Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • The Second Half of 2021

    July is starting, and with it we move to the second half of 2021, or H2 2021 for those of you that like the planning shorthand on roadmaps and project manager boards.

    The first half of 2021 has felt like a big of progress in the world, as we try to recover from the pandemic that froze time for most of 2020. I felt like most of last year was one grinding day after another, with little change, lots of limitations, and a constant “sameness” in my life from day to day. While I like routine, I also like some changes and little alterations that keep life interesting.

    I know the first quarter of this year felt like that as well, but slowly in the US things started to change. I got my vaccine does, something I didn’t expect until this month or later. The US and a few other countries have deployed so many vaccine doses that life has started to change and open a bit. I know many other countries aren’t as lucky, and I do hope that more assistance and sharing comes from the US and other privileged countries to ensure that we can end this pandemic.

    As things change, I’m more hopeful than I was six months ago that we will move towards a more normal way of life, albeit likely will still some changes. I know I see less masks in the US, but not zero. We still have precautions in many places, and most people seem willing to follow whatever rules a business wants. More offices are opening up, although partial remote work seems to be the accepted practice. I’ve seen a few music and other entertainment events start to take place, so maybe we’ll see more technical events. There were good decent number of people at DevConnections in Florida, so that was a hopeful sign as well.

    We are all emerging from the pandemic at different rates, with vastly different risk tolerances. Not only are countries taking different approaches, but even within a country like the US, the experience can vary. On a few recent trips, it seemed to me that we all need to be flexibly and respectful of others, willing to adapt to the situations as they occur.

    The second half of 2021 will be interesting, but likely very different from the last year. No matter where you are, and how you feel, I do hope that life improves and you can enjoy yourself, both at work and away from work.

    Steve Jones

  • Rejected for a Speaking Submission

    I got a speaking rejection today. Well, not today, but the day I wrote this.

    Not really a big deal, but it was interesting that the event organizer included a note that they had a lot of sessions, hard decisions, etc., and they hope I respect their decision on the schedule.

    I speak, or have spoke, a lot in my career. My speaking CV shows lots of events and sessions across the last decade. I had 20 sessions in 2020, a down year. The years from 2015-2020 have me delivering 197 sessions in those 6 years.

    This isn’t to brag, but show that I have had lots of success submitting to, and getting into many events across time. I’m semi-popular, though I honestly don’t think many people come to my sessions unless they like the topic.

    I don’t take rejections hard. It happens, and I know that my submission has to match up with what the organizers want from the event. Sometimes they might want me to speak because it helps with sponsorship or marketing, but mostly, they want sessions matching their idea of the event.

    I’m fine with that, and I wish them the best of luck with their event. As much as I might want to attend and speak somewhere, I wouldn’t complain because they made a different choice. That’s happened in the past, and it’s disappointing, but fine with me.

    I would love the chance to alter a session or change my submission to meet a conference agenda, but I also know this is asking a lot from organizers to work with speakers. A few of the larger conferences sometimes do this for certain people, but rarely for me.

    It’s hard to be rejected, whether for a speaking slot, a job, a date, a sports team, or anything else. It happens, however, and usually it’s not a personal decision. It’s often that the match isn’t there.

    If you get rejected, accept it, don’t complain, and submit to another event. Don’t get discouraged, but learn from it and move on.

    If you want feedback from submissions, drop me a note on Twitter. Happy to give my thoughts.

  • Titles and DevOps Confusion

    Alex Yates has become quite the DevOps consultant in the last few years. I used to work with Alex at Redgate before he left to start his own consulting firm. I hear nothing but good things about his work, and if you are looking for someone to help guide your database development team, he’d be a good choice.

    He wrote a piece on the Octopus Deploy blog about the title of DevOps Engineer and why that doesn’t quite make sense. He essentially notes that this doesn’t really describe what a person does and it might not be a good title. I tend to agree, since DevOps isn’t a thing, per se, but rather a set of guiding principles. While this might include building software, or deploying it, there are titles for those things (build engineer or release engineer). It could include Infrastructure-as-code, but that’s the domain of sysadmins.

    There are any number of titles that have come about in this business, and likely more being created all the time. If you have a new job, often you can finagle your way around some pay structures because after all, if you invented the term, the HR department doesn’t have a pay scale to limit you. I suspect that’s part of the reason someone started calling themselves a DevOps Engineer in the first place and got someone to hire them under that title.

    I suspect titles used to be more descriptive and important in the past, when we had fewer of them and the work that each of us did was more tightly scoped. Throughout my career, I’ve started to see more people doing more types of work all the time. Especially in technology where we usually do the work that needs to be done, often crossing over the duties between job titles when something is broken. Getting a system working often takes precedence over any claims of some task being “my work” or “your work.”

    Titles ought to be somewhat consistent, if for no other reason than to easily allow us to compare the work we do in different organizations and allow us to easily promote ourselves to a new employer. If every organization had different titles, we’d waste a lot of time trying to decide if we wanted a position, as would hiring managers trying to decide if we could do the work. Certainly the we find that a DBA or a Developer moving organizations might have some different tasks, but we have a general idea of what work they should be able to complete.

    I’ve never been too concerned about my titles, though I have worked to become “senior” at different employers. That’s usually a function of proving you can do the work well, across a period of time. Of course, if you get work done effectively and efficiently, the title likely doesn’t matter. Someone, likely many someones, will want to hire you.

    Steve Jones

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  • Goal Progress for May 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.

    Current Grade: C+

    Again, I’m falling behind and I’ve been a little busy in life, so not doing much outside of work. I read a little, and some SQL Saturday things, but not much coding. I did get some project work done, so it wasn’t horrible, but as I’m winding down volleyball season, that’s eaten up time.

    Reading

    The goal was 4 books (3 non-fiction, 1 tech). Here’s the current progress:

    • Non fiction – Project to Product – 47%
    • Career – TBD
    • Career – TBD
    • Technical – TBD

    Technical Skills

    I’m solving the Advent of Code three times.  I’m also studying for certification. In terms of work here, I did do some coding, but not enough. I’m behind here and #7 is daunting, which slowed me a bit. Same as last month, I tried #7, but got stuck and gave up.

    • 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

    I had a few projects for myself. Most of May was SQL Saturday stuff. So far things appear to be working fine. I did work on my PowerBI report a bit and it looks good so far.

    • SQL Saturday Inc – 90%
    • Support events: I spoke at another event and a user group
    • Speak at the 3 local user groups, at least one live presentation – 0%
    • 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 – 60%
    • 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.

    Overall, SQL Saturday is really set. Incorporated and starting to contact people. Updates here: blog.sqlsaturday.com