Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Reflections

    It’s nearing the end of the year, and usually this is a time where I look back at the current year and then forward to the new one. I’ll do some of that from a technical standpoint the last week of the year, but this week I wanted to do this from a personal standpoint.

    I read Jen McCown’s “Reflections Not Resolutions” recently and it stood out to me as a way to look back at my life and career. Jen takes a moment to think about how her life and career may have gone, without much judgment, but with some appreciation. A positive view.

    For me, I think professionally I turned inward a bit this year. Without events to go to, no travel, and struggles to cope at times, I could view my professional year like this:

    • I didn’t travel at all for work, but I did keep presenting at virtual events, and even learned to enjoy the experience, something I’ve disliked in the past.
    • I am amazed that I’ve written over 180 coping tips as part of the Redgate Community Circle, and used them to help me maintain productivity.
    • I struggled with maintaining connections with individuals and teams at Redgate, but I learned to appreciate how valuable those connections are. I am also looking forward to finding ways to improve this.

    Personally, I found some insightful things.

    • The only airplane trip I had this year was before the pandemic, getting family together for my wife’s birthday in Las Vegas. Despite the effort, hassles, and money, I see the value in celebrating events together
    • I learned to listen, sympathize, and allow my kids to struggle with virtual school while just enjoying the chance to be with them
    • Coaching is a real joy for me. Having the spring season cut short, and next year’s season move was a challenge, but I really have enjoyed the limited opportunities I had to work with 2 groups of young athletes.
    • I rode horses more this year than ever before, acquiring a small modicum of skill, but enjoying the time to be with my wife in nature.

    I’ll save my wishes for another day, but it was good for me to think about the losses, changes, gains, good times, and bad as I tried to put these thoughts down. I hope you take a few minutes and try it as well.

  • Practice Your Skills with the Advent of Code

    It’s that time of year, when the Advent of Code goes live. It started this week, with a few exercises released last week. You can still join in, and even go back and look at previous years (2019, 2018, 2017, 2016) and go through them. It’s a good exercise for your mind.

    To be fair, I’ve never completed the challenge in any year. Usually life gets in the way, and I get distracted. I’ve gotten through 15-20 in some years, but often the time required to work through the complex algorithms gets me a little discouraged. I’m not a 10x programmer, but I try.

    One thing I’ve done most years is to try and work through the problems in multiple languages. Typically my choices have been to try and solve each item three times, using T-SQL, Python, and PowerShell. I find it interesting to compare the languages and see how to handle the test data and also get the solution to work in each environment.

    If you want to stretch your programming mind and have some fun, give the challenge a try. Posting your solutions to a blog or even open a GitHub repo (or other VCS platform). It’s a good way to showcase your knowledge, at whatever level it is. You might even learn something if others comment on your solutions.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Seeking Growth

    The word of the day is na·ive·té:  lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.

    I used this word in a post, and wound up checking the spelling, since I constantly want to include an “i” instead of an “e” in middle of the word. As I saw the definition, I started to think about what this really means.

    We all experience this at times, after all, how can we gain experience except by working in a field where we lack it. The wisdom and judgment, hopefully come with experience, time, and (not too large) mistakes.

    The thing I’ve found often for myself is that I try to avoid situations where I am naive. I lean towards those places where I have some confidence, some wisdom, and experience. I work on my strengths most of the time. Certainly I’ve seen lots of people embrace that. We polish those things we enjoy, we have success with, and from which we get good feelings.

    When I coach, I see this often. Arguably, this is not the best use of most of your time. You ought to work on those things you don’t do well, those weak points, the places where you are naive. Improve the lower end, and the entire finished product is better.

    Or is it?

    I think you need a balance here. It pays to continue to refine you top skills, but it’s also good to grow and embrace things where you have little skill. Step into areas with the acceptance that you may make mistakes. Grow and learn, and embrace new ways or working, or even refinements to your skills.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Goal Progress–November 2020

    This is my report, which continues on from the Oct report. It’s getting near the end of the year, and I wanted to track things a little tighter, and maybe inspire myself to push.

    Rating so far: C-

    Reading Goals

    Here were my goals for the year.

    • 3 technical books
    • 2 non-technical books – done

    Books I’ve tackled:

    I’ve made progress here. I have completed my two non-technical books, and actually exceeded this. My focus moved a bit into the more business side of things, and so I’m on pace to complete 4 of these books.

    The tech books haven’t been as successful, as with my project work, I’ve ended up not being as focused as I’d like on my career, and more focused on tactical things that I need to work on for my job. I think I’ve learned some things, but not what I wanted.

    My push for December is to finish Team of Teams, get through Power BI Desktop, and then try to tackle one new tech book from either the list of them I have, or one I bought last winter and didn’t read.

    Project Goals

    Here were my project goals, working with software

    • A Power BI report that updates from a database
    • A mobile app reading data from somewhere
    • A website that showcases changes and data from a database.

    Ugh. I’m feeling bad here. I had planned on doing more PowerBI work after the PASS Summit, thinking I’d get some things out of the pre-con. I did, but not practical things, so I need to put time into building up a PowerBI report that I can use.

    I’ve waffled between one for the team I coach, which has little data, but would be helpful to the athletes, and a personal one. I’ve downloaded some data about my life, but I haven’t organized it into a database. I keep getting started with exercise data, Spotify data, travel data, etc., but not finishing.

    I’ve also avoided working on a website, and actually having to maintain it in some way. Not a good excuse. I think the mobile app is dead for this year. I don’t really have enough time to dig in here, at least, that’s my thought.

    The website, however, should be easier. I wanted to use an example from a book, so I should make some time each week, as a personal project, and actually build this out. That’s likely doable by Dec 21.