Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Goal Update – Misc accomplishments

    I have been trying to better track my goals this year, and find myself failing at some, exceeding at others. I’m not sure if that means that I did a poor job setting goals, or that I’m not so good at following through. I’ll have to evaluate that in December.

    In terms of goals, this is a milestone for me. Not really a big goal for this year, but it’s an accomplishment that I’m proud of, and it exceeds a goal I set two years ago.

    As of today, I’ve been running continuously for two years. Every day I’ve run at least a mile every day for 730 days. Yesterday was my 730th day, and today, Sept 10, 2010, starts my third year. I track this on my other blog (The Daily Runner) and I’m listed on the Running Streak Association’s site as #210 on the active list.

    Getting through these past two years has given me new insight into my health, and also kept me going in other areas. I learn to better manage my life and keep on a more even keel over time as well as motivate me.

    So I looked at how other things are going. I checked my posting for the year, and I have these counts:

    Month  Post Count
    8        410
    7        453
    6        377
    5        352
    4        442
    3        277
    2        372
    1        280

    That’s an average of 370 a month, which is above my goal of 300/month. Pretty good, and I’m enjoying answering questions again, which is a bonus.

    I also checked my blog count. I was trying to post every day, and I know I missed a few days, but I had a few double posts as well.

    Month Posts
    1       39
    2       37
    3       26
    4       37
    5       28
    6       44
    7       37
    8       30
    9        8

    With an average of 22 days a month, and an average post count of 34, I think I’m doing well here.

    I did miss one newsletter, and started two in the morning when I woke up, but otherwise doing well there as well. Now if I could just find some time to work with SSRS….

  • Enjoy Your Job

    I was listening to Mike and Mike on the radio a few Mondays ago and Mike Greenberg was returning on a Monday morning after being gone for a week’s vacation. He mentioned that he was happy to return to work and looked forward to it. Not that he didn’t enjoy vacation, but he likes his job and said he was thankful that he didn’t have a job that he dreaded returning to after time off.

    That’s how I feel, and it’s how I’ve tried to pick my jobs over the last decade or so. That wasn’t always the case, and early in my career I picked jobs that would be good for me growth and development, would pay me more, or provide some exciting challenge. I was willing to put up with long hours, or lots of demands from the company. I even took jobs with people that I didn’t like, or wouldn’t bother to ever socialize with.

    These days I feel differently, and the advice that I’ve given to people lately is “Don’t take a crappy job.” You can define that however you like, but I’d really think hard about whether you’d look forward to going to work. Whether it’s the people you want to meet or the challenges of doing the work you do, I hope that you do look ahead positively and not with trepidation.

    Life is short, and remember that when you pick the place and position where you’ll spend a lot of time in the future.

    Steve Jones

  • Where Are the Programmers?

    When I was growing up, I thought I wanted to be a computer programmer. I had my own Vic-20, and various other machines, and I wrote code that was used to solve problems. I programmed the computer to handle various calculations or manipulations for school or fun and thought that was very cool. I solved many chemistry labs with the help of my computer.

    The other day someone asked me what I did for a living and I said that I used to work with computers, but now wrote about them. They asked me if I was a computer programmer in the past. That was something I hadn’t heard in a long time.

    I’m not sure when we changed from programmers to developers. Fundamentally we do the same thing, though I’ll admit that developer sounds more important, or more talented. I’m sure at some point a programmer wanted to separate their job from everyone else, called themselves a developer, and the trend caught on.

    I haven’t worried about titles for a long time, but at one point in my career I did press to get the senior DBA title after working with SQL Server for about 6 or 7 years. At that time I felt I knew more about SQL Server than the majority of people that I met, and I deserved to be “senior.” I’m still not sure if I had earned it at that time, but it was a title I was proud of.

    It seems that us data professionals have tried to separate ourselves from the average DBA with database architects and database developers and any number of other database specialties that sound more important than just DBA or developer.

    It makes me wonder what’s coming next. Will we start to advertise ourselves as DSS (data security specialist) or DTS (data transformation specialist) or even BIDS (Business Intelligence developer specialist)? Who knows, those acronyms are already well known in the SQL Server world. They might just impress a manager who knows just a little about SQL Server.

    Steve Jones

  • Salaries and Experience

    One of the main reasons that I got into IT was the salary. Honestly, there were relatively few places where I thought I had a skill AND could make good money. I graduated with an economics degree, with the idea that I’d go to Wall Street, follow Gordon Gecko, and work 140 hours a week and make a few million.

    That was until I wrecked my shoulder playing rugby my senior year, realized that I wasn’t invincible, and decided there were more important things than my salary. However I still wanted to have a good living, I had some skills in technology, and I moved in that direction. When I heard that our DBA was making $90k a year at a time when I was making $45k, I decided I should learn more about databases.

    Across the last two decades of my career, I think I’ve been fortunate in my career. It’s been a lot of work, , and a lot of fun. I’ve tried to grow my career, learn new things, and find better opportunities over time and in new positions. I’ve had success, and I’ve found the experience has resulted in higher salaries for me. I found a blog about salaries recently that says it’s not only experience, but also location that matters in terms of salary. That’s probably true, though I think industry, the particular company, and other factors are important as well.

    For most of us, we don’t necessarily want to change locations, but we can do something about our experience. I’ve seen it written before that for people that have 10 years of experience, it could be gained two ways. They could have one year of experience ten times, or ten different years of experience (or some combination). The point is that you should be continually expanding on your experiences, not just relying on skills you learned a long time ago.

    You may or may not be able to get a job that pays you more with more experience. I’d like to think, however, that any investment in improving your skills and learning more about your craft, is never wasted.

    Steve Jones