Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Potential

    I love sports, and every year I’m amazed to see how many highly touted athletes, those picked early by their teams, fail to perform at a high level. Many of them go on to average careers, but quite a few fail out of sports within a few years, becoming just another person that didn’t live up to their potential. I thought this was mostly a sports-type phenomenon, but that might not be true.

    Are employers and managers looking at potential as well? Do they see high scores in school, or glowing recommendations as reasons to hire a technologies? I think this was definitely the case a ten or fifteen years ago when there were few candidates and many open positions. Managers tended to view anyone with a certification as having the potential to solve any problem with their computing systems. That still might be the case in some areas today, but as business people become more technology savvy, they realize that there’s a substantial different between different platforms. We can’t assume someone talented in one area is an expert in others.

    I think we are drawn to potential, often because many of us are optimists. We see the best in new ideas and people and want to believe they will succeed. I think this is also one of our problems in security because we see the potential benefits and don’t bother to look deeply enough into possible flaws. However as we are burned, and employment decisions burn many managers, we learn to look deeper at candidates and consider their past experiences, successes and failures, with an eye towards choosing someone that has a record of achievement.

    Then there’s a cloud hype. That might turn all of these ideas upside down and bring potential back to the forefront. Maybe doing a little project on Azure or AWS will convince your next interviewer that you have the potential to build an application that scales like the Netflix video delivery systems.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Join Our Networking Dinner in Seattle

    This is the third year that Andy Warren and myself are hosting a networking dinner in Seattle, just before the PASS Summit. If you are new to the Summit, or just interested in meeting some new people, we hope you’ll join us on Monday, Nov 5, at Gordon Biersch, located in the Pacific Place mall on Pine St. It’s just a couple blocks from the Convention Center.

    We don’t have anything formal planned, just a time and place for people to swing by, shake hands, introduce themselves and talk about what they do, or why they came, or just life in general. It’s a casual event that is just (barely) organized so you have a chance to meet other attendees on an off night.

    If you don’t have plans and want to attend, come on by. Please register so we have an idea of the number of people coming.

    It’s BYOD/BYOF (buy your own xxx), but there’s no fee to attend.

    I’ll be at SQL in the City – Seattle 2012 during the day, another free event, and then I’ll come by afterwards.

    Register today

  • A Cloudy Future

    crystal ball
    Can you divine what’s important for your career in the future?

    Those of us in Information Technology are constantly learning to do more with the tools and platforms we have. There are no shortages of new systems to manage. Since staffing levels never increase as quickly as servers, we must find ways to manage and maintain more and more systems all the time. That’s fine since tools like Powershell or MultiScript allow us to extend our reach to many machines as easily as we work with one machine. That’s not quite accurate since the effort to build a repeatable process is greater than performing a task one time, however I have found that most of the time if I need to perform a process once, I’ll need to do it again.

    Over time I’ve learned that investing in my own skills, and learning to work smarter and more efficiently, has paid dividends for me. Becoming more familiar with the business my employer is involved in has helped me to return more value to the company, as well as ensure that my employment is appreciated. As companies look to virtualize systems, move to cloud services, or find some other more efficient way of dealing with computing resources, it’s up to each of us to find new ways that we can provide value. That’s what system administrators need to do, and I suspect DBAs need to be thinking along these lines as well.

    The world is getting more complex from an IT perspective. These days companies have their pick of candidates for many jobs, and the person that has a variety of skills in multiple areas with a history of solving problems is desirable. Even when companies have few candidates, they seem to be waiting to hire a candidate that is a good fit rather than picking the first person they find if that person lacks some of the skills the company needs.

    As you continue along the path of your professional development, think about adding a variety of skills in different areas, skills that improve your efficiency, and allow the business to get more of their work done every day.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • The Dream Machine

    I could replace my desktop since I have a similar setup

    Hardware is usually important to techies. I see now shortage of discussions and debates about this laptop or that. I see people asking about this machine or that ( the W530 looks niiiiiiiccccceee) and as various Surface tablets are announced, I often find people blogging about what they like or debating the merits on Twitter. In the SQL Server world, there are a few very impressive hardware setups at people’s homes.

    I ran across this post about life at Stripe and there was one benefit listed that caught my eye. In the post, the author says “New employees are asked to send in specifications for their dream machine, which is then built and waiting for them on their first day.” I think that’s a great benefit, and it shows that the company values their employees and wants to ensure they start off with a little excitement.

    This Friday I wanted to ask you what you’d do if that were offered to you. Most of us working for corporations get the same type of machine as all other technical employees, but imagine that isn’t the case.

    What machine would you specify if your boss gave you the choice?

    Personally I like my MacBook Air. It’s small, light, comes on instantly, and I find myself really enjoying OSX. The one thing it lacks is some horsepower, and if I need more I’d have to look at either one of the new Macbook Pros or the Lenovo 530. The former is very tempting right now, but the latter would allow me to replace my desktop as well since it can drive four external monitors.

    If you could spec out your machine when starting a new job tomorrow, what would you want?

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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