Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Treat People Like People

    The Millenials have different priorities

    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

  • Working Long or Working Hard

    Do you want to work hard or long?

    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

  • Competing with an MBA

    It seems that if you want to move up in management, you need an MBA. At least that was the prevailing wisdom a few years back as I worked in various corporations. Most executives were expected to get an MBA, and most did. There was an explosion of “executive MBA” programs in the late 90s and early part of this decade allowing employees to earn an MBA while still working in a full time position.

    However a lot of the MBA program was geared towards teaching hard topics, like finance and accounting, and ensuring that graduates understood the roles of information technology in a company. I think that was a bit of a mistake as we ended up with a generation or two of managers who viewed ROI, profit margin, and the bottom line as the most important parts of a company.

    Companies are realizing that becoming an executive and leader takes more than understanding numbers, and are starting to look to hire candidates that have stronger “soft skills” that emphasize working with others, understanding other viewpoints, motivating employees, and relating to customers. Business schools are starting to catch up in these areas and looking to offer more courses that deal with softer skills.

    If you are interesting in advancing into management, an MBA might be a good investment, but I would also argue that building strong soft skills is just as important. If you demonstrate strong abilities to interact with others, solve problems, handle disagreements, and act as a leader, you might be just as strong a candidate as that recent MBA graduate.

    There’s a lot more to IT than technology, and a lot more to business than crunching numbers. Those soft skills will be valuable in every facet of your life, and are worth spending some time on in your personal development plan.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Choosing Your Tasks

    I have been working for SQLServerCentral for nearly a decade. I started in 2002 and in that time I have had to define my own job most of the time. Early on Andy and Brian had a list of things they thought I should be doing, and there were certain things to get done each week, but it was a general list.

    This Friday I thought this was a topic for a good poll. Answer this question:

    What percentage of your time is self-directed?

    Do you get to choose what happens every day at work?

    By self-directed I mean the tasks that you choose to do because you think they need to be done for some reason. This is opposed to the specific tasks that someone assigns you and gives you some deadline for finishing. If someone asks you to “tune the server”, I don’t consider that a specific task, and you would have to pick items to work on, and determine how much time you spend on them, that’s a self-directed task.

    Do you have a good amount of self-directed time? When I used to manage a series of production servers, I usually had at least half my time as self-directed time. I could look at poor running queries, contact groups with proactive ideas for improving performance or preventing problems. I even had time to schedule DR testing. That took a lot of investment over time. I had to understand each system, set up monitoring and standards, build in data capture and analysis routines, and of course, plenty of alerting mechanisms.

    I think that a great production DBA will have a lot of self-directed time after 6-12 months on the job. A development DBA, however, will likely be constantly responding to code requests and enhancements, which is one reason I prefer the former job.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts