Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • 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.

  • Do as I say, not as I do

    A common saying from parents, teachers, and many managers, is that you should follow their instructions and not necessarily their behavior. This is a very human thing to do, with many of us struggling to follow the behavior that we ourselves want. Instead, we follow the vagaries of our moods and desires. We do this even as we tell others to do things that we don’t bother to do.

    It’s not just human behavior, but it applies to how many companies deal with their customers. Microsoft talks often about taking advantage of new features in code and using the platform to solve problems. They dislike adding simple “syntactic sugar” (like a numbers table), and instead prefer you build the code to handle some of these simple tasks.

    However, they don’t really follow this advice, as Andy Mallon showed with a recent post on why not to use a couple of their “recommended” stored procedures. They’re not well written for modern code, they have limitations (or bugs), and could be considered a security risk.

    To be fair, I know that changing code in something that works is always dicey, but at the very least, moving from varchar() to nvarchar() shouldn’t break anything. If there are edge cases, then write some tests and rebuild the code to work better. Maybe, more importantly, these procedures ought to model good code, as Microsoft would recommend to their customers.

    There are a lot of places where different products at Microsoft might not use SQL Server well, and I understand. These might be software developers that don’t know a lot about how to perform good data modeling or even how to take advantage of SQL Server code. However, at a company with the resources Microsoft has, I’d expect them to form teams to handle these tasks and then review and suggest changes to software like Dynamics, Sharepoint, etc. Even if they can’t use the latest features in the SQL Server codebase, they ought to model good practices for all versions.

    For many of us, we might act similarly inside a company. Often we write code out of habit, and perhaps, to expeditiously get work completed, even when we know better. Using SELECT *, leaving out error handling, and more are habits that far too many of us embrace, far too often.

    Start making some changes today. If you know there are better practices you should follow, then take the few extra moments to implement them. If you don’t know of good practices, start compiling a list, asking questions, even post an idea or question in the discussion for this editorial. We all could write better code, and that starts with us actually making an effort to model the behavior we might preach to others.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Goal Progress for July 2021

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

    As I look at goal progress for 2021, I’m going to follow a similar pattern as last year. I’ll give myself a current grade and report on overall progress in of the areas where I set goals.

    This is a two month update. I forgot to publish June, so here I am including both months together.

    Current Grade: C

    June was vacation month. I spent a few days in the Florida Keys, and then another week in Orlando coaching. In between, I was trying to get work done. Not as much progress as I’d like, especially as a lot of non-work time was spent catching up on chores around the ranch. An unusual level of things to fix.

    July was slightly better, but not a lot. I ended up with a couple trips away from home, lots of chores around the ranch, a business trip, and a bit of stress from a home renovation. As a result, I read a bit but fiction. I also tried to take a bit more time away from the computer.

    In any case, I’m still not pleased with progress for the most part, but I am learning that maintaining steady progress across the year is hard, even with relatively few goals..

    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:

    I started with Lights Out as I think it’s easier to read.

    I’ll put a short review of the Project to Product book out in August month as well.

    Technical Skills

    I’m solving the Advent of Code three times.  I’m also studying for certification.

    In terms of work here, I did little with vacations. I should have spent a little time on Azure, but really, I didn’t do much. A little, but not much. For coding, I’ve just hadn’t put in much time. I started on day 7, but got a little stuck, and hadn’t completed the challenge in SQL, which is where I started. I should have started with Python or PoSH, as this is a recursion issue. I also hate recursion, and I’ve been avoiding this.

    For certifications, I started watching some videos, but I find myself getting too distracted with other things. So I’ve not been focused on more programming, which is really a state of where I am in my career. I should have done less here goal wise.

    Update:

    • Certification –  AZ-900 – 5%
    • Certification – DP-200 – 0%
    • Skills – T-SQL – 2020 Advent of Code – 5/25
    • Skills – Python – 2020 Advent of Code – 6/25
    • Skills – PowerShell – 2020 Advent of Code – 5/25
    • Skills – TBD

    Projects

    Little things are moving forward. I did send a note to the 2 groups near me offering to speak. The other one appears to have stopped meeting during the pandemic. I have scheduled a talk at one for August. Not sure about the second.

    I did a little more work on my volleyball report, and started to structure the data store in Excel better to ensure I can easily publish this early next season for the next team. I also started to write about how I’m doing this, so I think this is further along than it was before.

    • SQL Saturday Inc – 90%
    • Support events: I spoke at another event and a couple user groups
    • Speak at the 3 local user groups, at least one live presentation – 15%
    • Help organize a Denver/Colorado event, live or virtual – 20% (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.