Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Life Organization

    For years, those of us in technology have often worked outside of the core working hours for the rest of our organization. Whether this is being on-call, staying late, or coming in when asked. It’s not uncommon for many developers and Ops staff to work 60, 70, or more hours to get things built/deployed/supported for our customers. Often we do this while juggling lots of tasks on a to-do list. While many things might be in a ticketing system, often I find there are tasks on a project plan, requests from team members, and other items which don’t fit neatly into a ticket. I’m juggling more than one to-do list.

    The line between work and personal life has often been blurred for me. I’ve taken work calls on the golf course, in an airport, late at night in my bathroom, while shopping with my wife, even at kid’s sporting events. I regret not pushing back more to a few managers early in my career, but I also recognize that I (and many of you) are sometimes in poor cultural situations and we don’t have a choice if we want to keep employed.

    A quick example of why I feel this way, and perhaps why some of you do. I had a boss paging me on a Friday night while I was at a comedy club with my wife. I walked outside to take the call during a break and was told that I wasn’t responding quickly enough to the page. The emergency? A test of how quickly I’d respond on a Friday night. Note that we were not a 24×7 business. After pushing back Friday night that I wasn’t answering any more pages that weekend, I was asked to resign on Monday. I was happy to do so.

    With the pandemic and many of us data professionals working from home, the line between work and personal life has blurred further. In many cases, our work isn’t bound by a clock, and we might easily move some work to personal time to take personal time during working hours. Trading an hour after a kid’s bedtime to work so that you can lunch with them during the day seems like a good thing all around.

    However, what I’m wondering today is how we start to manage and juggle all our tasks when we might not easily be able to separate all our time into work time and personal time? We might have work deliverables, which are already on multiple to-do lists. Our partner might ask us to handle some items around the house, we have scheduled events for kids or friends, or even ourselves. Perhaps we volunteer at the user group, a church, or another place and we have various deliverable items we’ve agreed to handle. On top of the myriad of tasks, some of these repeat regularly and might not have due dates.

    How do you handle keeping track of all the things in your life?

    I’ll admit I don’t do this well. I put most things with specific deadlines on a calendar as meetings. These include speaking engagements, travel, meetings, doctor’s appointments, and coaching events. If I need prep time, I’ll often schedule a few earlier meetings to either prep or remind myself I have something coming.

    For other To-do items, I sometimes put them on a list, but I find the lists growing out of control, and I don’t have a good handle on how to think about tracking UTV oil changes, vacation planning, getting a package to my daughter, fixing a fence post at the ranch, reaching out to a UG to speak, and more. I don’t have a good way to track, visualize, prioritize (or re-prioritize) these items in a busy life. I usually struggle to juggle two calendars, work and personal, as it is. In some sense, life is somehow out of control and chaotic, and I tackle things when I have time and think about an item. Or I respond to a crisis.

    Someone asked me how I keep organized, and I realized I’m not very organized. I do a good job with many things, but there are plenty of tasks that aren’t well organized. Fortunately, there isn’t a lot of need to have these items tightly scheduled, and like technical debt, I can let some of them go for days or weeks (or months).

    If you have ideas, suggestions, or you suffer from the same issues, I’d love to know what works for you, or just that you feel things are out of control in your life.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Getting Started Speaking – #NewStarNovember

    My journey might be somewhat unusual, but perhaps not.

    I started writing articles on the Internet at a few different places before I started SQL Server Central. There were other authors online, and one of them was also in Colorado. We became friends, and a few years later (after SSC started), he reached out to me and asked me to come speak at the local user group, which he was running.

    I accepted and then had to come up with things to say. I dug into the topic he’d requested, practiced a little (not enough), and was lucky enough that the meeting was small. About ten of us sat around a conference table and I talked about some things, no Power Point, just discussing some data topic.

    It was a rather inauspicious start, and I don’t think I did a good job. I didn’t really look to speak at other places until my co-founders at SQL Server Central asked me to join them at a few talks in different places. I got a few positive reviews and then started to send in my own submissions. Things worked out well and took off from there.

    The last ten years I’ve often looked for authors or fellow professionals that have good ideas, ask interesting questions, or might impress me during a casual chat. I often ask them to submit something to a user group or SQL Saturday and consider speaking. I know it’s not for everyone, but if I could give it a try, they could.

    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.

  • Using Time Wisely

    As I get older, I realize more and more the value of time. I also realize this is a very limited quantity for me, it is getting more precious each day, and it is one of the more valuable assets I have. Time with my wife, time with my kids and my extended family is precious. Time for hobbies, work, and more is difficult to come by. Well, not work. I have to work, but it gets in the way of things at times.

    I’ve been learning to take time off from a busy life and enjoy the lack of trying to use that time. I find myself looking at email or checking some work item less and less on weekends and holidays. At least, I avoid working if I’ve had a productive week. Quite a bit of my work is independent and can be asynchronous with others. I might spend time during the week on something personal and then make-up that time on weekends. Often that’s the case when I am called to be the emergency ranch worker if someone else isn’t available.

    In trying to efficiently use time, I find myself often trying to think ahead and work on things well in advance of deadlines. I can procrastinate as much as others, but I tend to look forward a week or two all the time. This helps me avoid last-minute crunches, though sometimes I find myself stressed about multiple things that are due next week and the week after. I still have time management issues and stress, it’s just not for something due today or tomorrow.

    Usually.

    Like everyone else, I’m human. Despite my best intentions, I don’t always use time wisely. I find my moods vary throughout the month. My energy can peak or wane. My focus can be strong or weak. I’m fallible, and that in and of itself can bother me and affect my efforts. I know time is valuable, so when I haven’t had a productive day or gotten enough done, that can carry over into the next day. It might even carry over into my evening and distract me from personal things.

    As I try to be better at managing time, I am learning a few techniques. First, if I am productive, I usually lean into this. I can be very productive in a short time, so when I am in the zone and focused, I work hard. Even if this impacts something else. I might skip the gym one day, not cook dinner, and work late because when I am efficient with my time. When this happens, I’ve also learned to forgive myself for not following my plan. Sometimes my plans fall apart, even when I am the one that is often in control of the creation and execution of the daily plan.

    I’ve also learned to move away from difficult creative tasks. Whether that’s writing or assembling some code, when I don’t feel like doing that work, I move on to something else. Often administrative things, catching up on meeting recordings, or other somewhat low-focus tasks keep me using time wisely, even if less efficiently. At least I’m getting something done.

    Finally, I am lucky in that I can abandon work some days. Not any day, but sometimes things fall apart, and I accept that. I’ll handle something in my personal life, or go do something fun. I know this means I will need to make up the work, and let my wife know that my schedule has shifted, but it’s a way of remembering that time is valuable everywhere.

    Both for work and in my personal life. If I need to work on a Saturday, then I need to be sure I can recapture that time away from work somewhere else.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Evolving Yourself

    I ran across an interview with Big Boi, a music musician and producer. It’s an interesting look at someone that has had a lot of success and continues to work, mostly because he enjoys it. I’m sure the compensation matters somewhat, but that doesn’t appear to be his driving force. Whether you like his music, it’s an interesting look at someone who lives by his creativity.

    As I read through the interview, a lot of the themes and quotes could be attributed to software developers. We constantly need to learn more and evolve how we write code if we want to be more successful. We have ideas, and often the code we write today isn’t the way we’d write code to accomplish the same task last year. At least, I hope that we would learn, grow, and write new code.

    Certainly, many of us are compensated for what we know now, and often we can write the same code over and over to handle similar situations. This might be more true for people that work in Operations and manage systems more so than developers, but perhaps not. Even if we write similar code as in the past, we often do it more efficiently or incorporate small enhancements that help us. Perhaps better error handling, perhaps anticipating places where our code might fail or falter. These might be changes we hadn’t considered in the last version of this type of code.

    Not everyone wants to be a star or famous, whether a musician or software developer. Lots of us are happy to do a good job, leaning more heavily on past experience than evolving to tackle new challenges and produce a better end result. There is nothing wrong with having a career that accomplishes what is asked of us and nothing more.

    However, the world presents lots of opportunities if you look. Often those come from exploration, experimentation, and making an effort to grow in some way. Having hobby software projects might be akin to writing music and creating new “beats.” Learning from what others have done, studying their techniques and patterns can help us improve our own learning. The more I try to be creative, the more I understand that copying others is an important way to learn. From there I can start to adjust and alter the final product to be my own.

    Study your craft, improve what you know and learn more. Practice and improve, and you might be surprised where your career can go. Plus, it’s more interesting when you’re engaged. Of course, as noted at the end, learn to take breaks, relax, and enjoy life outside of your work. Finding a balance there is important to ensure you work to live, not the other way around.

    Steve Jones

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