Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • No Cloud for Stack Exchange

    Stack Exchange administrators love computers

    One very large and successful site in the technology world is the Stack Exchange collection of sites. They’ve grown and scales with relatively few people, and they have chosen to host thier own systems as opposed to moving to the cloud? Why? One of the administrators talks about it in this blog post. The short answer: they love computers.

    That’s pretty cool from my perspective. They have a passion for their jobs, they like the different aspects of it, and they aren’t going to change that to save a few dollars or make their jobs easier. They don’t want to avoid responsibility for parts of their jobs, they want to embrace all of their jobs, as something they enjoy doing.

    That’s very cool, and it makes sense for a small company. However I’d hope that even at larger companies there were people that enjoyed their job. I know some DBAs love hardware, and enjoy digging into the specs and enjoying going over the configuration of every new server they procure. Me? I’d like to have three drops downs, with options for CPU, RAM, and disk, and be done with it, letting the people that do love hardware pick the actual configuration. Hopefully all of us love our jobs working with data.

    Life is short, and while there will always be things we don’t enjoy about our jobs, there should be plenty of things we do. If there aren’t, I’d hope we’d all be looking for some other job that we do enjoy.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • WWBOD

    What Would Brent Ozar Do?

    I’ve titled this for Brent Ozar (web |@brento), What Would Brent Ozar Do, since he was the one that turned me on to this post about calculating your FU money. A polite way of describing FU money would be the money that allows you to live your life on your terms, without having to work again and without having to kowtow to anyone else, including your employer.

    When I was younger, I was very money driven, looking for new jobs or ways that would allow me to earn more money. I have been in and out of consulting, always looking to move up in the world. As I grew older, had a family, and (hopefully) grew wiser, I realized that most of the time I hadn’t be happier by making more money. Finding more money became a game, but the things that really helped me enjoy life were the challenges, the people, and the experiences I had in different places. It’s not my advice, and it’s not often followed, but it’s advice I think it well worth following: do something with your life that you enjoy.

    Most of us are not likely to get FU money early in our careers, but hopefully many of us will get close enough to live life on our terms when we retire. However this Friday, let’s have fun for a minute and think about what it would mean if you had the winning lottery ticket next week and received a check equal to your FU money.

    What would you do if you had the choice?

    If you didn’t have to work at your job anymore, would you go crazy like so many athletes. Would you keep your life relatively sane and embark on some other pursuit? Maybe you’re follow your musical dreams, like Allan Hirt. Maybe you’d go back to school and study something that interests you, maybe you’d move to Hawaii and surf every day. Drop a note in the discussion that lets us know how you’d change your life.

    I had this question put to me on vacation with some friends, and the first thing that popped into my mind is that I’d go work for Habitat for Humanity. I enjoy building things, working outside, and their mission is one that speaks to me. I hope that someday I’ll retire from technology and go work with them, and I feel confident it will happen. Someday.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Unlimited Vacation

    Unlimited Vacation sounds good, and maybe it works, but I wonder how much vacation people really take at Red Frog. My guess is that it’s not far off from what most progressive companies give, something like 20 days a year.

    It’s a good perk to have, and I’m sure it doesn’t get abused since the people that abuse it get let go. The people that don’t abuse it might even shortchange themselves. I know it sounds like a company would have people taking 40, 50, maybe 100 days a year off, but the reality is that if someone does that you find yourself in one of two situations:

    • their work isn’t getting done and you fire them
    • their work is getting done and you ignore it.

    There are plenty of managers that might feel they should be getting more work from someone that can take 100 days a year off and still get their work done, but what type of attitude is that? You hire someone, expect them to get xx things done in a year for yyy dollars. If they get xx things done in 2/3 year while the person next to them takes a year, why complain? If others complain, tell them to just get their work done quicker (or learn how to work more efficiently).

    I get over 20 days, plus holidays, and I struggle to take it. I’m essentially in the same boat as the Red Frog employees in that I manage my own schedule, and can take off whenever I want if my work is done. I rarely take sick days, since I can work at home when I’m sick. I have a grinding, daily job that requires regular effort, so I can’t plan on a month project, take off 2 days in the middle and catch up later. I essentially run a newspaper, every day.

    However I could take unlimited vacation. I could potentially get my work done in 3 days every week, keeping enough items scheduled, to take two days a week off. I’m just not sure that it would be vacation since I’d be stressed during those 3 days.

    If you are a professional, I think most places will work with you to get the vacation you need, whether it’s tracked, booked, managed, or not. The key, in my opinion, is to set a schedule that works for you, and a set amount of work that justifies your salary and makes both you and your employer happy.

  • DBAs in Denver

    I have a friend looking for a production DBA in Denver, so if you’re interested, email me at SQLServerCentral.

    They need a production DBA in the South Denver area, backups, config, query tuning, replication, partitioning. SQL Server 2005-2008 R2.