Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Goal Progress for August 2021

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2021.

    I’m late in putting this out, but here goes.

    Current Grade: C-

    I left the grade the same, as I’ve made some progress, but not much. Time is running out, I’m getting busy, and I realize I didn’t do a good job really thinking of the workload this year. I’ll review this next month.

    Reading

    The goal was 4 books (3 non-fiction, 1 tech).  I finished one in early July, and found a few more to add to the list. I haven’t been sure what to read, but I found a few career books. Now I need to find a tech book for the second half of the year.

    Here’s the current progress:

    No book review, so that’s a failure.

    I am enjoying the GE book, as I thought I would work there at one point. It’s interesting, mostly from a business and finance perspective, but I like thinking about this from a business point of view.

    Technical Skills

    You can read about these goals in my yearly post (linked above), but for now, no change.

    That’s not great.

    Projects

    No real project work here in August. I did speak to a couple user groups, and I guess I helped them move forward with a hybrid meeting.  I’m calling the UG one half done, as one group is dead for now.

    • SQL Saturday Inc – 90%. We own the trademark!
    • Support events: Minor calls here.
    • Speak at the 3 local user groups, at least one live presentation – 50%
    • Help organize a Denver/Colorado event, live or virtual – 50% (more conversations)
    • Complete my Power BI Volleyball report – I know lots of kids will use this, so I need to get it done – 70%
    • SQL Memorial – 90% – I updated this, sadly, as someone passed. I need to move this to straight GitHub Pages and get the custom domain set.

  • Better SQL is a Good Career Investment

    Many of us reading this are data professionals, and we likely know quite a bit about SQL in general. We may use T-SQL, specifically, with SQL Server, but many of the skills we have would be portable to other dialects, such as those use in Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc. We’d certainly need to brush up on best practices and which language constructs are better suited for a specific platform, but most of the knowledge transfers.

    I ran across an interesting post on the value of SQL in a career, mostly for someone that might be moving into the data science or machine learning/AI type role. The post notes that lots of these job descriptions mention SQL, but focus quite a bit on R, Python, modeling, etc. In this case, SQL matters, and I’d agree with the author that it matters a lot. Most of the work in those fields is data prep, and SQL makes this much easier at scale than other languages.

    What about those of us that have been working with SQL Server (or some other platform) for awhile? Is learning more about SQL a good investment in our career? In most cases, does our boss even know if we have mediocre or amazing T-SQL skills? Do they care?

    They may not, but I think they should care, and more importantly, you may care. When you know more about the language and how to structure queries to solve problems, you’ll work quicker. You will write code that performs better, resulting in a lower workload on the instances. Your code will last longer, have fewer bugs, and co-workers will trust your work.

    The more you practice with code, the more you solve new problems and learn what works well and what doesn’t, the better you will be at your job.  The time you put into learning to write better queries will pay back with less stress and more time for other tasks. While your boss might not notice your code is better, they certainly will see you as more capable, relaxed, and trustworthy. All good impressions to make at review time.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Become a Beginner at Data Science with the WIT

    I’m a beginner in data science. I know a lot of general things about the field, but I’m really a beginner in most ways.

    This Friday, 20 Aug 2021, the data platform WIT group is holding a Beginner Data Science Day. This is a series of sessions all day, from 7:50am EDT until 3:50pm EDT, covering a number of data science topics.

    It’s free, and you can register to learn from Alpa Buddhabhatti, Steph Locke, Lindsey Allen, Pragati Jain, Donna Ellis Wilson, Hope Foley, and Anna Hoffman. There are a number of interesting topics, and I’m looking forward to attending a few.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #141–Finding a Balance

    tsqltuesdayThis is a great topic, and the host is a good friend, TJay Belt. We’ve met each other’s families and a lot of our conversations revolve around non-work stuff. I actually am friends on Facebook with TJay and follow his outdoor adventures on a weekly basis as he hikes, bikes, boats, and more.

    This month he asks us to write about Work/Life Balance, which is an important topic to me.

    Work From Home

    My first attempts to find balance started at the turn of the millennium. Actually in 1999, when I worked at a financial services company. We had instability in systems, to the point that I kept a pillow in my office as I spent more than a few nights there.

    After that I changed jobs a few times until I finally went to work for myself at SQLServerCentral. Since then, I’ve been at home for 18 years, including through this pandemic. A few things that I’ve learned in that time.

    Be Flexible

    The first time I was at home regularly was sharing an office with my wife, who had been telecommuting for a company for quite a few years. She was on the phone a lot, so I learned to keep headphones around, or be ready to grab my laptop and go work downstairs.

    I also learned that things come up at home. Maybe my wife was planning on getting kids and a meeting popped up, or vice versa. It was helpful to be flexible and ready to adapt.

    Set Some Rules

    When my wife started working from home, we had a 5yr old. He was pretty good with rules and learned to be quiet when the door was closed. A couple years later, our second was born, and that was a challenge. We had a nanny, and that was helpful, but we slowly had to  teach the 2nd (and 3rd) rules about noise and disturbances.

    On the plus side, we learned to be flexible and make time for kids. If they needed some attention and we weren’t busy, give it to them. Include them in breaks, walks, or head to school. I loved going to lunch with my kids when they were at school in 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade.

    Blending Chores

    One thing that helped me is that I blended work and life when at home. My boss or coworkers wouldn’t hesitate to ping me if they needed something at 6pm, or now, 7am, and that’s OK. However, I also know that doing laundry, or prepping something for dinner, or even cutting grass are things I might do as a break from work or while listening to a call.

    I mixed my life with work, taking advantage of the proximity. In an office, I might wander to the break room, or go talk to someone and do a little less work. Here, I try to get something done. I’ve taken an hour to change oil or put on winter tires in the middle of the day, and it sometimes lets me return to work refreshed.

    At the same time, if I have a bunch of chores, it’s much easier to go back to work after dinner for an hour if I need to get something done.

    Set Some Hours

    At first I tried to make a strict set of office hours and work from 8-4, like I was in office. That didn’t work for me. It felt like I was not taking advantage of being at home, around kids at times, and more.

    However, I also learned to get away. I am lucky in that I’ve often had a separate office, but I have had laptops or other devices around the house. I’ve learned not to check email or do work when I’m not working. If I use the computer to check something for life, I don’t spend time looking to see if I’ve missed something at work.

    Spoiler: I’ve always missed something and it’s almost always not that important.

    I do, however, make up time if I have had a bad week. When I struggle to work, it’s hard as a creative person. In an office, I’d listlessly sit at my desk and let time pass me by. Now I get up and go do something to help myself.

    I’ll then make up that time in the evening or on the weekend.

    Time Zones Suck

    I work for a UK company in Colorado. I’m GMT-7, which means I really have a few hours in the am when I can reach people in the UK and work together. I also get some people scheduling things at 7am, or even 6am, my time. Not often, but it happens. We have an office in CA, and I sometimes get messages around 6pm my time, just before someone there knocks off.

    I roll with this. My wife hasn’t been thrilled, but during the pandemic I’ve had a lot more 7am calls than ever before. A ton at 8am. I just deal with it because it’s not every day, and the flexibility is a trade off. I’ve done plenty of 9am yoga classes, taking an 8:00-8:50 call on the way and in the parking lot. They deal with it, so I can as well.

    Remember

    We work to live, not the other way around.