Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • What You Practice

    37slogo-transI saw a very interesting blog at 37 Signals on the quote “the things you do more often are the things you get good at.” It’s aimed more at a business model, talking about the idea of building a service for free without having an idea of how to later convert that to profit.

    However I think there is something else here. For most of us, outside of running our own business, the things we do most often are the things that we are interested in, or that speak to us. They are the things we like, and if we are self-aware, we recognize these things and look to build them into our life.

    Life is short, and your career is a big part of that. I recommend that you understand what you like to do, and then find a way to do more of it in your career. And enjoy your job more.

  • Changing Jobs

    I interact with a lot of people about their jobs, both online and at various events like SQL Saturdays. With my Modern Resume presentation, I attract a lot of people that are interested in finding a new job, or sometimes just finding any job. Apparently these are not an out of the ordinary group of people. According to a ComputerWorld survey, over one third of respondents are looking to find a new job.

    The last few years have been a hard economy for many people, and for many companies. Raises have been small or non-existent, layoffs have occurred, and it seems that IT workers must do more and more with less resources all the time. Those are not necessarily conditions that make for happy workers.

    But is it time for a job change for you? Only you can really answer that question for yourself, but I would urge you to open a dialog inside your company if the answer is “yes.” Either with your immediate boss, or perhaps with another department, and look for some way to make your job better. Find new duties, rotate into some other area, or tackle a project of interest to you. There are some very difficult managers out there, but most of them would rather retain you if they can. Finding new employees is a pain.

    More money doesn’t usually help you enjoy your job more. I’ve rarely had any friends think that they made a good decision when they took a job primarily because it paid more. Instead the people that are most happy are those that picked the job that best fit them, without worrying about the money. I’m certainly one of those; I took a pay cut to get this job years ago.

    Life is short. Don’t stay in, or take, a crappy job if you can avoid it.

    Steve Jones

  • Do You Talk Salary in the Interview?

    This is a reprinted editorial from August 2, 2005. It is being republished as Steve is on vacation.

    A friend recently interviewed someone in his company for another position. The internal candidate knows the salary ranges and the position in relation to their current spot. There was a screening by HR and an interview and then a follow up from HR with the candidate. During the follow up, the candidate told HR that the salary wasn’t high enough and that they weren’t interested unless the position could be moved.

    Suffice it to say that my friend was rather upset. He’d spent quite a bit of time on this person and all of it could have been avoided if the salary question had been brought up informally before the interview in the screening or in the hallway. However, he didn’t think the interview was the place to bring it up.

    I’ve felt, or maybe just learned, that I want to bring this up early on in the process. Knowing the salary range on an initial phone interview or contact is something I need to get out of the way because it has at times impacted my decision to proceed. I’m not sure that bringing it up in the interview is a bad thing, however. If there’s no phone interview and someone brings you in, ask at the end of the interview.

    My thought is that if you’ve impressed someone, they might move the range. If not, then you both know this is going nowhere.

    Money is a strange addition to an interview. Lots of times the person making the hiring decision has to make some decision on the offer, but it’s not something they relish doing. Making a decision that affects the person’s life is tough and trying to balance the value you perceive in this candidate alongside those existing employees is hard. I’m sure that’s why most people like having definite ranges that they can fit a person into.

    I never enjoyed making a financial decision for someone, especially determining their salary. My preference is to interview them and give my opinion to someone else to make the offer.

    Steve Jones

  • The DBA Disconnect

    We all know that security is an issue that we have to pay attention to. At least, those technical people that feel responsible for the security of their systems feel this way. However a short article referencing a DBA survey shows that the rest of the business might not be in sync with the technical people.

    I think most DBAs don’t know what a data breach would cost their company. I’m sure that’s not a number that most places I have worked would even bother calculating. Of course, most places probably would have no clue if there were a data breach in the first place.

    This puts many technical people in a bad position. They want to do a good job, but management often wants to just give lip service to security. When it comes down to it, the performance, availability and convenience of database servers is much more important than good security to many companies. From allowing access for developers or applications with privileged accounts to preventing password changes because of hard coded entries, it seems that companies aren’t that concerned about security in many cases.

    Ultimately some external  force is needed for us to make security a priority. It could be through regulation, insurance from lawsuits, or something else, but I don’t have any confidence that companies are going to take security seriously. However you can do some little things yourself, like making sure there are no default passwords open on your systems.

    Steve Jones