Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Importance of New Speakers–#NewStarNovember

    Many of us have learned how to research and get new information online. I certainly think the written word, whether from formal articles at places like SQL Server Central or from an individual’s blog, is very important to many of us looking to learn and grow. Or just solve problems at work. Sometimes we just need a little help understanding things.

    Many of us read a lot, but there is something special when we get together in groups at an event like a SQL Saturday or larger conference. There is energy and excitement, inspiration, and engagement that is hard to replicate online or in the written word. Especially during these times when the COVID-19 pandemic separated many of us from regular gatherings with others.

    We’ve had an amazing community, but lots of us are getting older. The people who taught me SQL Server, and many of whom have run user groups and organized SQL Saturdays will move on in their lives or retire. I’ve already seen plenty of people lose their energy or get busy with other parts of their lives during the pandemic.

    While we’ve had no shortage of speakers, I think we need to grow more for the future. I also want to get a more diverse group of speakers, not because we need more women or other minorities for some political purpose. I want more diversity of speakers because people with different experience and different frames of reference approach problems differently.

    I hope that many more of you consider giving a talk. I hope that some of those that do will love it and continue to do it more in the future. I’m also hoping we do see more SQL Saturday events come back in the future as these are a great way to encourage and support new speakers.

    Part of a Series of #NewStarNovember posts. If you want to help promote new speakers, consider writing a post as well. Some ideas at the New Stars of Data.

  • Losing Skills Because of Automation

    When I was younger, it seemed that everyone I worked with in technology knew how to build a computer. Most knew how to work with a BIOS, were comfortable with command lines, and could assemble complex compiler directives into a Make file. Over time, it seems many people, especially Windows and MacOS users, became focused on the things they needed for their job, lacking a lot of knowledge about how computers process instructions and the low-level operations they perform.

    There are plenty of very talented developers out there, and many great data modelers, but as I work with many of them that try to make the transition to DevOps, I see lots of uncertainty and tentative behavior. They often approach builds, automated tests, and deployments as though these are completely new skills they need to learn. New software that is foreign to them.

    I wonder if the increased use of automation will make this worse in the future? Already plenty of companies are looking to low-code and no-code solutions as a way to handle the lack of staff to perform development. Will that be exacerbated in the future as more and more automation is put in place that mocks up a shell (or more) of a project and handles work for the developers and even operations staff? Will they struggle to debug complex problems, which are the more likely problems to occur in modern software?

    There is an interesting article about surgeons that might be losing some skills with the advent of robots helping in surgery. While there are some worrisome aspects to this for me, as someone getting older and possibly needing medical care, I find that some of this is applicable to the world of software. How well do we apprentice people new to our environment and give them the chance to build new skills? Often we have senior people taking on interesting work, making data modeling decisions, troubleshooting issues and more. Do we allow more junior people the chance to get hands-on experience and perhaps take charge to lead others? To learn to actually be the one to make the decision?

    In a few places, I’ve seen senior people fixing bugs and junior people developing code. That seemed strange at first, until I realized that fixing problems is more than likely something I want the better developer dealing with, not the worse one. These don’t even have to be issues in production. In a DevOps world, I might have the senior people looking at and fixing the bugs that are caught in CI. While I appreciate giving someone the chance to correct their mistakes, I also think that a “refactoring” or improving of code might be something senior people are better positioned to tackle.

    Of course, I think rotating people in and out of roles, giving them a chance to experience difference sides of our industry, is a good idea. This might include learning how dev works (for Ops people) and how Ops works (for developers) can bring about empathy, understanding, some skills, but likely to create a better culture of collaboration. A tenet of DevOps.

    What skills are we worried about learning? Or losing? To what extent ought we try to ensure others grow wide and deeper outside of their core skills? I find this to be a area that the best DevOps companies do well. They have champions that can provide assistance, knowledge, and teaching, not just do the work. Companies that pretend to adopt DevOps aim for specialization, letting others do the work when they can. Over time, I think they’ll end up like some of today’s surgeons: only practicing their craft for the first time (with no training) when someone else isn’t available.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Deciding to Submit to Conferences–#NewStarNovember

    I wrote about getting started last week, with invitations from others. I think the first time I actually made my own submission was to the Indy Tech Fest in 2007. At the time, Andy Warren and I were in SQL Saturday discussions about how things had gone the year before and we wanted to get some info on other events. John Magnabosco invited us to submit something to their event, so both Andy and I did.

    It wasn’t much of a submission, and I think John just accepted what I sent without thinking about it. However, at the same time, SQL Saturday #7 – Orlando was coming up and Andy wanted me to come down. This was their second event, so I also prepared a career based submission based my life and sent that in.

    That first talk in Indy was OK, but nothing special. The one in Orlando, however, was very exciting for me. I was nervous, especially as the room filled up. Eventually there was standing room only, with some people sitting down around the sides of the classroom. The session was OK from my perspective, but people really enjoyed it, I had a lot of questions, and some good reviews.

    That was in 2008 and it got me a little excited. I gained confidence and I submitted that session to two events in 2009 and got accepted. Then in 2010, I expanded my reach, submitting to more events and getting in 10 talks at 7 events.

    Since then, I’ve worked on my abstracts and submissions, getting advice from others and trying different things. I’ve also spent time recording and watching myself, taking feedback, and practicing more to become a better public speaker.

    I still get nervous at times, but delivering a good talk and having people give me positive feedback is exciting each time it happens.

    Part of a Series of #NewStarNovember posts. If you want to help promote new speakers, consider writing a post as well. Some ideas at the New Stars of Data.

     

  • Goal Progress for Oct 2022

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

    Another month of busy stuff. Prepping for the Data Community Summit and 3 travel trips. Gone from home for 11 days, though I was working on some of those.

    However, I re-focused a bit on things I need to do for grow myself. I did that with an eye on these goals, pushing myself a touch.

    I also bolded the places where I’ve done something.

    Grade: C-

    Here are the goals:

    Work

    I didn’t do much here with demos. Things have been changing a lot with work, and I’ve delayed some of this until tech settles slightly. Still on my list to do more here in Nov/Dec. I did read a bit and am finding Do Hard Things fascinating.

    • DP-900 – Passed
    • DP-300
      – Stated studying, practice tests around 80% correct, need to schedule
    • Demo with SQL Server – 20% – dev db set up, started on pipeline
    • Demo with PostgreSQL – 20% – Dev db set up
    • Demo with MySQL – 0%
    • Thanks for the Feedback – 100% – HIGHLY Recommended
    • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – 100% – VERY interesting
    • Do Hard Things – 43% – HIGHLY RECOMMEND so far

    Personal

    I spent some time getting data into Google Sheets (sample data) and then hooking this to PBI Desktop. I haven’t tried to publish, but I managed to get this working-ish. Not sure if my auth will work in the cloud, but at least a few things are connected. I’m calling this 50% done.

    I am aiming to start getting this to some kids in Dec, once I can collect a few stats for this season.

    Added. Not tech, but I have been working on being a better volleyball coach. The book above is part of that, but I also signed up for some formal training. I started in Sept, but did get more coaching training done during my travels.

    • Link Google Sheets to Power BI – 50%
    • Create Report – 45%  – Minor updates to my report based on the Google Sheets data.
    • Create Dashboard – 30%  -Minor updates
    • Get people using it – 0%
    • Coaching Certification – 38%

    Community

    • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
      – 40%
      • CO Springs event set up and executed
      • Denver SQL Server SQL Saturday executed
    • Speak at 3 other community events (was user groups) outside of Colorado – 100%
      • Spoke at DBA Fundamentals group
      • Spoke at Toronto SSUG
      • Spoke at SQL Saturdays in Jacksonville, New Jersey, LA, Denver
        • Boston, Toronto in Oct
    • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
      – 100%

      • We have had 9 run this year and 9 more scheduled
      • In Oct, we had 5 events complete – Boston, Orlando, Memphis, Toronto, Richmond
    • Volunteer 4 days with Habitat – 0 days
      • Not happy about this still. I had hoped to go Sept 15, but they cancelled the build that day. Need to find another day, but it’s hard. They aren’t doing every Wed/Thur/fri, and travel is getting in the way.