Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Attracting Talent

    Red Gate Software
    Red Gate is hiring

    Finding good employees is hard. If you read the blogs and tweets from people trying to interview developers or DBAs, it seems there’s no shortage of unqualified candidates looking for jobs every day. The answers given to fairly simple questions, the lack of knowledge in areas list on the job description, and the inability to back up the words written on resumes are jaw-dropping. It’s a problem that seems to have no solution in sight, which is distressing.

    When a company needs help, what can they do? Hopefully they’re a good company, one where people want to work. If that’s the case, then be real, be honest, and show employees that you are a place people want to work. My own employer, Red Gate Software, made a great video for a UX specialist. It almost makes me want to apply for that job. Unfortunately I’m much better at breaking visually appealing things than designing them.

    The best way to find good employees is really through networking and word of mouth. Employees tend to know who can do a good job, and it’s not often I find someone looking to recommend an incompetent individual to help share the load. Empoyees know that recommending a slacker is likely to result in more work for them, not less. This might help you build better teams, but if your culture stinks, you might get no recommendations at all.

    Steve Jones

    PS – We are hiring a few people at Red Gate. It’s a great company, and if you want to live in Cambridge, apply for one of the positions.

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Why Support WIT

    First, only support Women in Technology if you want to. It’s an idea that appeals to some, but not to everyone and if it’s not your cause, that’s fine. I don’t think less of you for not supporting the cause, but I would if you bash it. There’s no reason to do that.

    What is WIT? Karen Lopez has a great writeup, and one I agree with. We want to make sure people that want to get into technology can, and not feel that their interest in the field is “wrong”.

    This is Why I #WIT …And Why You Should, Too.

  • Data Gravity

    gravity
    Does data have gravity? And will it affect DBAs’ jobs?

    Many of us have worked with distributed applications at this point in our careers, with different parts of the application located on different physical servers. Some of us might have worked with applications that actually have different servers in different locations, potentially even different countries. That can be challenging, dealing with different time zones, different collations and regional settings on servers and more.

    While many of us are not looking to implement cloud computing now, we may do so in the future, but not for simple cost reasons. There’s a piece about data gravity in the cloud, and how the law can drive the location of data in some cases. Just as many companies that wanted to offer gambling services moved to countries with fewer laws about that business, I would expect that we see some companies moving pieces and parts of their data to other countries to take advantage of more lax or lenient privacy or other laws in the future.

    Most companies won’t bother trying to avoid laws like this right now, but at some point in the future, the cost of moving an application to another country might be tiny. We constantly build better tools for distributed development, deployment, and management, and whether it’s a cloud infrastructure, or just a rented VM, we may find that it becomes worthwhile in some cases to move data, not just for cost reasons, but potentially to reduce the costs of compliance with local laws.

    It’s hard to know whether compliance with the law will ever significantly affect the work a DBA does, but I certainly expect that we will have distributed applications with their various components more widely distributed to challenge us in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Use the 4th Dimension

    Time is the 4th Dimension

    Brad recently wrote an editorial about the career-life balance and asked you to think about whether or not you might be focusing too much time on your career. I write fairly often about the need to manage your career, and learn more on a regular basis. There’s only 24 hours in a day, so how do you fit it all in?

    The simple answer is use the 4th dimension: time.

    We can’t fit it all in. There’s no way that any individual can work full time, raise a family, be a good spouse, find time for their friends, pursue a hobby, learn more about their craft, and more in a year. However we don’t live in a single year; we live across time.

    There are times in our lives when work is busy. There are times in our lives when our home life is busy. Hopefully those times don’t overlap, but that is not always the case. We have to learn to find some balance over time, and work on our goals, not necessarily in parallel, but perhaps sequentially. Spend more time on different parts of your life, at different times in your life.

    If your job keeps you extremely busy, then perhaps you don’t focus on learning more this year, or you take on less personal commitments. If you really want to work on a hobby, or coach your kids in sports, or run a marathon, you might need to take on less at work for a period of time. If work is slow, and you are bored, perhaps you ought to spend more time educating yourself on SQL Server and improve your future prospects.

    There are only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 (or 366) days in a year. However we live for many years, and we ought to remember that when we have a busy life. Push back, learn to say no, and learn to be more efficient to fit more things in, but don’t try to fit everything in.

    You only get one life, so enjoy it while you can.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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