Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Goal Progress for Feb 2023

    The grade for February is also D. Details below, but just not making a lot of progress in these areas. So far I have:

    • Jan – D
    • Feb – D

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

    Reviewing Goals

    The various sections are listed below, and I’m giving a SMART grade based on what I listed. Have I gotten much done. January wasn’t too busy for me at work, but a little busy outside of work with coaching ramping up and my wife being down from work for a few weeks.

    I got a bit done, but not a lot.

    Reading

    Two books on the list: marketing and coaching. I haven’t picked a marketing book, but I picked Wolfpack for coaching. With one started and one not, this is an F.

    Progress:

    Career

    My goals:

    • Set up a tracking system based on the book for my efforts with customers
    • Track and calculate my scores to help me better approach how I work with customers.
    • Review this with my boss and with someone in sales

    Rating: B, I rated myself on a couple more calls and got feedback on a call from another person in the company. Not a ton of activity here, but I did make progress.

    Community

    • 2 speaking engagements for community (RMOUG Training Days complete. SQL Bits on my schedule)
    • Reach out to 10 SQL Sat groups that did not run an event in 2022 and motivate them for 2023. This should be at least 2 emails to each person/group.
    • Reach out to all 2022 organizers and ask about plans for 2023
    • Start coding a tool for converting schedules to HTML.
    • Hold office hours once in Q1
    • Send 3 monthly SQL Saturday updates to the community

    One speaking engagement complete, one more on the schedule. So far doing well here. A few submissions in for later in the year.

    I have been reaching out to other groups with limited success. I have emails out to 10 groups with limited success. It does look like there will be at least 3 events in 2022 from places that didn’t run one in 2022. A B here.

    I have reached out to 2022 organizers, most seem ready to do a 2023 event if they can find space.

    Personal

    My goals:

    • Use my Power BI report for stats
    • Update the Power BI report based on feedback from athletes
    • Build 6 wooden coasters – I haven’t made enough time for my hobby here, so I’m going to start small. We need more coasters (as noticed over the holidays), so I want to build 6. Same style, different.

    Same rating of a C here, as I’ve updated the report a little, I continue to use it though I need to fix a few calculations. No woodwork done with a busy life and mostly continued cold temps.

  • Coaching the Digital Transformation

    One of the challenges for me when working with customers is getting them to think about how to change their software process. Often they want to solve their problems, but no one wants to alter the way they work. Whether that’s the protocol for capturing code or managing servers, it seems that changing the way we work is hard for many people. They want everyone else to change. Or they want a magic tool that solves problems without them changing the way they work.

    Unfortunately, I’m not a magician.

    This is a common problem in many organizations. We want to be more efficient and effective, but actually changing our habits and culture is hard. Management should lead the charge, and they want to, but they can struggle with how to do this. Often they focus on changing technology, and not actually improving the way their company works.

    There’s an interesting article on digital transformations and whether the efforts are worth the investment.  In many companies, someone makes a good argument for a course of action or a project and then drives it. Others participate, but often a person pushes this forward, usually because they have some stake in the outcome. A bonus, a reputation, or just pride, whatever matters to them becomes the reason for continuing, even if there isn’t enough value from the effort. This can be because of an institutional culture that wants to finish projects, wants to find some success in a course of action. Whether a human or an organization, pride and inertia often keep us moving forward, often without any other support or analysis of how well things are progressing.

    Effective dashboards enable everyone to see current status and progress, and to make better course corrections, helping to move from a command-and-control model to a coach-and-communication orientation. Many organizations have adopted KPIs, dashboards, and other ways to analyze parts of the business, but this isn’t always something we do well in software development. We tend to look at metrics that management cares about, and on which we are measured, rather than metrics that might help us improve how we work.

    Part of digitally transforming a business is also transforming how technology is used. Part of that is us, as technologists, learning to be better and more effective. Whether this is in development or operations, we can often improve how we function. We need coaching, and in many orgs, that coaching has to come from within, from the people in a team asking others to do better. And to allow others to ask us to do better .

    Coaching is often teaching from a different perspective. It’s helping someone see what they don’t see themselves. This might be new knowledge, but many times it’s just reminding the individual of something they know, but aren’t doing. As we are asked to do more, be open to coaching and be willing to help coach others. Become a role model that helps transform how your organization uses technology.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Outsourcing Operations

    When I first started working in technology in the 90s, it was a time of outsourcing lots of work overseas. Many large companies followed the wave of manufacturing in the 70s and 80s by many companies, including lots of semi-conductor manufacturers. I watched as a number of jobs moved overseas, though fortunately not mine.

    In the early 2000s, I worked at a company as a manager, where I was involved in some of the discussions about outsourcing a lot of our IT operations to another company. It was a scary time for my friends, as the move would have left a lot of them looking for work. The CIO tried to say that many would get jobs with the outsourcing supplier, but couldn’t say how many.

    I commented in a meeting that it would have to be less than 100% of people for there to be any profit. That statement ensured I needed to look for a new position, which I happily did. The company didn’t outsource at that point, but being involved in the discussions helped me realize how different management and workers often view the business of IT.

    There was an article on when to outsource, which talks about the benefits and drawbacks. For most of the benefits, the reasons why you do this are very similar to why you might move infrastructure to the cloud. There is speed and flexibility, as well as simpler internal operations, when another organization handles those functions. The downsides are that your organization needs to manage another, and you might not have the control you desire.

    The same thing you could say about the cloud.

    The costs could be lower, with outsourcing or the cloud, if you can reduce unnecessary resources. That can be hard to do internally, especially as you hire staff. Each additional person might be necessary in the short term, but if when they are no longer producing a positive ROI, it can be hard to get rid of them. Consequently, with an outsourced company, often contracts dictate the staffing levels, and those contracts aren’t amended or renegotiated often. That could leave you with lacking services you need or paying for those you don’t.

    I don’t know that it’s easy to decide when to outsource. My view has often been to keep some level of in-house staff, but augment them with some sort of managed service provider that can provide additional resources when you get busy. Whether this is a DBA service, like https://dallasdbas.com/, or a development effort, like Crafting Bytes, adding staff in limited quantities is often the best way to move forward.

    These smaller groups also provide opportunities for some of you that might want to find a different type of employment arrangement. Usually more flexibility, a warm, friendly atmosphere, and the chance to grow with a small business.

    Outsourcing might sound like a bad idea to many corporate employees, but it does provide opportunities for you. Keep working on your skills, network with others, showcase some knowledge with a blog/article/speaking slot, and you might hedge your bets in the event your employer makes a decision about outsourcing that doesn’t work for you.

    Steve Jones

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

  • The Senior Advantage

    The senior advantage means more to me all the time, though often I feel there are more disadvantages to being around longer than advantages. Getting older is hard, especially physically, and I struggle with that. Having more wisdom, more tolerance, and more patience, are good things, but I’m not sure I would consciously make that trade.

    In a business, senior often equates to more experience and time working on systems. Sometimes it means more skill as well, but usually, the internal knowledge of how our systems work inside of our environment is more valuable, even though it can be hard to get management to realize that fact.

    The last two years have had many technology workers at home, doing the same work they did in an office. Over the last year, there has been contention between some managers that want people to return to the office and many workers that want to remain remote. While lots of people don’t have a choice, there are some who do, and they are often the senior, skilled people. Lots of them quit, which creates a challenge for managers to fill their slots.

    One would think that management would work to retain and keep more employees, but in some cases, the response is to find ways to make it easier to hire new people. One positive thing that happened is the relaxation of the rule for tech workers to have a college degree. That’s good for many people that are talented and don’t want to spend tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars on a degree. A little disheartening to me and others who think that this further devalues the experience of current employees.

    There are some great employers out there, as well as some great managers that care about their staff. My company is one of them, and I appreciate how we run the business effectively while treating employees fairly. However, there is no shortage of poor employers who do not care much about their people, their training (or re-skilling), or whether staff leaves. They will continue to lean on whoever is still employed while replacing staff with cheaper, and less knowledgeable, new hires.

    In thirty years, the one thing I’ve learned is that I need to be responsible for my own career. That means learning often, working on my tech skills, polishing soft skills, and burning no bridges. I need to be prepared and ensure I have opportunities and choices in the future.

    That’s my senior advantage.

    Steve Jones

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