Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Fixing Impostor Syndrome

    I think that most of us feel like an impostor at some time in our lives.  We will get asked to do something we’ve never done, with others expressing confidence in us. We may tackle the task, or we may not. We may succeed or we may not In any of those cases, we may still feel like an impostor, someone that isn’t really qualified to do this thing. Many of us continue to feel this way in our careers, suffering from impostor’s syndrome.

    While I know that I’m good at my job, good at working with SQL Server and teaching others to do so, I still suffer from impostor syndrome at times. There are periods where my mind wonders if I’ve just gotten lucky and slipped through some evaluation process. Maybe my knowledge hasn’t been well tested. Will someone like my boss, or their boss, question my skills at some point and get rid of me? Will I be able to find another job if that happens? Can I really compete with others out there? This isn’t a constant or regular feeling, but I do experience it at times.

    I work with technology, helping customers better manage their database software. However, I also work in marketing, which is a completely different kind of job. Someone in my company posted an article about impostor syndrome for marketing, which I found fascinating. This could be written for technologists or, perhaps, any other profession. Read through it and think about a few things that I saw in the article.

    If you feel you don’t have the knowledge you need, you’re not alone. I think that’s very true in technology, where it feels that the pace of change from vendors, from peers, and what you might read in the media (including here at SQL Server Central) can make anyone feel as if they don’t know as much as others. I do try to acknowledge to myself that others feel as I though. It’s slightly comforting, but not a lot. Especially when I converse with some amazing experts. Discussing execution plans with Grant or T-SQL with Jeff or HA with Allan can cause me to question my knowledge and success.

    The second thing to think about is how poor the state of the industry can be. Whether this is the skills of others or the architecture of software, systems, or databases. How often have you seen software that’s been purchased or deployed and you question the decisions that got it to this state. Are you amazed at how many problems you see? Do you start to question the skills of others? I know at SQL Server Central we try to help others, but I can also be amazed at the lack of knowledge out there about what I’d consider to be simple topics. At the same time, I recognize others may be in a different place in their journey. Having empathy and compassion keep me answering questions. The need to keep answering them reminds me that I do know quite a few things.

    Lastly, education helps. I constantly experiment and build demos of different things. Often these are learning experiments. I don’t know that I become an expert in many of them, but learning more about how something works, or increasing the depth of knowledge in some area I’ve worked help me to build confidence to tackle the challenges I face (or my customers face).

    The article notes that marketing is an imprecise science. I think software can be that way as well, despite the growing number of “engineers” in our industry. Like marketing, there are no shortage of people who think they know it all, or use boisterous, blustery, loud discussion to convince others that they do. Even hen their choices or design might be suspect or perhaps their approach is outdated. One of the tenets of DevOps is that we continuously learn and experiment. I try to apply that to my own knowledge, and find it can help me feel like less of an impostor some days.

    Not all, but there’s always tomorrow, and I usually find that these feelings pass with time, especially when I apply myself and continue to grown and learn.

    Steve Jones

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

  • DBA to Data Engineer

    When I was starting my career, I expected to be a programmer. That’s what people who wrote the software were called. At some point they adopted “developer” instead, shunning the programmer label. Now I see software engineers has replaced developer in many organizations. I’m not sure the job is much different than it was in 1990, other than the specific technologies used.

    The DBA used to do a lot of system administration-type work on database instances. Check logs, set security, run backups, and maybe look at some queries. However, in many cases, their work was limited to things running inside the database software, or the database software itself (patches, related configuration for the host OS, etc.). I saw recently that DBAs have started to adopt the data (or database) engineer label as a new job title. Presumably, this pays more because, well, it sounds like it should. Data Professional sounds more comprehensive and skilled than Database Administrator. Database Engineer sounds better than both.

    Is it better? I do think that many people working with databases are being asked to learn and do more (and new) tasks as a part of their daily work. We often need to support and maintain a wider variety of different systems. If it’s the same platform, then we often support more versions, especially with the 2-3 year cycle of releases of SQL Server. However, we may also need to learn a bit about other platforms, like Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. We can add the ability to work with and deploy new languages, like R or Python, and that might help us land a new position. Certainly understanding cloud database platforms and options, their deployment, and monitoring can be useful in asking for a raise or interviewing for a new position. Scripting, PowerShell, and DevOps are good skills to showcase as well. All of those might be in a Database Engineer description.

    Why bother adding these skills? Especially if you have a good job and are comfortable. You never know when things will change. Your company might downsize, as Ken’s did. They might get bought by another organization and your job could change (or disappear). It’s possible that your family situation or some life event might make you look for a different job. There are lots of possible reasons why you need to change your current employment.

    If you want a better job, perhaps more compensation, better hours, remote work, less late night calls, or something else, then it’s not a bad idea to beef up your skills. Learn to automate things in a better way, which might make your current job easier. Experiment in the cloud, maybe do a small PoC of how you might move or deploy a current workload into a VM, a PaaS service, or even a new platform. Can you migrate from one database platform to another? That’s a useful skill to showcase.

    I have found that a lot of the really good jobs are a hodge-podge of different skills. Being adaptable, comfortable learning, and trying to grow are important skills to demonstrate. Even more important, learning to talk smoothly with others about why you made a decision or recommend something is a key skill to getting hired.

    Sprucing up your titles can help, especially with HR where new titles often mean new salary ranges. SRE Engineers were only at Google at one point and their high salaries set a bar. Engineer, Scientist, Architect, these are all better than Administrator. Boost your skills (tech and soft) and you might find a new position that is even better than the one you have today with potentially a new title.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Look Beyond What You See

    One of the sales managers at Redgate Software posted an origin story about how he came to work at Redgate Software. It’s an interesting story, and while I don’t work in sales or have the same origin story, I don’t know that I could have seen the place I’m in now early in my career.

    When I saw the video, it made me think of this movie scene, where Rafiki asks us to look beyond what we see. I think this is a hard thing for many of us, especially when many of us have been leaning on our skills in the past. What we know and what we are good at doing has led us to this place. Picking a new direction, or thinking in a new way might be hard.

    For lots of us, we might be concerned about the cloud, and what we should learn or where this might lead us.  Azure or AWS? Some might be concerned about moving into management. Will I be good at it? Will it be a better career for me? Others can wonder about specific technologies. Power BI or Tableau?

    I wouldn’t recommend a specific thing for anyone without knowing more about their situation, but I do advise people to be open to opportunities, investigate and ask questions, and embrace possibilities. Look for what might be slightly out of focus or uncomfortable for you. Look beyond what you see and consider what you haven’t seen before.

    My origin story is getting an electrical engineering internship. Finding that the group needed help with Lotus 1-2-3 macros. Realizing I liked working with computers more than walking around a power plant and working with electricians to follow designs. I then realized that I didn’t love programming or network support, but I saw an opportunity in 1991 to work with SQL Server, and I took it. I looked far beyond what I had thought about as a teenager, as a college student, and even as a young person in my career. I embraced an opportunity to write an article and that led me to SQL Server Central and now Redgate Software.

    Think about the directions you could take in any situation and open your eyes to the possibilities. You might find an opportunity that changes your life.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Being Reasonable

    The last two years have changed the way many of us work in technology. The pandemic allowed many of us to work remotely, a challenge that many companies are struggling with. Or perhaps, management is struggling with and employees appreciate. In any case, no matter what your situation, the way we work has changed.

    The change wasn’t easy at times, and even though many people appreciated the extra time in their day from not commuting to work, they often had other challenges. Co-existing with others in a residence, finding a place to work that allows concentration, and even learning how to separate work from home life. These have been issues for many data professionals and other technologists. Even if we’ve had an easy time adapting, not all of our colleagues have felt the same way.

    One of the core values that we have at Redgate Software is being reasonable. It’s a somewhat amorphous value that I didn’t know how to interpret or act on at first. Our former CEO repeated this often in updates, to the point where I have heard other management and employees use the verbiage in meetings on a regular basis.

    I think as a company, we’ve learned how to be reasonable with others. We don’t overly rely on policies or rules to guide us in how we accomplish work and interact with each other. Instead, we use judgment, and managers are flexible in their interactions with employees. As a Type-A, driven American, it has sometimes felt strange to not have everyone trying to outwork everyone else. It was an adjustment for me.

    The idea is not that we do little work or avoid work, but that we avoid working too much. It’s not about the hours anyone puts in, it’s the contribution they make to their department. No one watches the parking lot to see who’s in the office or who’s logged in. Instead, we expect people to manage themselves, meet their commitments, and be accountable for the tasks they’ve been assigned. At the same time, we cover for each other and support the team. We’ve had people out sick, out for maternity/paternity leave, or struggle with other life-altering issues. The rest of their team will help cover for someone, knowing they will do the same for us.

    We treat each other as humans, have empathy for others, and act towards others as we would want to be treated. At the same time, we have goals and missions to drive us forward to build a better company. We find balance in how we do this, and it’s worked very well for over 20 years. In many ways, it’s how I try to live life. There are good and bad days. There are busy ones, some hectic, chaotic times, but also slower times when I can recover and recharge.

    It is really hard to describe what being reasonable means, and at times I am not quite sure how to act in a situation, but I try to put myself in someone else’s shoes, see their point of view, and then decide how I would want to be treated. That usually guides me as to how I should proceed. It’s worked well for 15 years for me and I look forward to being reasonable for the next 15.

    Steve Jones

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