Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Bad Eyes

    This editorial was originally published on Jan 9, 2006. Steve is traveling to the UK this week and we are reprinting a few older editorials.

    It seems that most DBAs that I know are a little bit older and more experienced. It’s fairly rare that I see someone really young, right out of college, early 20s, etc., as a DBA. So when I saw this question on Slashdot about computers and vision, it caught my eye. I’m one of those “visually challenged” individuals that asked the question. And I’ve been working with computers pretty much since 1991 as a career. In middle school I slowly found out that my vision was failing. That was when my career as a baseball catcher ended. With glasses on, I couldn’t pull off the mask without pulling the glasses with them and ensuring that I’d catch the ball with my cheek instead of my glove 🙂

    I’m not a 15 hour a day computer user, but I am a 7-8 or more user. Fortunately it’s not all at one stretch. Usually it’s early am, then a break, then most of the day until the kids come home, and then late at night. At least the last few years it’s been like that. Before that I was mostly a 7-8 hour stretch person and a little at night.

    Through all that, including 5-6 years of working as a bartender in a late night, smoky atmosphere, I’ve had pretty much the same prescription for about 15 years. I switched to contacts in high school, but since college I’ve pretty much been the same, blind 20-400 in both eyes. I’m getting an eye exam today, so we’ll see if it holds for another year.

    I think the person asking the question has other problems, 15 hours a day in front of the computer being the least of them, but it still is worth asking the question. Is a monitor bad for your eyes? Is it any different than staring at anything in a repetitive work environment.

    One of the things suggested is a light source behind the monitor. That’s an interesting one. Especially for the guys that like to work in the dark. I’ve had a number of co-workers that insisted on working in the dark. Personally I’m an outside, ambient light guy. I like to sit on my shaded porch and work with the laptop in nice weather.

    So do any of you have issues working in front of your monitor? Any suggestions to take better care of your eyes? I’m sure everyone in the community would be interested in this.

    Steve Jones

  • Lesson #6: What CIOs Really Care About

    What Do CIOs Care About?

    I saw a blog by Dave Rosenberg and it was interesting in a few ways. First of all, Dave works for OSDL, which promotes the use of open source software.

    There were a number of basic things that you could probably guess like costs are important, blogs aren’t, and more. But there were two things that I really thought made sense to a SQL Server guy.

    The first was that security was mentioned as a big item, but more importantly, one of the examples was “don’t build SQL Server apps using sa.” I’ve preached against this many times, but still developers want to do it. And I don’t understand why it’s so hard to just create a login and get away from the all access development. Especially given the security issues across all platforms in recent years.

    The second one was something that I think more CIOs should stand behind and not just “talk” about. Hiring and maintaining staff was listed with this comment: “This is my number one issue.”

    And it should be. Retaining staff is a big deal, especially as more and more systems are integrated or even running side by side in new and innovative, and most often, complex ways. Having some knowledge of the journey that got you to a place is important and it’s hard to rebuild that in new people. Making good hiring decisions and then making an effort on a regular basis to be sure those people stay is important in all businesses, large and small.

    Not that you won’t have to turn over staff at times or cut your losses. After all, not every person fits in every job and circumstances certainly change.

    It should just be the exception rather than a regular practice.

    (update, Info World has removed the original blog)

  • The Top Ten Skills You Need

    One of the things I’ve found is that so many people struggle to get started with SQL Server. There are regular questions about how to learn to work with SQL Server, so I built this quick talk that should help you get started.

    This talk is built on the 80/20 rule, the idea that 80% of your job needs 20% of the DBA skills, and vice versa. So these are a series of skills, presented quickly, that should get you through most of the things that you need to deal with in SQL Server as an administrator.

    Developers will find that spending a little time learning these skills will also let them easily setup a SQL Server instance that can maintain itself for the most part without them. And it will protect them in the event there are issues.

    The talk moves quickly, but there are lots of links and references in the deck.

    Slides

    The slides are on my SkyDrive.

    Length

    This talk is built for 60-75 minutes

    Related Blogs

    These are the blog posts related to this talk:

  • Sabbaticals

    This editorial was originally published on Oct 25, 2005.

    Does your company offer a sabbatical? Andy and I were discussing retention and benefits awhile back and we got around to sabbaticals. He was trying to secure this benefit for his development staff, and I’d had a little experience, so we got to talking. I’ve never personally had one, but my wife has. She worked for a high tech company in the 90s and after 6 years, she was allowed to take 6 weeks, full salary, as a sabbatical.

    I’ve never personally worked at a company where it was offered, much less stuck around long enough to earn one. But I’ve always thought they were a great idea, without really understanding the purpose. It seemed like a great reward to let someone get a little extra time off after devoting six or seven years to the company, which seemed to be the norm with my friends.

    However I started to research this a little and found that the idea wasn’t extra vacation. It was to allow someone to recharge, but in a constructive way. In academia, this usually means working on some defined project, a paper, book, or something else that has a tangible and specific end to it.

    That is an interesting idea. When my wife took her sabbatical, she basically took 8 weeks of vacation; the sabbatical and some other PTO time she’d shared. For her it was a project, to try and be a stay at home Mom, but it wasn’t something defined with her employer. I’ve spoken to a few other people that were lucky enough to get them and it was really a vacation time for them, a chance to get away.

    I think that setting up a sabbatical is hard. You don’t want to just pile up work for someone that takes off for 6 weeks, especially if there’s a chance they will not return. And if they return to something like that, it’s more of a punishment than a reward. Allowing someone to leave for an extended period, and I’d argue that 6 weeks isn’t that long, but it is hard on a company and the other employees. But I think it’s almost a necessity given the long hours and extra efforts that many IT people put in.

    The idea of setting up a specific project, even something like attending a cooking school or training for a marathon, is a good one. There should be some flexible rules that bound the time, but still make it productive for the employer. Xerox has a great volunteer sabbatical where employees can spend a number of weeks volunteering with some organization, and I think that is outstanding.

    I think I’d enjoy 6 weeks of pounding nails with someone like Habitat for Humanity.