Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Individual Contributions

    “Never underestimate what you can bring to the table.” – Rob Cooper, on StackOverflow.

    I read that and immediately went back to a time earlier in my career.  I worked in a large team of IT workers, with a variety of skills and experiences. Each of us had an area we specialized in (databases for me), but we had to cross train and handle calls and issues in other areas at times.  Being a diverse team of about 20 people, we all had noticeable strengths and weaknesses. Some people were talented in almost all areas and could figure things out. Some struggled and sought out the experts in areas outside their own constantly.

    We had one person in particular that was fairly low down on the skill level, and was in charge of a number of administrative-type tasks for the IT infrastructure. Things like basic group/user security, handling simpler AD tasks, things that you usually task to a junior level individual. I often heard others complaining that this person could not carry their own weight, or didn’t do enough work.

    However when this person went on vacation, and someone else had to fill in, I’d hear more complaints about having to do basic tasks, like managing groups or setting permissions.  I couldn’t  imagine the way a team would work if it was filled with highly talented, highly capable superstars; we’d never get any work done because of the constant complaining.

    We all have a role to fill at times in our lives. Sometimes it’s a high level role, and at times it’s a low level role. Each of us brings value for the work we do, and none of us is any “better” at life than any other. The lead developer might seem like they are more important than the secretary or the cleaning crew, but those other contributions are important as well. They’re valuable, and they should be appreciated.

    Steve Jones

  • The DBA Financial Analyst

    The DBA job is somewhat nebulous, with a variety of skills being needed, and the mix of those skills varying from company to company. As companies look to save money, and look to perhaps go with cloud computing or other types of hosted environments, are DBAs going to need to also perform financial calculations?

    I was reading a post on SQL Azure recently that talked about the cost of indexes. Not performance, or space, but actual real dollars and cents cost since indexes take up space and you are charged by the space you use. Adding extra indexes, or adding columns to indexes, or adding covering columns, can cost you real money if you have any large scale of resources.

    So does that mean that in addition to trying to determine what changes you can make to code to improve performance, or what new features might make sense to your applications, you need to also run some financial ROI calculation on the choices? Maybe PowerPivot was released just in time for all those virtual systems that might charge by the byte or cycle.

    As a DBA, I’ve had to budget, and try to determine  how to spend funds for hardware, balancing out choices for RAM v disk v CPU, and even comparing secondary servers for read-only scale out against a larger single server. However I typically don’t have to compare the cost of features in my analysis.

    I’ve sometimes wished I could pay for just one feature, and it’s starting to look like that might be something that could happen in the cloud. While the possibility if mix and match features intrigues me, the extra work to add cost to my calculations along with performance makes me think the cloud might be more trouble than it’s worth.

    Steve Jones

  • Personal Investments

    I’ve written a lot on various aspects of your career, and I mention training often. I try to encourage you to seek training dollars from your employer to go to things like the PASS Summit or SQL Connections.  I think that your boss out to invest in you and that it will pay him or her back over time with better quality work overall.

    I know there are plenty of managers that don’t have a budget for training, or they are resistant to just spend it on requests from employees without some sort of guarantee. There are no guarantees in life, and managers should get used to that, but you can help them gain some confidence that money spent on you is not money wasted.

    There are a couple ways to do this, one of which is to make your own investment. I think that you ought to be spending some time on building your skills on your own. Document those efforts, and then show your manager that you are trying to learn more when you ask for money. So for this Friday’s poll, I wanted to see who might be doing that. This week I’m asking:

    What are the investments that you are making in your career?

    Right now, what tangible things can you list that you have done in the last year that show you are making an effort to improve in your job. I realize that some of you might not want to post directly, or too specifically, but if you can write something, perhaps you can inspire others.

    For my own career, which is only somewhat technical, I’ve been making an effort to improve my skills by working more with the new aspects of SQL Server, blogging about them, and then building additional presentations that I can give at events. That is a way that I’m looking to improve my own skills, as well as gain additional exposure for my company. Hopefully that pays them back and it means it’s worth investing in me by sending me to more events, or even a few training classes.

    Hopefully you’ve done something in the last year that shows an investment in your own career. My own investment has been mostly limited to time, but I have purchased a few books to help me learn. Let us know this Friday what you’ve done on your own. And be sure to let your boss know as well.

    Steve Jones

  • Drive

    59075814[1] I saw a short talk from Dan Pink a few months back from this year’s TED conference. It’s very cool, and worth watching. After watching the video, I bought the book, Drive.

    This book goes through some the reasons why we are motivated to do things. It looks back at some of the older notions of motivation, mostly the carrot/stick  techniques most of us have been exposed to. It talks about the ways that we have tried to reward people and get more work, or better work, from them.

    It does this with a mix of stories and research that Mr. Pink has done, with economists and psychologists, with interesting results. The talk summarizes it, but the book then backs it up with great examples. There’s a look at Google’s 20% time, Fed Ex days from Atlassian, and Best Buy’s ROWE work structure.

    The main thrust that I’ve seen from this is that people want three things in their lives: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. We want to direct ourselves, we want to get better, and we want to make a difference. In my life, I had thought that better rewards motivated me, but as I grow older, I’m not sure that’s the case. I think that autonomy and mastery were key drivers, and purpose is becoming more important.

    It’s a great read. If you liked Outliers, or want to try to grow yourself and become happier in your career, or even manage people better, I think this is worth the read.