why I don’t like this

    It’s easy to take this to far and think the routine of every day or every week is important. It’s also easy to drive yourself too far. If you want to be the rest of the best, then you need this drive.

    If you don’t want to be the best, but just be really good, then you need to do this often, but give yourself a break at times when life gets in the way.