Tag: career

I saw a comic from Kendra Little recently, which reminded me of my first SQL Server crisis. I got hired as a contractor to support a large Novell network. In my first chance to work with SQL Server, a new database server running SQL Server 4.2 on OS/2 1.2 was installed on our network to support a new data entry application. This was mandated by a government legal change on Jan 1.

As the junior person, I was supporting the installation by corporate developers on Dec 31 at 5 p.m. We finished getting things set up, ate dinner, and then I watched the developers do some smoke testing and prepping the application and database servers for go-live at midnight. It was exciting to me as a young professional to be part of this deployment.

At around 12:30 a.m., as I was getting ready to leave, the system locked up. We found the database server unresponsive, so we rebooted it. This continued to happen, with my eventually paging my boss and having him come in the early morning. We worked through the night and into the next day. I didn’t leave until early morning on Jan 2nd, with the need to return that night. We had an overloaded, unstable system that required us to work long hours babysitting the server. It was worse for our clients, who had to manually record data and then try to perform data entry during slow times to catch up the system. I was a hero that January, as were my co-workers, with all of us logging around 100 hours each week that month.

It was a rough time, though I learned a lot about SQL Server, OS/2, and eventually, Windows NT. I also learned about poor software testing, especially load evaluation. I learned how easy it was to overwork yourself, and how heroics are needed but can’t be business as usual. Being a regular hero isn’t something that is conducive to being effective or efficient with your staff or your business. I saw this later when I came to Denver and a poorly designed system that needed patches or reboots every week overloaded me and my staff.

Much of what we do as developers or operational staff is to support others. We provide them with systems to get their work done, whatever that work might be. We work hard, and we find solutions to challenges, but we ought to not only provide stability to customers, we need to do that over time. That means that we need to have a staff that we can count on over time. If we overload them or struggle to retain them because of burnout, we can’t easily do that. We also can’t get new, perhaps more important work done if we are constantly dealing with the same issues.

I’ve seen management do this, and they end up with staff that isn’t efficient, can’t tackle new work, or turn over constantly. Some of you might know of a company like this in your area where they are always hiring because they aren’t a place anyone wants to work. Someone will work there because they need a job, but that company is never very efficient. Eventually, they’ll struggle with their competition and lose business. Or maybe not, maybe they’ll linger on with lots of missed opportunities.

I’ve also seen IT professionals live like this and thrive on emergency situations. If you’ve read The Phoenix Project, you’re familiar with Brent, who is the go-to person for anything. I’ve been that person, and I’ve seen that person in different organizations. While I always appreciate them, I’m often frustrated because they become too busy to handle my requests and there is a constant stream of requests because things aren’t being fixed or solved. It’s never a good situation.

We need to be heroes at times, but those ought to be emergencies, and they ought to be rare. Most IT professionals (and others) I know will work longer or harder when needed, but the need can’t be constant or even regular. It should be an unusual situation. If it’s not, then something has to change, at least for me. Either the technology or the staff. As I gained experience and savvy, this has usually meant I go find another job because the situation has become “emergencies are status quo.”

Life’s too short to live like that.

Steve Jones

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

I enjoyed my time in college, and I learned a great deal. While I do think that the time helped me grow, I also recognize that I was always a good student and the cost of my working through that degree was far below what today’s degrees cost at many universities (even accounting for inflation). What’s more, I worked most of the time I was at university to pay for my living expenses.

These days I am torn on the value of a degree, especially when the total cost can easily exceed USD$50,000. Even more concerning is the fact that many people have to drop out with substantial debt and no degree. That’s the worst of both worlds. While it’s easy to point the finger at people for not finishing or working harder, it ignores the challenges of the real world, which can throw curve balls at all of us.

For a lot of my college time, I had to work to support myself because I didn’t have enough scholarship funding, and I was worried about loans. I was worried about post-college, and in the 80s, I was able to work 30+ hours a week and earn enough to pay rent and buy food. Later in my time, I was able to secure an internship that paid me, which was nice. Then I wasn’t spending 80+ hours a week trying to learn and support myself.

I saw a note recently about degree apprenticeships from Purple Frog Systems. The idea is that someone is part-time in university while working for an employer. This might require more than 40 hours a week of combined work, but I like the idea of someone learning about both the academic and practical views of an industry and getting mentorship from both co-workers and academics.

While many of us who work for an organization might get tuition assistance, it’s not always easy to work out school and work. Managers may or may not work with you, and there isn’t really continuous support to help you complete your degree. The quality of your manager often determines if this works. However, the bigger issue is that many people struggle to find jobs in the first place and not many organizations I’ve worked for have any programs to find people who might be suited for an apprenticeship program.

I don’t that our industry, or many industries, really need to require degrees. That being said, I do think there are things universities teach well, and they give a good perspective on a variety of topics. Employers can benefit from motivated individuals who learn their business, learn different skills in school, and bring about energy and fresh perspectives. Plus, employers learn how to train and grow new people at a lower cost. We all struggle to hire well and train people to be effective quickly. Working with interns or apprentices is a good way to embed regular mentorship and training into the culture of your company. That’s something everyone can benefit from.

I hope to see more apprenticeships in the future, not just in technology (or marketing as in the post), but in a variety of industries. I don’t know if we will, but I do think this might help us get better at finding and training new staff.

Steve Jones

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

I find there to be a lot of value in actively managing your career. I’ve been a technical individual contributor, a manager, a business owner, and a cross-team supporter in my various positions. Each one has challenges, and in each case, I’ve found ways to build a better career position that not only suits me but makes my life more enjoyable. I hope to inspire others to do the same, and this is part of a series of editorials based on advice I’ve read from Raylene Yung (Facebook and Stripe) on your engineering career.

One of the first things I read was that engineers ought to aim to be valuable, but not critical. This is similar to the advice from others that good tech staff try to work themselves out of a job by documenting and sharing everything. Not everyone is a great, or even good, engineer, so I understand why it can be scary to share knowledge. However, many of us find ourselves doing something that few, or no one else, does anyway.

Viewing this as being valuable is helpful. However, if you are critical and the only one that can do something, you might find yourself on-call, or under a lot of pressure from management when something goes wrong. Instead, if you have the detailed knowledge, but you’ve shared that in some way, you can be the consultant or advisor rather than the person everyone expects to be doing the work in a crisis. This is a mistake I’ve made many times in my career.

You want to provide value in some way to your organization, but not be a single point of failure. In the short term, your manager might feel you can’t be replaced, but often I listen to managers talking about their plans to find a way to remove those critical people who don’t want to share their knowledge from that position. Usually, removal also is accompanied by termination.

Good engineers find ways to be valuable, partially by gathering tribal knowledge, partially by developing solutions, and partially by sharing with others. Document, explain, train, and assist others, but ensure that if you want to go on vacation, sleep all night, or celebrate life away from work, you aren’t the critical person during a crisis or even normal, daily work.

Steve Jones

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