Tag: career

In the last few years, I’ve noticed that the quality of technical workers can vary quite a bit in many organizations. I think most people get things done, but often not at a high-quality level. It’s one reason that I write, speak, and try to motivate more of you to work on your skills and your career. I want to see better software being built.

I tend to work with more database developers than application developers and I tend to see more SQL code than C#/Java/etc. And I see a lot of poorly written SQL Code and poor data models that seem to have been built without a lot of thought put into them. Whether this is because of ignorance or just poor skills is hard to know, but I see a lot of code that makes me slightly cringe.

Over time, many of us see that this technical debt limits our ability to improve things or make changes. Often these systemic issues linger because the development staff a) doesn’t know how to fix them, b) has other, higher priorities, or c) is afraid to try and make changes. Often it’s a combination of all three, which further limits the agility of the database and application teams. We end up struggling to keep up with customer demands, or we may pile on more and more technical debt. Often this leads to increased performance problems in the database.

I was reading about development and staffing in this piece, which had an interesting quote: “I currently believe that there’s only one way to buy yourself out of technical issues and bad data models, and that’s buying a really talented engineer whose sole focus is fixing the problem.” Essentially, you need to do two things here. First, hire a smart engineer, and second, empower them to effect change. In many cases, I think you actually need two smart engineers: one database engineer and one application software engineer. Those people have to focus on improvements, refactoring bad data models and the code that depends on them, and slowly raising the level of quality.

The piece gets a little sidetracked with the way vendors promise their products will fix your problems. In general, that’s not true, at least not without you adapting your process to their software. In my role, I’m careful not to promise more than I can deliver, and not try to minimize the effort required to change. I know it’s somewhere between using 10% time and a major overhaul, and I hope I convey that to clients.

Ultimately, I think that we haven’t commoditized lots of software development, which is the point of the piece and the quote above. We need to get talented people, or we need to train them, or both. We need people that enjoy their jobs and find some purpose or satisfaction. Part of that is making their jobs more interesting and enjoyable.

That also means there are many opportunities if you learn to be good at your job. Learn to build good data models. Keep up your skills that write efficient code, learn how to troubleshoot, and learn how to work well with others. None of those are easy skills to develop, nor are they quick to learn, but they can be learned with some effort. Document your progress, blog/write/speak, and I bet you’ll find your career prospects improving.

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It seems I’ve heard from a lot of people looking for jobs lately. I had a friend reach out and when I posted a note on LinkedIn I had someone looking for a job, I heard from a few dozen others that they were in the same situation. The last year has seen a lot of turnover in IT. There have been lots of big (and small) companies that have let staff go, for a variety of reasons. The why doesn’t matter to you if you’ve lost employment. You just need a new job.

At the same time, I hear from lots of customers and friends that they are struggling to find good talent. They have openings, but none of the people interviewing have good skills.

That’s an interesting mix of situations. There are jobs and companies want to hire people, and there are people needing jobs. However, there don’t seem to be enough good matches, and my guess is we have some skills mismatches here. In other words, candidates aren’t showing they have the skills employers need, or at least not at the depth employers need.

A lot of success I’ve had in the past is being good at some tasks with a database, but also showing employers I can learn about other tasks easily. Some of that is from blogs or answers on forums, and some of that is showcasing those skills in interviews. I think that many managers will accept they might need to teach you or train you on certain things, but they want confidence you can learn and grow.

Good interview soft skills help, but showcasing learning and growth helps as well. Blogging is a good way to show that, but what do you blog about? My advice to students is to explain how they solve the problems they’re given in coursework. Show what you learned, from where, and how you chose to solve a problem with the resources used.

I would say that experienced workers can do the same thing. Take on some sample projects that build or design a database. Work on a sample dataset and produce queries to answer questions, explaining what the goal is and then how you solve the problem. Show how you can improve a project by refactoring code, and then proving things are better with execution plans and performance numbers.

Show you have skills to get some things done, and the skills to learn how to solve complex problems. Hiring managers need to have this confidence in you.

If you have ideas for a project, let us know in a comment. What types of projects have you worked on that you were proud of the solution? What sample datasets have you used to learn? We all can improve our skills in some way, and perhaps a few specific ideas will get some of you moving in the new year.

Steve Jones

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Today is the last working day of 2023. Next week we start with the New Year’s holiday on Monday and then many of us go back to work, starting a new year. This is the time of year where many people make New Year’s Resolutions, most of which will be abandoned by March. Some of you might keep to your goals, but it is hard to make substantial changes in your life all at once, especially based on a calendar date.

Instead of making a resolution this weekend, I would suggest that you think about your career and sketch the outline of a plan. Having a plan is a good way to approach the new year, one that I think might be better than setting goals without a plan. It’s easy to set goals, but without a concrete approach to attacking those goals, I think it becomes difficult to meet them, and more importantly, difficult to drive your career in the direction that makes it better for you.

I heard some good advice from Brent Ozar at SQL Saturday Boston 2023. He said a good way to build a plan is to think where you would like to be in a year. What would you like to know? Or what skill would improve your career? What do you think would impress your boss? I’m sure most of you working in technology would like to make more money or find a better employer but those are the results after becoming a better data professional, not the plan.

In a year, I think you can easily spend 50 hours working on your career, in an hour a week. Two hours a week is doable, but it can be hard to do more with a busy life, especially if you have family. However, you can make a couple of scheduled times a week to spend 15, 30, or 60 minutes on something in your career. Consider it a hobby and discuss how and when you’ll find time with your partner and family. Put the times on your calendar and take the time to sit at a computer.

As for what you work on, look at my questions above, and pick a technology/language/framework/tool/platform/etc. and start typing. Write code, build a server, read what others have written, and practice answering questions that others have asked on your topic, even if you don’t post the answer in a forum.

In the beginning, it will be hard. You’ll feel like you aren’t accomplishing anything. You might feel like you’re just wasting time, but you’ll learn things and slowly you will be able to actually get something done. Whether you want to train AI models, write better T-SQL, or learn to manage Availability Groups like an expert.

My last piece of advice is to write. Journal, blog, make notes, but write about what you’ve learned. Whether these are notes for yourself to review before an interview or published blogs that build your brand. Document your journey and I am sure you will be very proud of yourself on this date next year.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.