Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Looking back at 2009 Goals

    I set goals at the start of 2009 for the year. They were:

  • Continue with 400 posts a month
  • Blog Daily
  • Speak at each Denver area user group
  • Speak at one SQLSaturday
  • Comment on blog posts that I think are interesting.
  • Update my blog roll to show who I think is interesting.
  • Grow the SSC audience to 1.4mm members by the end of the year.
  • Give all new articles a first review within 7 days.
  • Not miss sending any newsletters. I think I missed 3 this year.
  • Build something useful with .NET/SQL Server.

    I set a way for measuring my goals, and then had a couple updates during the year, Q1 and Q2. So how did I do? Here’s the evaluation:

    400 posts a month

    This got a little hard after the ASK SQLServerCentral site launched and I split time there. To be fair I asked more questions there than answered, but it still distracted me and ate up time. I ended up with 4628 as of Dec 19, which is closer than I thought I’d get.

    Blog Daily

    I think I blogged almost every day, or at least published something once a day. I ended up writing two or three many days and scheduling them, though I also published multiple ones some days. For the year I had 377 posts, plus one coming for tomorrow. Not bad.

    Speak at each Denver area User Group

    Complete, actually I spoke once at each group in the first quarter of 2009. That was a good goal for me. It got me out there, and while I only attended one meeting of Boulder and Co Springs, I got to 3 or 4 Denver area meetings.

    Speak at one SQLSaturday

    The idea was to support SQLSaturday and also get me out into the community. I ended up speaking at Pensacola and Baton Rouge. I cancelled SQL Connections, but managed 2 other remote deliveries, which was a pretty good number. Overall I exceeded this goal and was proud of it.

    Comment on Blog Posts

    I started out commenting on all blog posts since we really only had 3 or 4  regular bloggers at the beginning of the year. Since then we’ve grown to many more, including a lot of syndicated ones, and I don’t comment on all posts, but I try to read them all and comment where something strikes me.

    Update my blog roll

    I’ve done this 4 or 5 times, but not enough. I updated one more as I was writing this entry, but I didn’t really do this regularly enough. I should have set a monthly reminder and evaluated what I had down there.

    Grow SSC to 1.4mm members

    I failed here. Though to be fair, the rules of the game changed on me. rightly or wrongly, we’ve always required a registration to view most of our content. We had a time when you could read the forums, but not post, but as “payment” for the articles, we’ve wanted a registration. That changed substantially this year as Red Gate decided that we were alienating a number of people and we moved the “read” and “write” gates, as they were called, further back. I think now the read gate is gone, and it’s just the write gate if you want to post. That dramatically slowed down growth, and while we are still getting lots of traffic, we haven’t added a lot of members since September.

    Review New Articles within 7 days

    In hindsight this was partially a badly picked goal. I don’t have a way to determine what’s a “new” article other than memory since it’s not set up as a good workflow. It’s more like a waterfall model, and if I kick something back, it goes back to the top.

    But this was also a year in which writing seemed to explode. With so many people wanting to be MVP, so many people wanting to share, and maybe my expanded efforts in blogging and engaging with the community that I’ve often received 10 articles a week. Some are rewrites, and some are new, but it’s been a huge load and I’ve been behind quite often in editing.

    I think I failed here, not because of the workload, but more because the quality of writing has at times been horrible. I used to have relatively few writers, about 100, and they didn’t need a lot of editing. Now I have over 400, and many of them first timers. That’s OK, but they often scribble something down without proofing it, and I end up sending back more comments than they wrote!

    So I often put off editing for days, hitting it once or twice a week since it would put me in a bad mood. I failed miserably and I’m often not getting to a new article before it’s been in Q for 2 weeks.

    Not Miss Sending Newsletters

    I know I missed 1one I think that was it, though a couple were late. Let me know if that’s not the case.

    Build Something with .NET/SQL Server

    I had a few ideas, mainly redoing my own site, but never executed. This remains an unfulfilled goal.

    I think I was hesitant to tackle the process of relearning how to code in a language. It’s been a long time and while I don’t think the process of writing code would be hard, it’s the constant looking up of what methods to call, what properties exist, all the drudgery of re-learning the basic syntax and working with VS that I dreaded. I’m adding back this for 2010.

    Overall

    I think I did pretty good, and these goals were definitely on my mind. Setting them does drive you towards them if you have any ambition, so I’ll add a few more for next year.

  • Can Wives Shorten Work Hours?

    Or spouses in general, to be fair to all. I saw this piece that commented on long work hours and that spouses withholding attention, love, whatever, might help to reign in those crazy work hours.
    I guess it depends and I know that finding a balance between home life and work is a hard thing to do, and it’s a very personal thing. You have to really work at it and make those tradeoffs that work for your family. I know that executives are sometimes in a different situation than most of the rest of us, but it does seem that with people in technology, there is this tendency to work any and all hours, treating many situations as a crisis that has to be resolved immediately.
    I know it’s not just technology, doctors, lawyers, and other professions seem to attract and require long hours for success. Starting young, with no family, it’s easy to get sucked into long hours, trying to “outwork” the next guy and get ahead, get more experience, show that you are a great employee. And with that build up a good salary, get yourself set for life. I know I’ve often seen younger people try to get ahead at the expense of those with families because they’re willing to work more.
    Perhaps that’s just the nature of the beast, and I know that we do need people like that. Those that work the extra hours, that spend more time on problems, are more devoted, are often the ones that really can drive a business forward.
    But lots of people contribute to success and can make a difference. Not always with long hours. There are lots of people that put family and downtime at a higher priority than work and their careers. Not that they are less professional, or that they are less valuable, but they have their own agendas and their own lives to live. A good manager, a good leader, will work with those people’s strengths and use them to the best advantage of the company without requiring them to work crazy hours and be connected all the time. Something that would likely drive them away.
    Most professionals will stay late, pull the all-nighter, really help out when it’s needed in a crisis. Just don’t ask them to do it everyday.
    Steve Jones