Tag: career

Today we have an editorial from Mar 22, 2006 as Steve is on vacation.

Terrell Owens signs with the Cowboys and I’m not thrilled. As a longtime fan of Dallas, I’d have preferred that they get someone else, despite his talent. Too much baggage. Alfonso Soriano refuses to play outfield for the Nationals this week, disobeying his manager who asked him to go out there during a game. Lots of people are upset with this “spoiled” athlete who makes $10 million a year and won’t listen to his boss.

There’s way more stories of this type of behavior than there are positive ones. But how do these individuals get away with this behavior and still command such high salaries?

It’s called economics. There are many people, often sports or entertainment stars, that have a supply of something: talent. And with the demand out there to see them, the price goes up. It’s a simple graph from basic Economics 101, like the one shown below. I learned about this early in my college career, as the supply goes down, as in one or two superstar wide receivers in football, the price goes up. In this case to $10 million for Mr. Owens this year. If you can have that kind of demand for your services, than you can easily get more money. And it’s not limited to sports.

I have a friend that manages a development team. This manager requires the team to read software development materials from the team library, which contains books, magazines, etc. that pertain to their business. Often there are magazines passed around and the developers are asked to read for an hour a week and note a sentence or two that shows they read something. My friend even gives them the hour during work hours as a way to encourage personal development and growth of the developers.

Recently one developer said that they didn’t want to read one week. Since it was a busy week, the team working overtime, my friend didn’t complain too much. However the developer went further in saying they didn’t think they should have to read and that if they did, they should be able to pick anything, not just from the library. No suggestions or, hey, could you get a copy of Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services, nothing other than a complaint.

My friend was a little put off by this. After all, my friend is trying to help the team grow, looking to ensure they do not become stagnant and wanting to foster a professional environment. And giving away work time to do it, not requiring the developers to find time at night or on the weekends.

I’ve seen this behavior more and more over the last 7 or 8 years than the 7 or 8 prior to that that I’ve been in this business. As the demand for IT services has gone up, many people have gotten inflated salaries and the ego to go with them. Too many IT workers think they’re above some work or don’t think they need to improve or companies should place additional demands on them. This goes from requiring certifications or training to not being willing to help out in lesser skilled areas.

Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m from a different time, but I think that requiring you to keep learning isn’t a problem in IT. After all, technology changes rapidly and it benefits you. And requiring it on company time shouldn’t be an issue. Asking me to help out with a ticket queue and assigning ACL permissions to individuals won’t generate a complaint from me.

Heck, it’s much easier than doing SQL work and the pay’s the same.

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Today we have an editorial reprinted from April 3, 2006 as Steve is on vacation.

We have heard lots of stories about hackers using social engineering or even paying employees to get information. It is not really amazing anymore and sadly, we kind of expect people to compromise their ethics when dollars are involved.

What is even sadder is our leaders, the management of companies we work for, who are supposed to set an example for work, build pride in the company, and help it to grow, are expected to throw ethics out the window on a regular basis. This story about Morgan Stanley executives pressuring IT to buy certain products in order to get those vendors to bring their banking business is nothing new. In fact most of the IT people I’ve worked with are surprised when it isn’t some political decision such as this that decides which products they will use.

I know that people often scratch each other’s backs. After all, each of us on a small scale usually wants to work with someone we know, trade favors, and show some loyalty to each other.

But when you put out a bid, it gets frustrating for the people that work hard to find out what they think is best for the company, or the best solution for a problem and have that circumvented because someone got to go play golf or had tickets to a sporting event given to them.

Or worse, the promise of a job or other financial compensation for steering business rather than awarding it. There are penalties for accepting gifts of this sort, and the article has some advice on avoiding issues if you are worried.

I don’t pretend to have a solution. Nor do I think I would be immune to this. Andy, Brian, and I have spent 5 years trying to build a community we’re proud of, often putting the profit second or third on the list to having a place we are proud of running.

I just wish it could be different.

Millennials, the next generation of college graduates are coming out of school and looking for work. These are people who have grown up with technology all of their lives, and probably can’t imagine living without a computer, much less Internet access. The world is a much different place to these people that it was to the Gen X or Baby Boomers before them.

And hiring them takes a new tactic. Reading this article about the way to hire new graduates makes me think of one simple thing: treat people like people, not resources. This is a generation of people that have seen many alternatives to corporate cubicles, and have a different approach towards work. The flexibility and soft perks of a job are often more important than money, which is interesting to me given all the stories about Internet millionaires in the time of The Social Network.

I’ve never liked being referred to as a resource, as some interchangeable chess piece whose performance is easily replaceable by another employer. As much as HR departments have tried to incorporate more tolerance and sensitivity into our workplace, the very way people are described tends to dehumanize them.

I’m not a Millennial, but perhaps I was born a couple decades too soon because many of the things they find important in a job, the autonomy and purpose (talked about in Drive) being more important than compensations, are values I have. We should work, and we should try to give our employer’s a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. We should also be treated fairly, as fellow human beings and neighbors, not resources.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

• Windows Media Podcast – 20.3MB WMV
• iPod Video Podcast – 14.5MB MP4
• MP3 Audio Podcast – 3.4MB MP3

Seth Godin has some very interesting things to say and often makes me think with his short posts on the world. I saw him speak a few years ago, enjoyed it, and while I don’t always agree with the way he views the world, his comments and thoughts often cause me to rethink my position. Recently he had a blog on Hard Work vs. Long Workthat made me stop and think about my career.

Seth talks about the difference between those two types of effort, with most people dreading hard work more than long work. I think most people would say that they’d rather work hard for 8 hours a day then work for12 at a lesser pace. Most people in IT seem to not want to work long hours, especially as they age, and would prefer to work hard for a shorter period of time. However,  my guess is most workers tend to shy away from hard work more than long hours.

Why is that? Seth nails the reason when he mentions risk. Doing hard work involves risk, it involves taking chances and trying to fundamentally do something that is hard. If it wasn’t a challenge, we wouldn’t call it “hard” work, and everyone would tackle it. However the risk introduced by taking on a difficult task is daunting to most people, especially if failure might involve consequences. Most people avoid increasing their risk, even at the expense of spending more time coasting along.

We see this every day in our jobs, and I know I’m not immune. I implement change slowly, and tend to shy away from risk. I do take some changes, but they are calculated efforts, without too much downside.  Both at work and in the rest of my life, I am definitely risk-averse.

Should you be doing hard work instead of long work? I can’t answer that for you, but I would urge you to think about the differences, and understand what you are more comfortable doing. It pays to leave your comfort zone as you often grow, but being uncomfortable with the way you work is also a large source of stress in your life. And stress is best dealt with in short doses, not long periods of time.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

• Windows Media Podcast – 24.8MB WMV
• iPod Video Podcast – 18.0MB MP4
• MP3 Audio Podcast – 4.1MB MP3