Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Why Build a Brand?

    Why should you go to the trouble to start blogging, speaking, answering questions or anything else. What’s the point?

    I’ve written a little before about this. When you build a brand, it helps you to stand out from others. You become more noticeable, and more likely to get the interview. You allow a potential employer to do some due diligence before they call you for an interview, which gives them more confidence you are the right person for the job.

    And that if they call you, knowing your brand, the job is more likely what you want to do. Your brand lets people know what your skills are, what talents you have, and what you might want to do in life.

    Working on your own brand also forces you to think about what you want from your career, or in your career, and it helps you to become better. Working on a better brand means getting better at your career in some way. Whether you blog, speak, or do anything else, you have to learn the topic well enough to teach it.

    You are building an online brand with everything you do online, and many people in technology are regularly building that brand, so take advantage of it, put a little more effort in and get into the top ten percent of people in your field.

    Remember that a brand can have a downside, so use your own version of “The Test” before doing anything online.

    And don’t forget that just because you have a great job your branding doesn’t matter. It can still be useful, even if you don’t want a new job.

  • Enjoy Your Life

    A sad weekend, and shocking news Sunday morning. I was out running errands when I checked email and found out a friend had been killed in a plane crash on Saturday afternoon. He was a Boy Scout and Girl Scout leader, someone who I have gotten to know quite well, our kids have played together, and we’ve camped at various events together, sharing lots of cooking duties and conversations. He was one of the people I know very well from Scouts. My heart goes out to his family, who were present at the airfield when the plane crashed. I couldn’t imagine being there to see my spouse die.

    I was in a bit of a daze yesterday morning, and tired to work through the day, helping them to enjoy an Easter holiday, but it was hard. Tia and I talked about it quite a bit, and were both grateful and thankful for all we have.

    A few days earlier, I had watched this short piece from a man that survived the Hudson River crash last year. It’s worth 5 minutes of your life, and it resonates with me, more so than it did last week.

    Three things I learned while my plane crashed

     

    My wife and I have talked bout dying a few times, and being prepared. I have lived a great life, and I’m comfortable with experiencing and achieving so much in my 43 years on Earth. I don’t want to die, and I’d like to see my kids grow up and have families, but I think I’ve had a great life so far with few regrets.

    I’d like to do more things in my life, and I’d like to go places and experience new things. I invest for the future, in different parts of my life, but I seek to enjoy myself as much as I can each day. I strive for a balance.

    My editorial today talked about my loss, and tried to remind people that life is short. We should look for that balance, and enjoy our lives as much as we can. As mentioned in the video, don’t try to be right as often as you try to be happy. If you want to improve a part of your life, whether that’s family, career, or something else, start taking the steps to make that improvement. It might take time, but today is the first day of the rest of your life, and it’s a good time to start going in the direction you want to go.

  • The Mentoring Experiment

    The Mentoring Experiment
    http://thementoringexperiment.org/

    As I have progressed through my career, I’ve worked hard, read and studied constantly, and asked lots of questions of others. All that has helped me to improve my skills and better understand my craft. However there is more to growing a data professional career than just learning to better work with the technology.

    One thing that helped me a few times was the ability to talk to other people in my companies that were more experienced in life and business. These were people that I reported to, directly or indirectly, who were willing to listen and offer me some insight and advice on my career. They were mentors, but unfortunately they were few and far between in my career.

    It made me wonder if I might have made some better decisions, or made different decisions earlier in my career if I had been able to call on a mentor more regularly.  Andy Warren (LinkedIn | Blog | @sqlandy) and I talked about this being a problem that we both shared in our careers, and one that we see many people struggling with today. Our discussions led us to wonder if there might be a way to develop a mentoring framework that would help people grow their careers in a way that is better suited to each individual.

    The Mentoring Experiment is our initial attempt to build such a framework. It’s a short cycle, with the idea that we are seeking to learn some lessons about mentoring while helping people with advice and insight from mentors that we respect.  We hope that we can find some patterns that allow us to facilitate the bonding of mentors with mentees.

    We are taking applications until Apr 30, and while Andy and I will be mentoring people, we have a list of mentors from the SQL Server community that we respect and think will be good mentors for data professionals looking for help in better understanding their careers and where they want to go in the future.

    We’ll be blogging about the process, respecting everyone’s privacy along the way, and we hope to expand and grow this experiment over the next few years into something that gives back to the community, and hopefully helps many data professionals grow careers that they benefit from and greatly enjoy.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Careful Blogging

    Be careful about what you blog.

    There are official blogs, like Jonathan Schwatz of Sun and others that are corporate preaching/marketing/promotional efforts. Not that this blog or others aren’t what the authors think, but I feel that they are probably checked and monitored by someone at the corporation to be sure that the message doesn’t bring any liability or unexpected issues out.

    Then there are unofficial blogs, like the guys at MSDN that are handled by employees, they are asked to post, but they are not really monitored. I’m sure there are guidelines and regulations, however, that have been posted, emailed, snail-mailed, etc. to everyone.

    I ran across this article on potential legal isues with blogs on eWeek. It doesn’t appear the courts have been involved yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. At some point there will be someone that sues or gets sued over a posting and then we’ll really find out how “private” those blogs are.

    I made a note on the SQLServerCentral blogs page, but it’s something to think about whether you use a corporate site or your own private one. Be wary of what you post in a blog. To me the same rules that apply with you at Happy Hour apply on the blog. If you don’t want it getting back to your boss, don’t post it.

    Steve Jones