Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Welcome to 2011

    It seems amazing that it is already 2011, and we’re ten years past the point when I expected there to be a manned mission to Jupiter. Or at least hoped it would have happened. We look forward to 2011, with many people expecting a new version of SQL Server to be released, along with many other technological advancements likely coming.

    The new year is a few days old, and I suspect a few of you have set some new years resolutions. Those are always hard to stick with, and it almost seems like failing to keep them is as much a tradition as making them.

    I read quite a few blogs last week talking about goals for 2011, and this is a good time to think about what you would like to accomplish in your career this year. I am trying to work through this myself, thinking about where I would like to take my life over the next year. Like many of you, I have to blend a busy family life, a job working for someone else, and professional goals into some strategy that fits into that ever limiting 24 hours we are stuck with each day.

    I think that putting these goals down is important. It helps to focus you, and regular review or reminders to check them can ensure that you will work on them. It’s easy to forget in which direction you want to go, because we get busy and are pulled in many different directions each day.

    This next year I am not sure what will be on my list, or even if I will have a list of goals for the year. The pace of change seems to almost dictate a shorter term set of goals, perhaps quarterly. I do think, however, that it’s important to have a list of things that you would like to accomplish in your career, and make an effort to progress through them on a regular basis.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72059/)

  • Building Better Communication Skills

    The most valuable skill for your career.

    I think that one of the most valuable skills that someone in technology can have is the ability to communicate with others. It doesn’t matter whether you write code, rack servers, or sit in meetings with business people, it is important that you find a way to express clearly what you want, need, or would expect from someone else. If you can’t, you will find that you often struggle to get anything accomplished in an efficient manner.

    It’s possible that you can get by with verbal communications in many instances, but it seems that so much gets done by written communications of some sort. Especially these days where it seems that so much of the interaction between people takes place through email, IM, or even Twitter. We are constantly using some form of written text to convey information between each other.

    However it seems that many people don’t place a premium on building better writing skills. When I talk to many people at SQL Saturdays, most of them are hesitant to try something like blogging. The most common complaint: I hate writing.

    But we have to do it constantly at work and working on your writing skills will not only help you to communicate better, but it will also help you learn to better organize your own thoughts. You will have a better understanding of the logical thought process, which might even help you build better code.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72122/

  • Looking Back at 2010–Goal Review

    I had 8 goals for 2010, which I posted at the end of last year. That reminds me, I need to work on goals for 2011 Smile

    These were a variety of work, community, and professional goals that I set with, thinking that I would be able to achieve these in the year. As with many things, I was wrong and didn’t end up I the place that I expected. Some of this was due to my poor time management, some due to changing situations, and some due to a changing of my feelings towards the end result of these goals. Here are my final comments on the goals:

    1. Forums – My original goal was to post less, but keep 300 posts a month average. About 40-50 of those are set (editorials, handling issues), so it’s really a 200+ technical posting. I managed to make that average, with a wildly varying level per month.
    2. Blogging – I wanted to blog 5 times a week, each week, with at least 2 being technical. I think I made this, outside of vacations, and most weeks I did manage to get a couple technical posts. In some ways, I think this is an artificial goal that forced me to look for technical items, but it also resulted in some less than stellar posts. I think I need to re-examine what I am trying to accomplish here for 2011.
    3. Learn Reporting Services – Fail. I was hoping to devote 1-2 hours a week, a fairly small goal, to this. However besides getting this setup no 3 machines, building some basic reports, and fighting through non-domain security issues, I didn’t accomplish a lot here. Part of the issue is that I had no focus on “what” I wanted to do with SSRS and no work to produce. I think this was my learning goal for SQL Server, but it wasn’t well focused or developed. While I think these are good skills, and worth learning, it wasn’t a good choice for me. In short, a bad goal to pick, and one that was easy to let go as my life became busy.
    4. Attend one SQL Saturday – A huge success, and I actually attended 7, along with a couple other events. I spoke at:
      1. SQL Saturday #33 – Charlotte
      2. SQL Saturday #22 – Pensacola
      3. SQL Saturday #28 – Baton Rouge
      4. SQL Saturday  #52 – Colorado
      5. SQL Saturday #53 – Kansas City
      6. SQL Saturday #59 – New York City
    5. Write a book – I made progress here, devoting a few afternoons here and actually working on two separate items at the same time. However what ended up killing me here is no enough of a focused effort, enough times. If I had spent 15-20 days on this, it would be done. I think that I moved some of this time to speaking events, and building presentations.
    6. Build 2 new presentations – I actually built 3 this year. Two on basic SQL Server (one non-technical, one technical), and one on Common SQL Server Mistakes. I have another in progress that I want to get ready for 2011. Again, need to make focused time.
    7. Take all my vacation in 2010 – Close. I didn’t make it, and again, work is interfering with my ski-Thursdays this winter. However I did manage to get in 4 vacations this year: St Martin, Las Vegas, Winter Park, and Steamboat Springs. I’ll call this a success, assuming I can free up 3 days each month in Jan/Feb/Mar.
    8. Travel to one new city for work – Charlotte, Kansas City, Las Vegas, New York (for SSC) were new trips for me. It was good to me to visit with people outside of the areas I have tended to go (Seattle/Orlando) over the years.

    So was it a successful year? It’s hard to say. It certainly was a busy one, and that impacted some of my personal goals. I think that overall I did well, and some of my failings were a lack of a well-focused goal.

    In 2011, I want to look for goals that produce some result, and not arbitrary goals like blog every day. I am looking to better define a goal that will make my career grow, as well as contribute in a positive way to the community for SQL Server.

  • The Office

    The subheading for this article caught my eye. Sixty percent of workers think they can be productive outside of an office in a survey conducted of 2,600 IT professionals. Most of the these people also said that they tended to work extra hours each day outside of the office. The majority also said they would take a lower paying job if they could access the information they needed outside the office.

    That’s actually a smaller percentage that I expected would want to work away from an office,  though more than I expected would actually take less pay to do so. As least in America, it seems that people are very concerned with their salary, and reluctant to ever take a pay cut. I’m glad it seems that some people are starting to understand that value of their time to themselves and their families.

    It’s hard to work at the office, as Jason Fried said recently in a TED Talk. I haven’t worked in an office in some time, but I do remember a constant stream of interruptions. An hour of time without someone talking to you was rare, and I assume that the situation is similar with many knowledge workers today. We have people that we pay to think, and solve problems, but we don’t give them the time to actually work on those problems.

    Steve Jones