Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Vacation Struggle

    poolIt’s a little over halfway through the year and once again I’m struggling to get away from work and get through my vacation. It’s not that my boss won’t give me time off, which is a common complaints from many workers in the technology industry. Instead it’s my fault. I’ve got a lot of ongoing work to get done, various commitments for events, preparation for travel, and most of all, I enjoy my job. I’ll add that a few family events have prevented us from executing on vacation plans along the way as well.

    Skipping vacation is not the best way to go through your career, and during the last month I’ve stopped to take stock of the situation and do something about it. I have a generous vacation allowance and there’s no need to hoard it, saving for a once-a-year-two-week trip. I have some family coming into town soon, and I booked a few days off while they are here. I’ve also extended one of my trips, planning on a mini-vacation with my daughter. I plan on saving some days to ski near the end of the year, but I’ll also be taking some long weekends and trying to recharge my interest in life, coming back to work refreshed.

    It can be hard to plan and take vacation, and I’m sure many of you have tips and tricks that you’ll share on how you get away from work and enjoy your life. Many of us see our careers as important, necessary, and hopefully fulfilling, but we also need breaks away from the stress and pressures of work.

    We should work in order to live, and enjoy, the rest of our lives. Time with family, friends, hobbies, and more is important. Life passes by quickly, and sometimes unexpectedly. One of the things I’ve learned as I age is that each day is precious, and that could end at any time. I seem to lose friends and acquaintances  all too frequently. All too often I find people passing that are well below retirement age, which is sad, tragic, and a reminder that life is short.

    Take your vacation. Get away from work when you can, if for no other reason than to see what else in the world there is for you to experience.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Hiring Guitarists

    guitarHiring good people is hard, though in some cases it might not matter as much as others. If I am hiring entry level developers or DBAs, I have a lot of candidates, I’m not investing a lot, and I shouldn’t be too concerned if I have to let someone go and find a new employee. Given the fact that the people are often unproven in this case by definition (they’re junior levels), I should be prepared as a manager to make more mistakes at this level.

    However at the senior level, hiring needs to be done more carefully. The high costs, the limited number of candidates, the responsibilities I give senior people, along with the trust I need to bestow upon them means that I can’t afford to make the same percentage of mistakes at the senior level. Most importantly, I don’t want to hire expert beginners instead of experts at this level.

    I ran across a post on a way to hire senior developers that I thought was very interesting. In particular, I was struck by the analogy of hiring a guitar player. For the most part, I’d agree that if I wanted an experienced guitar player, I’d want the expert, not the expert beginner. If for no other reason than I don’t want to argue with an employee that does things my way, including making the same mistakes I’d make, and then explaining to me this is how I had specified things to be. I want a senior people to warn me, and influence me to do better.

    I’m not sure how I’d devise a similar level of test for a senior level DBA, though I do like the idea of giving them some scenario or simulation that has flaws or problems and seeing if they’d correct them, point them out, or leave them in place as they moved on to “play” the scenario. I’m sure there’s a way to do this, and a balance between how to evaluate the responses.

    Ultimately I want senior people to fix things, make them better, and provide a smooth path to increase quality. I want them to point out flaws, and warn me about issues. If I insist on making poor choices, I want their support, but if they can influence me to do better, I’d prefer they did. That’s one mark of a senior person.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Programming

    programmingTechnology is here to stay, and those of us working in this business probably realize more than most people how dependent and integrated our lives are with technology. Even in countries that don’t have the infrastructure or economies of first world nations are using more and more technology in their lives. Mobile technology seems to be at the forefront of much of what we do, but I’d argue that data is fast becoming more important than the software itself.

    The one thing I’m becoming more convinced of is that this article is right: programming is a core skill. It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer building mobile apps, or a contractor scheduling workers, or a homemaker that wants to balance a budget. While there is software that might help, it seems many people are quick to open a spreadsheet, add some data, and start building formulas. These days the jokes about people not understanding how to program a timer on a DVR are fading quickly as more and more non technical people are using technology to make their lives easier, or perhaps, more complex, as they manipulate data and software.

    I suspect the fundamental skill of logically analyzing a problem and coming up with a set of steps to solve it is becoming more important all the time. In many businesses the ability of workers to think for themselves and handle a variety of situations is more desirable than the ability to follow orders. Even in industries where workers need to follow instructions, those instructions might be coming from computers more and more often. There will be a huge gap between workers that can think for themselves, perform data manipulation and make business decisions and those who cannot. That gap might take the form of compensation differences, opportunities, or something else, but in many industries, those that can build their own programs, whether in code or processes they follow, will advance faster and further.

    Not everyone will want to be a computer developer, but most everyone can benefit from understanding how calculations and instructions can be chained together to build a process or workflow. With newer generations becoming familiar and comfortable with technology from early ages, my vote would be that we should add programming to the three Rs for future generations.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Achieve Better Performance

    One of the hottest topics at most every SQL Server event I attend is performance. The sessions that talk about improving performance through various means are well attended, and that tells me a few things. One is this is an important topic, and two, people need to learn more about it.

    This past week I noticed a lot of performance related topics appearing in blogs and headlines. I’m not sure why there were so many this week, but I think it does deserve pointing out that this is a good week to beef up your skills in this area. I saw a little bit of something for everyone, no matter what your job.

    Database administrators, who often deal with the end product from developers and can make limited changes, should make sure they understand statistics, which can clue them into problems in a number of situations. You ought to be able to troubleshoot various issues, like blocking or tempdb issues. For those dealing with merge replication issues, you ought to ensure you understand how to deal with conflicts and resolve them. No matter who you are, you need to understand the impact of IO on your server, and that means ensuring you can measure the load. Measuring CPU can be tricky, but there’s an interesting idea from the SQL Server team this week.

    The developers, who can make changes early in the process of software development, really should learn to write better SQL. That means studying the various ways people solve problems and practicing using some of them. Do you know the issues with Scalar UDFs? Do you understand temporary objects? Can you PIVOT data? There are so many writings on T-SQL that you can’t keep up, but you should be getting better over time if you write T-SQL code in your job.Developers also should understand the basics of indexing, and deliver a few basic indexes along with their software. That’s the least you can do.

    This week we started to see various blogs on SQL Server 2014, especially the Hekaton feature. While I’m sure the next version of SQL Server will perform better and speed up some of your workloads, it can’t cover from fundamental mistakes, at least not completely. Do your career, and your current and future employers a favor and work on your performance skills this week.