Tag: career

In this article on flexible working plans, number four makes a good point. What work is suited for live, in-person interaction? Which aspects of your job benefit from seeing others face-to-face?

Today I’m asking data professionals to think about it. I know we can do all our jobs remotely, after all, many of us have been doing that for at least a couple of years, and some for far longer. I can’t remember the last time I actually needed to look at a physical server I wrote code for? Probably when I self-hosted SQL Server Central back in 2002-2003 and went to reboot a machine or add a disk drive. Even then, those weren’t DBA or developer jobs, but really Operations hardware tasks.

These days many companies are trying to decide how to handle office and workers. I don’t know I’ve seen anyone come up with a good plan other than leaving everyone remote and figure out how to make things work. Every day in the office doesn’t seem great, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a good company hybrid plan. I see some groups deciding to meet once a week or once a month and that works well, but I think that’s more a reason to have some social time than it is a need for productivity.

Not that allocating some amount of time specifically to bond socially is a bad idea. I am in favor of this. We used to do this when we were in offices every day, so why not schedule this periodically now?

While you can do your job remotely, I wonder if there are not some aspects of development or operations that are better done in person. Or maybe, sometimes in-person. I can see brainstorming and planning as being smoother in person. Being focused and closely collaborating always feel stilted and confusing online. I prefer being in person. Perhaps pair programming or a similar arrangement is better in person at times. I know we can share a screen and code together, but doing this in the same room periodically builds a bond that I think would make remote sessions more productive.

The only other thing that I think matters is cross-team bonding, perhaps doing some debate and discussion of how teams work together or how their work affects others is better done in person. Perhaps not every day/week/month but once a quarter or a few times a year I can see this building better relationships between people, much like in-person pair programming.

If you have other ideas or experiences, let us know. If you think there isn’t a reason to ever go in the office, that’s something worth sharing as well.

Steve Jones

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

An engineer at Google recently claimed that one of the AI chatbots might have become sentient. Great headlines, and whether true or not, this might bring some notoriety to the engineer.. It certainly did, and it also resulted in the engineer being suspended from his job. It’s entirely possible this person might be fired. Perhaps I’m cynical, but I think the more talented he is, the more likely he keeps his job. Less talented, likely fired. This might not be fair, but I am a realist. The more value someone brings, the more tolerance for missteps.

I give a talk on branding, and one of the things I do before giving you practical tips is to remind you to be cautious. A brand can be a very positive asset, but it can be a detriment as well. One of my stories is about Mark Jen, who Google fired after he blogged a few things about his employment. He was highly recruited and worked at Google for only a few days.

At one point I worked in a public company, in a large Operations group of about 20 people. We were listening to the earnings call one quarter when Security staff walked up and escorted a person out of the building that was sitting 2 or 3 cubicles away from me. They security people then returned to box up the employee’s belongings once he was gone. Apparently our boss told us this person had posted some of our earnings results online while the call was going on. They were posted literally minutes (20 or 30) before the numbers were announced, however, that’s illegal and a violation of securities rules.

Most of us know not to post passwords, IP addresses, or other sensitive infrastructure data on the Internet. Most of us should know not to post data, especially on a site like SQL Server Central. If we are looking for help with an issue, we need to mock up a situation. We might not be able to post code, and we might not be able to write about the specifics of our job in our blog. That might vary by company, and we need to understand what the rules are.

I’ve never had an issue with this in over 25 years of blogging and asking/answering questions on forums., but I’ve followed one rule. It’s the same rule I heard someone say was their internal guidance for blogging.

Be Smart.

Don’t post anything that might cause an issue. Whether you are in a forum or on your blog. Even inside your company, some information might be sensitive and compartmentalized. If you have a doubt, ask someone. It’s that simple. Just ask someone who can give you a second opinion.

I do this regularly with SQL Server information and Microsoft. There are times that I am unsure of something is under an NDA, so I ask. This includes words, pictures, and code. I do the same thing at Redgate, as sometimes things on our internal network might not be publicly released yet, so I just ask. On my personal accounts, I might ask my wife if I can post something before I do it. I’ve learned it’s better to ask permission in these cases.

I haven’t always done that in my job. Sometimes rebooting a system or making a minor change without following every rule, but those have been cases where I had a very strong understanding of the situation and the implications of my actions. It’s not something I do lightly, and it’s rare, but there are times to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

However when dealing with public disclosure of anything, I think you are smarter to ask permission first.

Steve Jones

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