Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • A New Language

    In my life, I’ve mostly dealt with people that speak English. I tried Latin in high school and Japanese in university, but I wouldn’t say I learned a lot. This past year I’ve been working on Japanese (konichi wa) and French (Bonjour) on a regular basis, but I’m still fairly uni-lingual. At least compared to many of the people I’ve met in my travels that speak multiple languages. I’m mostly just trying to read a bit, and that’s quite hard.

    In my career, I haven’t met many technologists that only know one programming language. Even the SQL professionals know a little C# or a scripting language. Quite a few people know a bit about many languages, and some are very competent. I used to think it would be good to master one language before moving on, but I find that trying different languages can give you an appreciation for others, or even an appreciation for your primary one. Comparing and contrasting code might even help you learn faster.

    These days many of us are being asked to handle more tasks, and we may be required to support or work with code that others have written. As a result, I think it makes some sense to have a basic knowledge of other languages that you might encounter. I can often look at code in different languages and get an idea of what’s happening. I might even think about fixing simple bugs if needed.

    I saw a Data Exposed edition recently with Hamish Watson that was titled KQL: The Next Query Language You Need to Learn. I had heard of it, but never used it. After watching the episode I played with it a little. While I don’t know how important it is, I do appreciate I may run into it and will likely spend a small amount of time writing some queries and familiarizing myself with some of the common aggregates and other types of structures.

    Today I’m curious, which do you think you would learn as a next language? Not that you’d give up your current work in T-SQL or something else, but what else might be good for your career, or perhaps be exciting to you personally?

    I’ve enjoyed doing some work in Python and PowerShell over the last year, and time spent in R before that helped me appreciate those languages. There are places I’d choose to work in those over T-SQL, especially for data not already in a SQL Server.

    Take a moment and leave a comment: what new language would you like to learn and why?

    Steve Jones

     

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

  • Goals for 2022

    I set goals at the beginning of last year, and I’m doing the something similar this year.

    Last year I didn’t do well in my goals. I definitely had the resolution failure, where I ended up being more excited in Q1 than Q2 or Q3 and felt rushed to do more in Q4. This year, I want to re-examine how I do things a bit more.

    There are a few areas I want to build some competence in for future work, but I’m less worried about the ambitious aspect of improving myself for another job. I don’t want another job, at least not another full-time job I need for the income. I’m mid 50s, looking to retirement, and I want Redgate to be my last employer.

    Therefore, my goals are a mix of a few things that matter for Redgate and a couple personal ones that pique my interest.

    I also know that life and work will change, and my interests will rise and fall. As a result, I’m going to leave space to adjust and add goals in June. Therefore, I’m tackling less, but in these areas:

    • Work-Related
    • Fun and Personal
    • Community

    I do want these to be measurable, so I need specific goals I can check off as done or not, rather than a subjective measure.

    Work-Related

    Two big items here: DevOps and certification. I started the certification goal last year and did nothing until someone at work asked me to take a test for Partner status.

    Certification first. I need to do these items:

    I can measure those by pass or fail.

    I also need to expand my demo work a bit and include some other databases. As Redgate evolves, what I really want is a good DevOps demo that includes at least 3 different database platforms and allows me to demo things from our various offerings. I’d like to be able to demo something and have it go live during a talk or class. As a result, I’m aiming to build a DevOps flow, from a git repo to multiple database platforms to publishing something that can be viewed live. That likely means some sort of website that reads from a DB and displays information on a page. I need to include these things by year end:

    • repository with multiple folders for platforms
    • test platforms (likely containers) for 3 data stores
    • CI processes (3 ) that build from my repo.
    • A live website that reads from the dbs (3 pages or 3 sites), updating from real time deployments.

    Those would be good measurements. I also need to complete two books. The feedback book from last year and Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, which is used inside Redgate.

    Fun and Personal

    I had hoped the Advent of Code would capture my attention for more time, but as the puzzles get harder, and life outside of work is busy, this isn’t enough of a priority. I’ve been watching our Redgate developers work the 2021 puzzles at night, posting thoughts and struggles after work. Clearly I’m not enough of a developer to do this outside of work.

    I am looking to combine some of the things I do already outside of work with those career related items. I have a Google Sheet for stats that I share, and a PowerBI Desktop report. I need to get the data in a database and make it available for others. I want to play with some of the Azure stuff, so I’m looking to set up more of a “DevOps” style flow with functions and apps that takes data from my sheet and puts it into an Azure database. Then I can more easily publish this into PowerBI for a live report.

    The measurement here would be that I can update an XLS or db and have a Power BI report or a new XLS automatically generated.

    Community

    I am a supporter of the community where I can. I am hoping to see more events and do more speaking in 2022. I know that depends on how the pandemic goes, but I’m aiming to tackle these things:

    • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
    • Speak at 3 other user groups outside of Colorado
    • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
    • Volunteer more with Habitat – I want to get out to at least 4 build days.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #146–Changing Preconceptions

    tsqltuesdayIt’s the start of a new year, and the first T-SQL Tuesday is from Andy Yun. I’ve known Andy a long time and this is his third time hosting with a creative prompt for us all to consider.

    I really like this one as it could be taken as a technical or a non-technical prompt. What did you think was one way and you learned it was another way. Always good to stop and double check that your view is actually representing what you think.

    We all do this in our views of life as well as work, and it can be hard to change what or how we think. This is especially true for many of my customers, as I find them wanting to adopt DevOps, but not really wanting to change.

    I’ll tackle this one in a couple ways, one technical and one non-technical.

    Separate Accounts for Each Instance

    For a long time, I always used separate domain accounts for each SQL Server service. Even in a large environment, with hundreds of instances, I did the work (or have junior DBAs do it) to ensure that each service was account separated. This was important because I’ve had change passwords and other issues break services in the past. None of the incidents seemed worth saving a bit of time to set up separate accounts.

    Over time, and as SQL Server evolved, Group Managed Service Accounts came into being. I resisted using these at first, but over time I’ve realized that these are valuable and provide security as well as ease of administration. If I went back to managing servers, even single ones, I’d likely look to ensure that gMSA was the standard.

    Take Feedback as An Opportunity

    I’ve struggled with having someone criticize me for my work. I’ve even struggled when they suggest something else, bristling at the idea that I wasn’t doing something well. Often I was successful and doing something well, but there might be a better way.

    Across time, and age, I’ve learned to appreciate other points of view and not become defensive to feedback. Instead, I’ve started to look at other views as a chance to learn or grow, or even just try something. I can still reject the advice or suggestion, but I ought to consider it.

    I’ve started to adopt the “strong opinions, loosely held” philosophy at work.

    Note, I’m trying to do this in my personal life, but I still very much suck at this.

  • What Were Your 2021 Wins

    LinkedIn sent me a prompt just before Christmas that asked me to write a post on my 2021 wins, using the #2021wins hashtag. I thought it was a neat idea, and I blogged on this topic before I left for my final vacation. I primarily had work items in there, though a couple of work-related things. To me, while 2021 was disappointing in some ways, it was still a great year for me in many ways, and I’ve tried to keep that in mind. Not focus on things that didn’t go well but those that did.

    It’s the first week of the new year, and many of you are likely starting to look forward at work and in your career. You might have made resolutions, or maybe you are just re-focusing after the holidays. Either way, on this Friday I’d like you to think back to last year, focusing on how your career might have changed throughout the second year of the COVID pandemic.

    What was a career win for you in 2021?

    That’s the question. It could be a change that you made, a skill you learned, a project you completed, maybe an award. Perhaps it was something that happened and you just experienced. Maybe an event or talk that inspired you or changed the outlook on something.

    I’d like to think that all of you had at least one good thing happen in your career last year. Take a minute and share in your win and congratulate others for theirs.

    Steve Jones

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