Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • 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

  • Networking and Connections

    This quote says it all:

    connections

    It’s from an article on the 9/11 memorial and how an algorithm was used to inscribe the names in particular places.

    That could easily be applied to your career as well. The connections you have, with people that know you, respect you, like your work, like you, etc. are the most important things you have.

    Your skills matter, but the skills help build those connections.

    Learn to network.

    Cross posted to The Modern Resume

  • The Poor Soul

    Poor Souls

    I recently had someone post this after I made a comment about someone taking responsibility for their database server.

    “So Steve, what would you recommend then for those poor souls?  As being one of them it drives me nuts to constantly be told I can’t get more training as it’s not my true job position yet I’m responsible for making the databases work. “

    I’ve been in this spot a few times, in and out of IT. I’ve been tossed into cooking or bartending jobs without training and had to learn quickly how to do the job, and I’ve had the same thing happen in IT. In a few cases the companies knew it was a bad situation and they eventually got me training, in others they didn’t. Here’s the advice I have for you.

    Ultimately you are responsible for the job. Tough love, but you’re being paid for that job, so you are responsible.  That means you have to learn how the technology in your environment works and how to solve the problems you have.

    First, get your resume up to date. Make sure it is ready for submission, and you are prepared to get fired every week.  Keep an eye on the job market and save some extra money, because to me, the financial security for my family comes first.

    Second, learn to restore data and then make sure you have backups in place. This is secondary because if you have a failure quick, you want to be ready to get a new job. But ultimately no matter what breaks or doesn’t work, getting data back first is crucial.

    As you go through all of this, you might be fighting fires. So while you practice restores or document the environment, you might be trying to fix things and asking questions of others, but invest the time to get yourself into a solid position.

    I’d also talk to my boss regularly. Every time I found a place I didn’t know something, I’d make a note and let my boss know this is a hole. Maybe I can learn it, maybe I can’t, but I could use help. That might be the best ROI for conferences. Go, make friends, get contacts that can fill your knowledge holes. Or find consultants you can call.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts