Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Finding Your Dream Job

    My pre-conference session for the SQL Rally conference in the spring is called “Finding Your Dream Job”. Chris Shaw ( LinkedIn | blog | @sqlshaw)  and I put this together based on a few other presentations that we’ve both given before.

    Whether you vote for us, Kevin Kline, or Joe Webb, go vote. All of the sessions are good, and depending on what’s interesting to you, pick the one you’d like to attend.

    Vote Now

    Why Us?

    It’s a good question. After all, is it worth $59 or $99 for a day to get some ideas on how to work on your career? Chris talked a little about why this might help you in his blog. To add to his points with a few of my own.

    Promoting one’s self is hard: I find so many people that struggle with promoting themselves. I think we’re all fairly humble at heart, and that’s great.

    Except when you’re looking for a better job. Then you need to stand out and we’ll give you ways to do that.

    Learn the tools: So many people don’t know how to use the tools available to them. Or they might not even know of tools. We’ll talk about, and give you some good cheat sheets, the tools that you can use and how to use them.

    Tips and Tricks: How do you network with people? What’s a good way to blog to show off your knowledge? How do you handle the interview when you’re stumped? We’ll give you these answers and more. Ultimately it’s up to you to close the deal, but we’ll help you be prepared so that you look your best when you’re in front of people.

    It’s a competitive world. Stand out in it and we’ll help you learn how to do this.

  • My Bucket List

    I actually built on in 1999 and called it a Life List. Over the years I’ve tried to work on the list each year, knocking off something, but I also learned something. I learned that as I grew, and my life was more enjoyable, some of the things on my list no longer matter. I haven’t removed them because I spent some time on it and maybe they’ll come back later, but right now I’m pretty happy with my life.

    However I saw Brent Ozar’s list recently, and a few more (Aaron Bertrand, Jason Brimhall), so I decided to update mine with a short list for my career.

    In no particular order:

    Write a business book – It could be on business in general, professional development, or something else.

    Write a piece of software – I’ve done some development work, and written some utilities, but I’d like to write something that is useful to others, probably something on the web. SQL Saturday is my template, but I’d like to do something similar, but in a different area.

    Work for a non-profit – borrowed from my other list. Habitat for Humanity is at the top of my list, but maybe a local food bank will get me for a significant amount of time at some point.

    Mentor someone, explicitly – I’ve done some of this without meaning to, and people have recognized it. I’d like to ask someone if I can, or have them ask me and have it reach some type of completion status.

    Drive a Race Car – I’m fairly conservative and careful, and actually am tempted to pull my “skydiving” off my other list. But reading Brent’s list made me think about getting on a racetrack for a day or two. I actually investigated this a few years ago.

    Drive around the country and see all 50 states – I’ve driven across the US, multiple times in fact. However I’d like to get an RV and just cruise at some point. Likely it would be a 5th wheel living quarters trailer so my wife can bring her horses, but that would be great.

    There’s likely more, and I know that my old list could use a re-vamping, but this will do for now.

  • Overwhelmed, Stress, and Planning

    It’s been a bit hectic this year. In fact, it feels crazy most weeks as I try to manage work, home life, and free time. More and more I have been having a night or two a week where I just want to lay in bed and watch some TV to unwind. I even find myself ignoring email on the weekends, which is something I never used to do. If I could process something in a minute, I’d rather just handle it.

    However when stress hits, and you feel like there’s too much to do, it’s good to be able to let things go, or at least delay them for a bit. And that’s what I’ve trying. I’m slightly behind on articles, and likely need to send a few apology letters to authors.

    I started to free up time for next year, anticipating that I might be doing more volunteer work. When that fell through, I started to direct that energy elsewhere, looking for other community engagements. However that started to grow like crazy, and I once again find myself slightly overwhelmed.

    My son has karate 3 nights a week (as do I), my daughter had 2 days of volleyball a week, and my wife has had a few trips, which mean I have horse chores. I’ve been to a few SQL Saturdays lately, and have one more in addition to the SQL Connections and PASS Summit coming up next month. Then there’s ski season. It’s one of the ways I try to get away from work and manage stress, and I look forward to it. But it means that I have to prep for the time off.

    I would like to get to more community events in 2011, but I am starting to wonder if I will. The SQL Saturdays are short trips, but the time away adds up and I’d like to actually slow down a bit next year and take on less project stuff.

    There’s more to life than work, and I’m trying to remember that. Hopefully more of you remember that as well and ensure you have a good balance in life. It’s good to recognize when you’re out of balance and look to correct the situation. I’m not sure what I will do, but I am aware that I need to plan on doing something different next year.

  • The Growth of Professional Development

    When I started in my career, it seemed that there wasn’t a good way to grow your career. Myself, and many others, somewhat fumbled around, looking for jobs with bigger databases or more money. We thought that learning to be the best at a particular technology was the way to grow your career. That or go into management, something very few of us were interested in.

    Most people I worked with took a job with the expectation that they’d be there forever. When that didn’t work out, they started applying for other jobs, hoping the next one would be the last they’d need for a long time. Managing one’s career was something you did by updating a resume and asking your friends if they knew of any jobs, along with the random learning that comes from new projects or reading magazines.

    I’ve been amazed in the last 4-5 years to see so many people taking a more active role in their own careers, spending more time on a regular basis managing their careers. I have been giving a presentation on The Modern Resume for a couple years and I find more and more people interested in attending and finding new ways to formalize their professional development. Not everyone will actually make the effort,  but new tools like social networking sites make it easier, and I regularly find more people that are spending time on the professional development in their lives.

    I recently submitted a pre-conference session to the upcoming SQL Rally event next May with Chris Shaw that deals with Finding Your Dream Job. I am still surprised that it was accepted, but it seems more and more people want to get career related information along with the technical sessions at various events. Voting is open for the sessions, which will be an interesting test in and of itself. Are there enough people that will pay for a professional development session alongside the other technical sessions submitted? Grant Fritchey has a great one on Query Tuning and Brian Kelley has one on security. Tough competition.

    Whether or not Chris’ and my session is accepted doesn’t matter. I’m excited that the topic is even under consideration, and that there are two other great sessions from Joe Webb and Kevin Kline. I would urge you to vote, and vote honestly. Let us know what you truly think is worth paying for and valuable for your career.

    Steve Jones