Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Value of Doing Something

    I live on a working horse ranch. My wife boards, trains, and trims horses and has employees. Occasionally I have to help out with chores, or more often, fixing things. I was talking with a coworker recently and showing some pictures. He was asking why I do things like tap a bolt instead of hiring someone to do it.

    I caught this excerpt from a book on cooking, which got me thinking. I don’t love the flow here, as it wanders between cooking, economics, politics, social justice, and more. However, the core ideas of specialization and taking on a task was what I got out of the piece.

    I work for a software company, and certainly, I make much more doing that than I save by cooking a meal or fixing a bolt. I could hire someone at much less than my hourly rate to do the work. Except, I don’t get paid more for working more. Maybe if I do more sales and get a quota, but for now an extra hour of work hasn’t helped me.

    Then there’s the satisfaction of getting something done. I talk and write and move bits around all day; nothing that has a tangible result. It can be satisfying but in a very different way than cooking or physically finishing a task. I actually like getting my hands dirty and seeing the results of my work. Seeing a new fence go up, a tree come down, or a repaired bolt brings about pride. I feel good when my family appreciates a tasty recipe and everyone cleans their plates. It’s a nice challenge.

    At the same time, routine maintenance, like changing oil, sometimes feels like doing an expense report. Needs to be done, it helps me, but there’s nothing very exciting about it.

    In the era of specialization, or even the era of automation and AI tools, it might seem that we don’t need to learn or work on anything outside of our area of expertise. I think it’s important to practice, learn, and use a variety of different skills. Even if I don’t need to write PoSh often, it is helpful to sometimes tackle work that needs doing. Each bit of new knowledge brings new understanding and appreciation for the work others do.

    It also helps me gain confidence in my ability to learn and use new technologies should the requirement arise. This has also served me in past jobs where I can step in and help others or even tackle a job when they aren’t available. This is something that I find far too many people struggling with. Either because of a lack of confidence or not having enough general skills that help them troubleshoot, build, or even support the vastly changing environments in which we work.

    Doing something old, new, challenging, or easy is good for all of us. Try something new, while you also appreciate and use the skills you have. Believe in your ability to learn and prove it to yourself on a regular basis.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Volunteering at Work: Teaching Others

    I give a few talks on career topics, and one of these is Branding Yourself for a Dream Job. In the talk, I sometimes tell a story in the volunteering section. I wanted to summarize that here, as a way to get you to think how you can do more at work and grow your brand substantially.

    A Young Worker

    I was a newly hired worker on a network team at a power plant. We supported everything from the computer network to servers to desktops to sensor devices. There were hundreds of people, over 1000 nodes, and just 5 of us. Needless to say we were busy, we had to think on our feet, and we built a lot of protocols to help us.

    We were the help desk and fielded a lot of calls from people, handling everything from password resets to reinstalling Windows to helping people work with various applications. I created a bunch of simple utilities (exes and batch scripts) that we kept on a share to help us solve common problems quickly. That was very helpful because we had a lot of repeated work.

    There was one person, I’ll call her Sarah, that called us regularly. She was an assistant in another department dealing with supplies of some sort. She had a lot of basic questions on using WordPerfect (remember this? ) and Lotus 1-2-3, often moving information to and from places and producing reports for her boss.

    We got the same questions over and over again, at least weekly if not daily. It got to the point where my entire team was so annoyed that we’d dodge her calls. This was 1991 and we had caller ID on the internal system. When she called, we’d pick up the call and immediately hand the phone to a coworker to deal with.

    This wasn’t the only person that created stress for our team, but this was the worst one. We were annoyed, and she was annoyed with us. Our feelings showed through and we gave her the minimum level of service, as slow as we could.

    Making a Difference

    I was as annoyed as everyone, but like with my utilities, I was looking for a way to make our team work more smoothly.

    At the time Windows was new and many people were intimidated with it. We had plenty of software that actually ran in a command window, like WordPerfect, while others ran as real windows (Lotus 1-2-3).

    I decided to try and fix things. I walked over to a remote building where Sarah worked. I’ve been there before to help with something, and likely my annoyance showed as she wasn’t thrilled to have me at her desk unannounced.

    I told her that I wanted to try and help her with some of the challenges with her position. I emphasized that a lot of people were struggling with these applications and I was trying to find ways to help them. I offered to bring her lunch and work through some things. At the time we were a remote station, and there was a Subway franchise that came in each day to do lunch. I said I’d buy sandwiches for a week.

    She agreed and I took her order. That simple empathy helped disarm her anger at the computer and my group.

    I bought lunch the next day and went over to Sarah’s desk. I watched her work, saw struggles, and then worked out some things to help her, created some notes she could keep around, and helped educate her.

    It took a week or two, but at the end of the time, she could self-service a lot of her issues without calling us.

    The Outcome

    First, I reduced the workload on my group. Everyone appreciated less work, and more importantly, less annoying work.

    Second, I empowered Sarah. She was able to get more work done, more quickly and felt more capable in her position. Her boss was happier with her, and I felt great.

    Lastly, because she controlled supplies, I was able to get floppy disks and other small things easily when I called her. My boss couldn’t because she was annoyed with the way he and others had treated her.

    The Investment

    This was an investment for both of us. We both invested time, giving up our lunch hours. I think this was a week or two, but not longer.  I also invested a bit of money, perhaps $5-6 a day back then, to provide lunch. Not nothing, but not a lot.

    However, the investment payed off. I kept a note of this and reminded my boss at my review. I got a raise that year, not solely on this, but since I was competing with others for money, this was something that helped me stand out.

    This also got me a good review from Sarah’s boss, which the overall manager of the station heard. That opened up opportunities for me as a developer position in the corporate headquarters opened up and I got recommendations from all three managers.

    Look for Opportunities

    These days many of us work remotely part of the time. We may not see our coworkers, and perhaps lunch isn’t easy, but we could invest time to solve something or train someone. Either online, written, or in person. A little investment to make your job (or others’) easier can pay off for the company.

    It can also pay off for your personally if you document this and bring it up with your boss. It’s also a great story for interviews.

    This is extra work. This is unpaid work. However, many people in many fields invest in their learning and advancement. From mechanics to doctors, people give up some of their time to grow their careers. You can do this as well.

  • Planning for a Bad Day

    Are you ready to get a new job? I’m not talking about you deciding you want a new job and working towards that goal, but rather getting surprised by a layoff or termination today. If your boss called you into his/her office in the next 10 minutes and told you that you were being terminated today, are you ready for that? Kendra Little wrote a nice post recently asking who might be prepared.

    Most of us aren’t. In fact, in my branding presentation, one of my slides has a screenshot of a post from LinkedIn. A friend noted that they walked into work and found out his company had been purchased. It wasn’t a good day because they were also notified they were being laid off, hence the post on LinkedIn letting others know of their need to find one.

    The modern work world, especially for technology workers, isn’t stable and certain. While we have lots of positives in our jobs (work environment, low physical needs, remote possibilities, etc.), many of those can be detractions. Outsourcing IT jobs is something many companies do, and whether it’s a good idea for the company or not, it’s a reality. We also have lots of acquisitions in different spaces, and when sets of IT groups come together, there isn’t always the need to keep everyone employed. Even with double the workload, many in management would rather save money and give more responsibility to fewer people.

    Side note, this is one reason a good knowledge of DevOps, ITOps, GitOps, etc. is valuable for your career. When a manager is trying to decide who to keep, those with these skills may stand out.

    Unless you are ready to retire and merely padding your assets, you ought to have a plan for changing jobs. Even if you like your job, circumstances might force that upon you and when lots of people are scrambling for new jobs, competition can be fierce. Like Kendra, I don’t know you need a detailed plan, but documenting some skills growth and keeping your resume or CV up to date is always a good idea. I recommend everyone touch their resume every quarter. At least spend 5 minutes looking over it and thinking about it.

    Kendra has other suggestions, and I like them. In fact, I’m looking to think about a few of these. Not that I want another job, but you never know what might happen, and I’m not that close to retirement. Close, but not close enough. Certainly thinking through a few options at a high level is something I want to do with my wife.

    And make sure my resume is up to date.

    Steve Jones

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

  • The Best Career Advice

    I don’t know that I have the best advice, but this month’s T-SQL Tuesday is asking for people to share what they think is the best advice they’ve been given or have for you. I wrote my own piece, where I noted that learning to say “No” was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Not that I say no to everything, but I do default to no, especially when someone asks for me to tackle something new.

    Actually, it’s slightly more nuanced than that. As I’ve gotten used to my workload, I will say yes to things, and certainly, I’m more likely to commit to one-off things. It’s the longer-term, larger things that I don’t want to agree to do unless I’m sure I can deliver.

    There are lots of other things people wrote. Deb said that you should trust your instincts and realize you can contribute, even if you’re new. Hugo notes the user is often right. Mala is more cautious with work and practices discretion. Rob got the advice to take it slow, learn his job, and figure out what he likes and doesn’t.

    There are lots of other advice, from Pragati telling you to get a mentor to Mikey saying you should find a job you love. If you check out the comments in the invitation above, you’ll see plenty more responses, many with interesting back stories and more details. If you only read through one set of T-SQL Tuesday responses, this might be the one to pick.

    I’m a big fan of actively managing your career. Make the decisions that move in the direction that matters to you. As noted in a few posts, we spend a lot of our lives at work. At times more than we spend with family, so be sure you have a career you enjoy.

    This takes work, but it’s an investment that can repay itself over many years. Both in financial rewards and less stress on a regular basis. Every job is a job some days, but when you enjoy your work, it doesn’t feel like work.

    Steve Jones