Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Burning Out

    I haven’t burned out, but I’ve been close. There was a time a few years back when I was working a lot, traveling a lot, trying to watch activities with my kids, making time for my wife, and more. While I have had stretches were I feel like that (like the last month), usually I have calm periods that balance my out. Across about 18 months, I realized I hadn’t gotten enough breaks and worked with my boss to lighten the load.

    During the last 18 months under the pandemic, I’ve had a few busy times, and some stress, but overall, I’ve managed to cope well. My coping tips have helped, and I’ve made a conscious effort to demand less of myself and slow down. It helps that I work for a UK company that values balance and tries to ensure employees work hard, but not too hard. While I  sometimes struggle and get very busy, I do get to balance that out and relax at times.

    That hasn’t been the case for everyone this past year. There is a blog about developer burnout, noting that a lot of developers shouldered a larger workload during the pandemic. I think the move to remote work is stressful, and it can be hard to adjust to expectations, or know what we should expect. There is often a feeling when you work remotely that you need to do more, because no one else can see how hard you are working. There is also a temptation to take some of the time that you used to spend commuting and get a few “extra” things done each day.

    Many managers also haven’t known how to adapt to remote work and can add to stress with either more work, higher expectations, or a lack of awareness of how employees feel. They may unknowingly, or purposefully, make things worse. Add to all of this the challenges of managing kids, juggling noise in your workspace, and finding space to work with others in the house. It’s no wonder many people felt some burnout in the last year.

    The article gives some stages of burnout, a way to measure yourself, and some strategies for coping. While a lot of these may feel like common sense, when we are overwhelmed and busy, we often forget common sense. It’s easy to dismiss the effectiveness of simple strategies. It’s also easy to underestimate just how much better you will feel by taking even small steps to combat burnout. Even things you think might make a tiny difference can help.

    I know there are some very poor work environments and awful managers. If you are in these situations, I’d urge you to look hard to find a new position somewhere, anywhere. Even another bad job will give you a change of scenery and can help in the short term. Even in the poor jobs, however, I’ve often had others that felt the same way in my team or in a related team. Talking, sharing, and bonding with others in a similar situation can help, if for no other reason than you can share, vent, and empathize with each other.

    Burnout is a real problem among technology workers. It’s not a personal failure, but it is something that you have to recognize in your situation. It is also important to make changes and find ways to reduce the stress of your situation over time. There aren’t usually quick fixes, but there are ways to change your life to better handle the situation.

    If you are struggling, please reach out to friends, family, or others and get help. Things can get better.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Growing and Keeping Up

    I keep busy. My wife and I tend to be type-A people, tackling lots of things and keeping very busy. We work hard, and often, a lot. Our spare time in the winter is spent with second jobs, coaching youth volleyball. My kids think that we can be a little unbalanced at times, not taking enough time off or getting away from work. I agree. They are better balanced in life than my wife and I.

    The thing I tell me self is that keeping busy and being driven has helped me have a great life and a great career. It’s also created lots of stress, perhaps more than I should have. I thought about this balance as I was watching I Can’t Keep Up!, Catherine Wilhelmsen’s keynote from Data Saturday Oslo. It’s a great talk and worth your time to watch. She tells you that while you can do anything, or almost anything, that you want, it’s not necessarily easy. You have to work, but you have to find some balance.

    The world of technology has grown at a crazy pace during my life. As I’ve watched the growth of cloud capabilities from vendors, I’ve felt the same things Catherine has. I can’t keep up, I don’t have time to keep up, and everyone likely knows more than me about many things.

    All of those things are mostly true.

    I can’t keep up, I don’t really have time to try, and certainly, there are plenty of people who know more than me about any particular thing. However, I should learn to accept those things, not worry about them.

    It’s easy to get stressed or feel discouraged at your lack of being an expert in your field. There is good advice in the talk, but the thing that I try to remind myself of often is that I know more than last year. I am good at some things, and I continue to improve my skills in some areas. Most importantly, I can prioritize, pick a few things, and then work on those across time, which is enough to help me succeed.

    I have learned to set a few reminders each month and focus at those times on something that I want or need to learn. I also allow myself some free time to improve myself in a general way, without an agenda. I struggle with distractions, but I do try to remind myself to focus when I have time. The key in technology is learn how to learn. Don’t worry about picking the perfect technology or being as efficient as you can. Just learn something and get comfortable with regularly learning about new skills. Even if you choose something you never use later, you are building the skill and habit of learning.

    It’s good to challenge yourself, but be realistic, and more importantly, find balance. If you are starting out in your career, without many external obligations, you may have more time to work on your career, but you also have more to learn. Be patient with yourself and learn to enjoy life outside of your career field, even if you spend lots of hours trying to grow your career skills.

    If you are older, perhaps you pick something related to your work, or perhaps you pick something that interests you. Either way, exercising your brain and gaining new skills, however slight, is helpful.

    Always remember, we work to live, not the other way around.

    Steve Jones

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

  • What Do You Want to Know Before Negotiating Salary?

    Many of us are employed, and while we might have a salary review each year, we often don’t get to negotiate much about the amount. We might periodically ask for a raise of some sort, but what should we ask for? Most of us have accepted employment at some point, responding to the offer of a job. Do we know what a fair salary is for our position, in our location, with our experience?

    Human Resources and Personnel departments use surveys and information to set ranges of pay for different positions. They come to a salary negotiation with some idea of the market, which is a generalization of what an employee is worth. This could be quite different than what you specifically feel you should be paid. However, do you have any rationale for your demands?

    Every year Brent Ozar runs a salary survey. He gets lots of responses and does a better job of this than most other places I’ve seen. Including me. I’ve done this a few times, but I’d rather just let Brent run this and view his data. This year he asks you to look at the list of questions and give feedback.

    I think Brent has a good list of questions, but perhaps there is something you wish you’d have known before you last negotiated salary. Is there something that might help you decide if an offer (or raise) is fair? Perhaps you want to add a checklist of responsibilities (BI, DBA, dev, etc.).

    Maybe you think it would be interesting to know if there is on call work, or even the number of hours your employer expects you to work? Given the pandemic I might ask if the company is allowing remote work or expecting people to come back to an office. Some people have suggested these in the comments, but read Brent’s answers. He’s looking for a indicators or features that affect salary, not necessarily how you feel about the environment. I added one about non-monetary compensation like training, but feel free to comment on other suggestions as well.

    What’s really important here is that you take the survey when it comes out. Even if you don’t like the questions, getting this data compiled for our industry helps us all, so keep an eye out for the survey and fill it out to the best of your ability. Then get the results when they are published and use them to try and evaluate if you’re being compensated fairly.

    Steve Jones

  • Do You Have a Talent Gap?

    I have seen articles over the years that talk about a talent gap in companies, similar to this one. For a long time early in my career, it seemed anyone that went through a boot camp could get a job, and we had lots of unqualified people earning lots of money. I know I’ve run into my share of paper-CNE’s, paper-MCSE’s, and more in my career that took advantage of that talent gap. Over time it seemed that many companies stopped relying on certifications in hiring, but this didn’t seem to help us find more qualified workers. We either were short of staff or still had plenty of people that couldn’t do the work that well.

    During the last year, I have seen lots of articles about companies that are struggling to find workers at all levels, even though the pandemic has broadened the search space. Companies learned to work remotely and many started to hire people in different cities. I know a lot of people that changed jobs in the last year. Many landing a remote position at a company they would rarely if ever, drive to visit. I still hope the pandemic repercussions will include hiring more people in different locations, though that may not be the case for all organizations. Many managers seem to assume they will bring everyone back into an office at some point.

    However, the talent gap is real, and it’s existed for years. There has been a concern for many years from managers about their staff having the proper skills for the future. I hear constantly from customers that they don’t have enough trained people that understand some of the modern tools available. This is especially true for those technologies that are DevOps related. This includes version control, which I think is a basic skill. There are plenty of people that don’t understand the basics of writing code and committing it in Git.

    I do think some talent gap of this is the result of technology changing so fast, with new options and products to learn. Many of us feel we can’t ever keep up. I know I do, though I think that’s both true and not something to worry about. If you don’t use tools at work, you might think there’s no point in learning about them. If you are excited about technology, you can still be intimidated by all the choices out there. Do you look at Jenkins or Azure DevOps? We email scripts around, so is there a point to git? I even feel that way with Redgate products. They update every week or two and I’m always behind in trying to learn about them and decide if I need to worry about a specific feature.

    I think the talent gap is real, but I also think that learning to be comfortable with being a little uncomfortable is important. It’s unlikely you will be an expert with a tool anytime soon, so learn to be productive and effective. Maybe, more importantly, learn to learn. Spend time going through a tutorial or tackling a walk-through and get some comfort with technology. If you do need to learn more, then you can ask for resources.

    The talent gap is real for many of us, and certainly for many organizations. That’s not likely to change, so learning to adapt to the situation is probably best for all of us.

    Steve Jones

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