Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Solving Problems at Midnight

    I couldn’t sleep last night. I was tossing and turning, struggling to rest, and it seemed I was waking up every 20 minutes.

    My demo broke. I have a talk that I’m giving at the Denver SQL Server User Group on Thursday, as practice for the same talk next week at SQL Intersection. After returning from my travels, I fired up my virtual machine on Monday and went through the talk. I’ve given a version of this as recently as 3 weeks ago, but I like to refresh myself. When I got to the third demo, I couldn’t get it to work.

    I tried a bunch of things, but the test I was sure would fail, wouldn’t. This is a significant part of my demo, and it shows how data volumes affect things. I reset the snapshot. I dropped and rebuilt the database and process. I even took a 3 hour break, going for a walk, picking up kids, and hitting a yoga class. When I returned at night, while my kids were doing their homework, I couldn’t get mine to work. I even faked the test, and caused a failure, but that wouldn’t work with an audience.

    I gave up around 9:30 and went to bed shortly thereafter. At least, I tried to, tossing and turning. My mind was all over the map, thinking about work, some projects at home, kids’ school, etc. At 2am, it hit me. All of a sudden I realized why the test wouldn’t fail. The join that was supposed to be slow, wasn’t, because it was missing some data. I was generating a large volume of data in two of the three tables, but in the third, I hadn’t linked it to my version control system. That’s why it failed.

    I don’t always have such great inspiration at night, but I have found that sometimes walking away from an issue and taking a break can help. I’ve even walked to a colleague’s desk and helped them with their own issue, and all of a sudden I realize how to solve my problem. I’ve learned to learn to be productive in other ways when I’m stuck on a particular problem, letting my subconscious mind analyze things in the background.

    This morning I linked my table and the test started failing. I have rarely been so happy to see red errors on my monitor.

  • Minor Problems

    When I speak to people about blogging to increase the visibility of their brand, one of the questions I often hear from them is “what do I write about?” My advice is to take the every day occurrences, the things that come up in the course of your job, and write about them. It doesn’t matter if everyone else has written about backing up SQL Server databases, or writing a query to find duplicate rows; it matters if you have written about it. A potential employer often your blog as due diligence on your skills, including the way you communicate information to others through your writing.

    However most of us also encounter these seemingly trivial, minor problems that plague our environments. We find creative solutions to the problems, solutions that others might not think of. They don’t seem to be worth sharing. I hear so many SQL Server professionals belittle their work, thinking that anyone could build the same solution. That might be true, but for every problem you solve, there are probably others working with SQL Server that would benefit from hearing about your work.

    New people come into the SQL Server community all the time. There will be people that connect to SQL Server with Management Studio for the first time and back up a database. This week someone is writing their first T-SQL query and executing it. The trivial, simple solutions that you develop for common problems might just help one of these beginners learn something, and solve a problem their first week as an accidental DBA.

    Write about the common things you do. Share the solutions you develop. Pay it forward, since most of us have gotten help already from someone else in the community doing the same thing.

    Steve Jones

     

  • Grow Your Family

    Yesterday I wrote a piece on the networking event that Andy Warren and I host on the Monday before the Summit conference each year. It’s a great event, and I hope more of you can come next year. Our event is really a microcosm of something amazing in the SQL Server community. I haven’t seen it in other technologies I’ve been a part of, and I’m proud that we, as a community, have done something amazing.

    The hashtag on Twitter for many events is #sqlfamily. It seems as though the various community members, some speakers, some authors, some watchers, all treat this professional group as a family. We greet each other warmly, we hug, we help each other solve problems or find jobs. And we argue and disagree. We act like a family, a large group of people bonded together.

    If you choose to join and participate, it seems that someone will be willing to help you, cheer you up, laugh with you, and be your friend. It’s an amazing group of people, and I have a question for you this Friday.

    Will you join the #sqlfamily and meet 3 new people at your next event?

    That’s my recommendation for networking and becoming more involved in the community. At your next user group, SQL Saturday, or other event, make an effort to talk to 3 people. Introduce yourself and ask them what they do with SQL Server. It’s that simple to network with people and you never know what will come of a new relationship. Most will be casual “hi, how are you” relationships and some will be “I don’t want to talk to them anymore”, but I bet you get a few closer relationships where you enjoy seeing and talking to the individual.

    You might find a new good friend, a contact that you can call for help, or a colleague that calls to offer you a new job.

    Steve Jones

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  • Open Arms

    This past Monday night was the annual networking dinner that Andy Warren and I put on before the PASS Summit. Actually “put on” is a bit of an overstatement. We pick a location, call them to ask if a large group can come in, and send out an invitation. People learn about it and if they can, they come and meet people and buy their own food or drinks.

    Apparently people still like the idea as we had over 200 people fill up the Buffalo Wild Wings at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte. I stood out front for 45 minutes or so, greeting people and making sure they knew were to go. I bet I shook more than 100 hands in that time, introducing myself to at least half of the people and greeting the others that I’ve known for years. I probably got 50 hugs as well during a long night. I didn’t get a chance to eat dinner until 10pm.

    Despite the main event not starting until Wednesday, a lot of people were in town early. Some had pre-conference sessions scheduled, some arrived early to sight-see and adjust to the new time zone, and quite a few attended our SQL in the City on Monday and weren’t even attending the larger conference. All of them came to meet others on Monday night.

    It’s an amazing happy hour opportunity for people to meet each other. Andy and I try to make the even welcoming, introducing people to each other whenever we have the chance. We encourage everyone to not just sit with their friends, but meet 3-5 new people and have a short conversation.

    I think it works well and even though I’m not attending the conference, I did want to make it to this event and I met some new people that I’ll remember in the future. @sqlhammer and Erroll from Charlotte are two that stand out, but I had lots of short conversations with others that are too numerous to mention.

    If you come to the conference next year, think about attending our Monday night event. If you don’t, think about going early (or staying late) at your local user group and doing a little networking. If you go to a SQL Saturday, be sure to say hi to at least 3 new people.

    Steve Jones

    Video and Audio versions

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

    Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.
    Steve Jones

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