Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • I Need a CS Degree. I Don’t Need a CS Degree

    For a long time I’ve felt that my recommendation for people wanting to enter technology wasn’t to go to college and get a degree, but rather start to learn on your own and get an entry level job (help desk, tech support, etc.) and start to work in the industry. That’s a good way to both experiment and understand what you’re considering undertaking as a career, as well as limiting your investment. It’s also nice to get paid to learn something.

    College is great, but it’s also expensive. I find that for many people, it can be hard to get a good ROI from college these days. The fast rising cost, not to mention the uncertain opportunities after college lead me not to recommend pursuing a CS degree, or really any degree, as a default view. There are exceptions, but for many people, I’d prefer to work and try to better understand where they should invest in education.

    However.

    Jerry Nixon has a great (long) post on Twitter on this topic, answering the question of whether someone should get a degree or not, mostly focused on developers and CS degrees. It’s a very nuanced view that you both should and shouldn’t get a degree. It really depends on what you want to do. There are cases where we might want someone to get a degree and deeply understand complex development. It’s one thing to build internal web apps or design a database used by internal sales teams. It’s quite another to design encryption for a military application or ensure a rocket can land on a floating platform.

    Both things can be true together. You should get a degree to be a developer and you should not get a degree to be a developer, but the more detailed answer depends on where you want to work and what you want to achieve. A nice optimistic view from Jerry is that some people want to achieve something bigger than a paycheck, bettering the world with software, not to earn more, but to make life better in some way. I wish more people felt that way.

    A great piece of advice from Jerry is to listen to those who you want to become, not the loudest people. I somewhat lament that so many of the very, very smart people I know or hear about are focused on tooling that generates revenue or income, and not necessarily pursuing improvements in the world. That’s their choice, and I can’t get upset about so many extremely capable technologists working in finance or FAANG rather than areas where they might change the world for the better. I can be though, and am, sad.

    Read the post, and think deeply about what this means to you. And if you want to be a great software or database engineer, then do great things. Work hard at your craft and constantly sharpen your saw.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Knowing Your Total Reward

    For much of my career as a younger person, I was mostly concerned with salary at a job, along with the opportunities for my career. I really wanted to know how much money would hit my bank account and cared most about that. I also wanted to know if I would learn something or get a better title or work with a technology that might help me in the future. That drove me through quite a few jobs in my 20s and 30s, leaving some for more money and more opportunity.

    As I got a family, I became more concerned about healthcare since that industry is a mess in the US. Often when I looked at a job, I perused other benefits but didn’t give them much weight, mostly concerned with salary and the cost of medical insurance. I also somewhat cared about who I worked with (the team), but that was more for helping me choose between different jobs. It wasn’t something I thought of as a reward, though I should have.

    Recently one of our internal recruiters shared a post on LinkedIn talking about total reward. This was from an HR company, but I really liked the idea of total reward. There’s not a lot to the post, but it noted that many HR and management think total rewards for employees are salary + benefits. It highlights that there is more, which includes all compensation (competitive + performance-based), work-life integration, career opportunities, supportive culture, and human-centric policies. There’s a graphic that highlights this idea.

    Early in the SQL Server Central days, Andy and I were talking about his job search and how he viewed the entire package. He cared about other things, often looking at certification or education compensation, time off, commute, and more. Some of those things were important to me, but they often were nice-to-haves next to the salary. The total compensation made more sense for him to evaluate, as employers sometimes have very different policies. He tried to put a monetary value on each benefit to compare them. He had one company that paid him for each certification he got, which added up to quite a bit of money on top of his salary when he got certified in most of the Office products.

    Today I’m wondering if some of you think about your total reward from employment. Do you weigh in the different types of benefits you get? Can you put some value on a particular policy your employer offers? As an example, I made this choice years ago when a company in Denver offered me a fair salary and position. However, they were unwilling to let me work at home more than one day a week. At the time I had young children and I would lose 90 minutes every day to a commute. I countered with $15k less salary each year and 3 days of work at home. They declined and we went our separate ways. I was very happy with that decision, as my time had real value to me.

    These days I think about the total compensation I get, with a lot of flexibility and autonomy, on top of interesting work and good compensation. I also think about stability and security, which are important to me since I really, really don’t ever want to have to look for another job.

    We should work to live our lives, and understand that while work is important and provides purpose, it’s a part of our life. We spend a lot of time in our jobs, so we should ensure our total rewards are a fair trade for our time.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Should I Learn PostgreSQL

    I got asked this question recently:

    I constantly see PostgreSQL on Microsoft slides, email, ads, etc. My MCADAA exam started with an entire section on it. I’m trying to determine if it’s worth focused study and training time. Roughly how much of the Azure cloud database space does PostgreSQL occupy? Should I include it in my personal training program?

    It’s a good question, though I am assuming that MCADDA is the Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate cert. That page describing the exam only mentions Azure SQL (SQL Server), and not PostgreSQL, so while I think Azure SQL for PostgreSQL is good to learn, I think the cert preparation needs an update if that topic is on the exam.

    In any case, should you learn PostgreSQL?

    I’ll give you the DBA answer: it depends.

    Ask yourself some questions:

    • Does your org use PostgreSQL or are they planning to do so?
    • Are you going to stick with your company for a few more years?
    • Are there more things you should be learning in the area you do work now?
    • Are there things you should become more skilled at that your company values?
    • Do you know what the opportunities are for people that know PostgreSQL well?

    Depending on the answers, I may or may not recommend you spend time there. If you have other things to learn that might be better at your current job, either the job you have or one you might want, then focus there. If your company does (or doesn’t) value PostgreSQL, then that influences your choice as well.

    PostgreSQL is growing fast. DB-Engines shows growth across a few platforms, and PostgreSQL is doing well.

    2024-10_0140

    The StackOverflow developer survey shows similar results:

    2024-10_0141

    However, those are general results. Your specific situation is different. Think about it and ask the question above to lots of people.

  • Small Data SF 2024

    I have often made an effort to attend conferences in the past to grow my career. Even today, when I speak at a conference, I’ll try to go to a few sessions and learn something, but I can be distracted. It’s rare I focus on just learning stuff without other responsibilities.

    I’m at Small Data today and tomorrow doing precisely that. I’m just an attendee, and today is a couple of workshops for me with a variety of talks tomorrow. It’s a real career growth opportunity for me and I’m excited. I’m doing the Data Warehousing and Design workshops today and sitting in sessions all day tomorrow.

    I can’t remember where I heard of this conference, but when I saw the manifesto and sessions, I was intrigued. There were tentative plans this week for me to do a customer visit, but when that got delayed, I jumped on the opportunity to visit San Fran and learn something.

    As I’ve worked with a lot of customers, I see the value of small data sets providing lots of agility for teams, while also allowing them to get work done, as long as the data sets are relevant and representative. That’s a big part of me pushing the Subsetter at Redgate.

    In this case, the conference focuses more on analytics and AI, and likely more developers than DBAs, but I think it’s a chance to get different perspectives, maybe learn a few things, and perhaps get others to see my data viewpoint in the hallways discussions.