Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The HR Scorecard

    Dundas controls make building interesting dashboards easy

    Are you looking for a BI project in your company to get some experience with? I’ve got an idea that you might try tackling as a side project, or even an informal project within the business.

    One of the problems that many corporations face today is a regular turnover of employees. That causes a loss of productivity, moral suffers, and projects may run late. This might be because of poor working conditions, poor management, or some other factor. While you might not be able to change that, perhaps you can help bring some visibility to potential problems.

    Human Resource departments are similar to IT departments in that both of them are a cost to the organization without generating revenue. These are overhead departments, and often receive limited budgets and assistance to accomplish anything beyond the bare minimum. These departments can add value, and the good ones help companies in many ways, reducing the costs that might otherwise occur.

    I have rarely seen HR departments with deep analysis tools available to them that might help them function more efficiently. If you want to tackle a BI project, think about building a detailed scorecard or set of KPIs for the HR department that might help them better understand what is happening in the company. Watching for the impact of vacations, turnover, etc. and aggregating exit interview data might help HR improve the conditions at the company, perhaps even for you.

    I’d consider working on an HR BI project, even during some off hours if you have an interest in this area. I’m sure the HR people will appreciate it, and they might be the ones that are in the best position to help you with your career down the road.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • It’s Your Career

    It’s your career. It’s something you have to take ownership of and work on. I know that life is busy, and training budgets are tight. That’s one reason we started SQL Saturday; it’s a way to bring a training event and a conference experience to many people.

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    I posted this tweet almost a year ago, seeing Brent in a class somewhere, learning and taking notes during some session. It was in humor, but I’m a little serious here. We all have more to learn, and while you don’t need to cram it all in this year, you should be taking advantage of your user group, local events, conferences, classes, even reading something in a newsletter on a regular basis.

    Many of us are out here to help. I’ve spoken at 12 events this year, 10 of them free, and will be at another free event this week (SQL in the City – LA). However, you’ve got to make the effort to improve yourself. I , and many others, will try to help you, teach you, but you’ve got to do some work yourself.

    Pace yourself, learn at a reasonable rate given the other responsibilities in your life, but don’t ignore this aspect of your career.

    PS – If you’re in the LA area, there’s still time to register for SQL in the City and get a free day of training. I’ll also be at DevConnections next week and SQLInspire the week after that.

  • The Khan Academy

    It’s completely unrelated to work, though there is a computer science section at The Kahn Academy.

    I can’t take credit for this, that goes to Andy Warren (LinkedIn | Blog | @sqlandy) for turning me onto the Khan Academy. It’s similar to what we built at SQL Share, but much broader in scope, and much more successful. Hopefully we’ll rectify that at some point.

    It’s almost an online learning site with a series of videos on a variety of topics. It was built with the idea that we can provide a free, high quality education to anyone that can view the videos. Students can sign up and pace themselves through the classes. Parents, coaches, teachers, can watch students and build a course with a series of steps.

    Or you can do what I did, just watch a few videos. I saw some algebra ones that I might show my kids when they need math help, and I started going through the calculus ones, as a brush up on my skills. I loved math in school and thought I’d play around with some of the topics and exercises.

    Check it out and see what you think.

  • Build Your Own Event at the PASS Summit

    There’s a bunch of stuff scheduled for the PASS Summit next week. You can see some of the events on the After Hours page, but there are a few other events happening during the week as well. Most are private, which is fine for the people that get invited, but what about everyone else?

    There are well over 1,000 people coming to the Summit, and the majority of them won’t get invited to private vendor parties, or many other events. However outside of the Gameworks party on Thur night, I have a feeling many of them will end up being “that guy”, spending the evenings alone or even working.

    Andy Warren and I have started a few events that are relatively open to anyone. We have our Monday Night Networking event, which is full right because of capacity limits. We also started the SQLServerCentral party, which I run and is open if you have a ticket.

    However we think you can start your own event. If you want to go see a band in Seattle, then wouldn’t you want to see if anyone else wants to go with you? Maybe share a cab? Perhaps you’re interested in a workout at a local dojo, or you want to attend the Underground Tour (which is very cool).

    If you want to do something, and would like to network, have a little company from people that similar interests, we’d like you to do two things:

    1. Create an event at EventBrite. It’s free if you aren’t charging. Just tell people what you event will cost and let them pay their own way. Put a limit on the number of guests, if it’s appropriate.
    2. Post your event at http://passsummitevents.info/. MVP/MCM Denny Cherry (blog | @mrdenny) has set up the site to track what’s happening at the Summit.

     

    That’s it. Post your event and let people sign up.

    If you are looking for something to do, check out the page at http://passsummitevents.info/ and see if there’s something you’re interested in. The site will tweet your event, but feel free to publicize it around.

    A week at a conference should be a lot of fun, packed with plenty of events for everyone. I hope we can get people to build their own get togethers, for anything from tasting beer at the Tap House to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory to taking a tour of the Museum of Flight.

    Whatever interests you, set something up or look for people that have a similar interest at http://passsummitevents.info/.