Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Employment Contract

    I ran across this piece on how we should pay people from Business Week. It’s a look at the issues of specifying the exact work that someone will do once you hire them. I suspect this is a problem in many industries, but it can be especially tricky in technology, where the job requirements can change as the technology rapidly changes.

    Most of the time I’ve taken a job in the US, it’s been an “at will” employment, with a verbal contract between me and the hiring manager or HR representative. Nothing was signed, and I essentially did whatever my manager wanted, regardless of my job title. That was fine with me. Currently I have a written contract, but the requirements for my position are a little vague and my duties aren’t explicitly spelled out.

    However I wonder how most of you feel. Does it make sense to more explicitly list the requirements for your job? As a DBA, developer or other professional, would you want any limits on what you were required to do?  This Friday, answer this poll question:

    Would you like to have your duties spelled out explicitly in a contract?

    I know we don’t typically sign contracts, but would you like that? What if the duties were modified every quarter, with an agreement by both you and the management of the company? What if you could just list the things you were not required to do?

    Let me know this week what you think.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • No Overtime

    overtime clock
    Are you working too much?

    It’s been a long time since I received overtime at any job. Most of my IT work has been with a salary, and the expectation that I would work as needed to accomplish my assignments. Early in my career I worked as a contract for an hourly rate, and while it didn’t necessarily lower the hours I worked, I did receive a little more pay on long weeks. From there I worked for a company that provided “comp time” when the hours exceeded 20 hours in a month. That seemed to help reduce hours more than anything.

    There’s a bill that’s in the US Congress that adds some new job classifications to the exemptions for overtime pay. In addition to the system administrative jobs, it now includes database and network professionals. I’m not sure how many people this affects as the overtime requirements disappear once you make more than $27.63 an hour. That equates to about an annual salary of 57,491, without the benefits. If you make less than this, you should be getting overtime.

    Does overtime pay matter to most IT workers? I don’t know. There are lots of workers who make more than US$60,000 a year, and are exempt, but I suspect there are many others who make less than this amount and work long hours without any extra compensation. This bill is aimed squarely at reducing pay for those people in the industry that make the least amount of money.

    I struggle with whether the benefits and abuses of a salary. On one hand salaries provide a level of security to workers, along with a guarantee of payment for work that cannot easily be measured in terms of output per unit of time. On the other hand, employers sometimes see a salary as a way to push workers to their limits, burn them out, and impose strict requirements on the work needed for deadlines, themselves often arbitrary.

    I like the idea of allowing businesses to pay salaries, and stabilize their cost structures, but I do think we ought to implement a few bumpers that prevent abuses. Limiting hours across a month or quarter and ensuring that employees can take their vacations would be limits that I’d like to see implemented. This bill doesn’t affect those and I’m not sure we’ll see any limits implemented, but I do think it’s up to each person to stand up to their employer and ensure they are not overworking themselves.

    Steve Jones

  • Thinking Time

    My Thinking Time

    I have a friend that is responsible for working with clients, helping them to design solutions for their businesses, write statements of work, and develop proof of concepts. This friend also finds 4-5 meetings a day on their calendar, usually lasting from thirty to sixty minutes. That’s not an uncommon workday for many people in technology, which always amazes me.

    There was a time when I managed multiple DBAs and worked to remove them from meetings whenever possible. It was hard, with the workers always feeling like they wanted to know what was going on, and managers always wanting staff available for detailed updates if needed. Too often I felt that staff time in meetings, and performing updates, was wasted. Managers should take quick updates to meetings, and handle the coordination as much as possible.

    Andy Warren (LinkedIn | Blog | @sqlandy) always talks about how important thinking time is, and over the years I’ve learned that’s important. The work that we do is knowledge based. By definition that requires thought, creativity, and most importantly, time. We need to have concentrated time to think, and to work out how we want to attack the problems we face, without the pressure of producing some specific solution.

    I know it’s easy to view thinking time as an opportunity to waste time, and some people surely will waste the time. However for those of you that work hard, and that are trying to solve issues, it’s important to get some thinking time, time when you’re not actually writing code and step back to view the problem from another angle. I’d encourage you to take some time to just think over the holiday season, when there usually is less work going on, and see if it can help you produce higher quality results.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • What’s Your Title?

    What's your title?

    I was reading a very interesting post from L. Z. Granderson recently that is more of a political observation than anything, but in the piece he brought up a point that struck my interest. He finds that many people use a simple question when they are getting to know each other, and that the question might color the impressions of us that others hold. The question is

    “What do you do?”

    It’s fairly innocent, and it’s a nice icebreaker, and in fact I’ve used it at many conferences to try and get to know other people. I know that most people I meet at SQL Server events are technical, or work with SQL Server, but this allows me to better understand who they use the question. When people ask me who I am at conferences, I usually reply that I am the editor of SQLServerCentral, and explain the site if I need to. On my resume, I emphasize the “DBA” title, along with the “writer” label for me work with SQL Server.

    However when I’m away from work, I answer the question differently. People in Denver ask me what I do and I’m a “computer guy”, and if they query more because they’re technical, I say I’m a “database guy.” Pretty vanilla, pretty plain, but I find myself more often interested in talking about things other than work.

    The label you use matters when you’re looking for a job, or when you are presenting your professional brand to a potential employer, client, recruiter, or even your boss during a review. With that in mind, I wanted to ask you what title you use this Friday:

    What’s your job title?

    Let us know what it is, or what you think it should be. I’ve often joked at many companies that I was the “data janitor” since I was always cleaning up accidents and messes, but I typically have only worried about being classified as a “DBA” or maybe a “Senior DBA.” However with the proliferation of titles these days, and the buckets that many companies use to classify people, I usually go for a DBA job, but I’m willing to take the title that best fits for that company.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts