Tag: career

This editorial was originally published on Mar 20, 2007. It is being republished as Steve Jones is on vacation. 

Are you ready to leave the corporate world and become a consultant? It’s a tempting thought and probably one that everyone in corporate America considers at one time or another. Especially those of us in technology who have skills that can easily be used to help some other company.

Here are 10 reasons not to go into business for yourself, which is an interesting list. It’s from someone who evangelizes the benefits, joys, and methods of escaping the corporate cubicle. If you’re seriously considering becoming a consultant, starting your own business, or going out in any way on your own, I’d recommend her site as a place to learn some things.

Coming from someone that helped start this site and has worked for it for 3 years this might sound funny. I don’t really like being in business for myself. I know, I’ve been successful, had a good life, let you all know about large parts of it, but the truth is I didn’t love working for myself. If not for Andy and Brian supporting me, I’m not sure I’d have done it.

Working for yourself, even when you’re successful, isn’t this easy, amazing job. It’s a hassle and it’s hard to worry about the different parts of a business. I’m a writer and a techie. As much as I pay attention to marketing, sales, and other groups, I don’t want to do their jobs. I have an opinion and am happy to express it, but I don’t want to get more involved than that.

I’m not really advocating one way or the other that you should or shouldn’t start a business or stay in a cubicle. Rather I want to caution you that it’s not as easy as tuning queries. The marketing, accounting, and collections will be as much as the job as the T-SQL.

Read about other’s experiences, think hard about it, and consider all the parts of the job that you’ll need to do. There’s always more than you think and remember that just as with a new job in corporate America.

The grass is not always greener.

Would you use this site to enter your morale at work? It’s an idea by a new company that should enable employees to enter information about how they feel at work, how their job is going, and other meta data that describes their attitude for the day. Managers get access to an aggregated look at their employees, as well as anonymous feedback about the way people feel about their jobs.

As much as I’d like to say this is a good idea, I can see this being more of a tool for abuse than a tool for making changes. I suspect most managers would take negative feedback personally and investigate more, perhaps even asking network people to comb through logs to find out who posted comments, or perhaps even assume that a particular employee had written the commend without any evidence. We are often entirely petty in our reactions to criticisms, and I’m not sure most of the managers I have worked with would actually use this data to improve the way they perform their job.

However this is exactly the type of data that might really help some companies improve their internal operations. If they care about their employees, and want to retain the skilled knowledge workers, this type of site could help identify groups of people that are unhappy, or even managers that need improvements in their own skills. I do like that this is a third party site, which gives me some degree of confidence that this data could remain anonymous, something I wouldn’t assume would happen if the software were hosted on a company’s own servers.

I would like to know if any of you would use this type of tool at your job, and if you think it would help your company’s morale. In order for it to work, I think that the various manager’s bonus plan would need to be based on the results. Even if the manager’s “gamed” the system a bit to get a better score, that would result in a better work environment for most employees. One word of caution: if you do criticize managers, be careful how you do so. Some people can be identified by their word choice and writing style. Have someone review your message before you post it and let you know if the writing reads like your other communications.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast – 19.1MB WMV 
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast – 19.0MB MP4 
• Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast – 3.9MB MP3 

Many of us work with computers extensively, day after day. It’s easy to fall into the habits of working in a particular way, and we’ve seen recommendations from health professionals about the dangers of our environment. I’ve written in the past about your heath being an investment you ought to make, and there are numerous places where you can learn how to better structure a healthy work environment. You might even want to try a new type of desk, asBuck Woody has done.

However it’s not just the desk you work at that might be a problem. There’s an article that talks about the dangers of mobile devices, and the potential problems of working while on the go, in bed, etc. As we use these devices more and more, it’s possible that we are inducing other repetitive motion injuries, similar to carpal tunnel syndrome. If you are a heavy user or a tablet, smartphone, or other device away from your desk, I would recommend you read the article and think about how you use your device.

I am fortunate in that I work at home, on my own schedule, and can adjust my work as needed to avoid injury. I don’t work on any one thing for a long time, end up taking frequent break, especially this month with a new puppy, and often move my work environment to different locations for short periods of time. You’re as likely to find me working in bed as at my desk, and I can often spend an hour at the kitchen counter or the couch as well during the day. There’s also that running thing I do every day, usually at lunch.

Working in IT is a great job, IMHO. We have a good work situation, one that doesn’t tax us physically and one we can probably easily do until we retire. However it’s easy to be complacent, and induce our own health issues by not taking care of ourselves. Look over your environment, make changes to keep it healthy, and pay attention to the way you treat yourself. You’ll be glad you did so in a decade or two.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast – MB WMV 
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast – MB MP4 
• Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast – MB MP3