Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Debating #PASSSummit Pre Cons for Monday

    I’ll be speaking at the PASS Summit in 2020, and I have some things to prepare for that. I get a conference admission for the event and access for a year, so I’m not too pressed to spend 3 days sitting in live sessions.

    However, I can always use training. I also want to support PASS this year during a pandemic, life and business altering event.

    I’d like to take a pre-con, at least one on Monday. This post looks at my choices for Monday. It’s a little stream of consciousness, trying to think through a few things.

    Tl;dr – I choose Building Power BI Reports that Communicate Insights and Engage People from Meagan Longoria. If you want to know more about her class, check out her promotional video.

    The Monday List

    When I look at the page of pre-cons available, there are a lot of great choices for Monday. The list is:

    My first thoughts is they’re all friends. Maybe a strange thing, but I’ve shared an adult drink with all these people, some of them many times. I’ve had one on one conversations, met many of their partners, and even been in some of their houses.

    They are also outstanding in their fields. All of them could teach me quite a bit, even in areas where I have some knowledge. As much as I’m overjoyed to see Rob every chance I get, I think that an intro to PoSh is out. The Edge stuff from Kevin is interesting, but way outside of my area. I’m not sure how helpful this is personally or professional for my current role, so I’ll skip this. I’ve seen Chris talk Python, and it’s great. I like his style and approach, and I recommend this one, but I’ve dabbled a bunch in Python and in Data Science. I keep working through a few resources in this area at times, so I’ll skip this.

    Everything else is interesting in some way. I’ve never taken a full class from Itzik, though I have enjoyed a number of sessions. It is tempting to try and learn a few more complex T-SQL queries from him live. It’s different than reading his work, and it might give me ideas for work. Worth considering.

    Learning more about Azure is good. I’ve been wanting to study for the Azure fundamentals exam, even saved this blog from SSC today:https://mostafaelmasry.com/2020/08/22/azure-dp-900-data-fundamental-certification-perpetration/ . I worry slightly this might be too general and full of practical stuff that would be good to know, but might not help me with the exam. At the same time, this is likely good info that might help me write more questions and content. I’m moving this slightly down my list.

    Perf tuning is always good. I need to write more content here, as I think we’re lacking some at SSC, but I don’t have a lot of desire to focus here right now. I think this will be like some of the Brent Ozar classes I did, which were good, and I learned things, but likely this will repeat some stuff I know and just haven’t kept organized in my head. I love Pinal, and I’ve heard this is a good session (he’s done it before), but I’m going to skip it.

    I don’t really run servers, but doing things to help your virtual environments run well is always good to learn. I’ve only lightly worked with the admin side of VMWare and Hyper-V. I can’t quite decide if this helps me personally or professionally. I think it would provide me with some knowledge and content, but I think it’s less likely than some other things, so I’m going to pass.

    Power BI is fascinating to me. I think it’s a transformational tool for many companies that deploys interactive visualizations. I learned quite a bit while working my way through the Stairway series on SSC, but I know I barely know anything. This one is as tempting as Itziks.

    That leaves Ben’s Kubernetes session. Ultimately, I do think the future of SQL Server and lots of data platforms will be containers, and K8s. However, I don’t think many of us want to know the ins and outs of K8s. We want AWS, Azure, or someone else to run most aspects of the platforms, and while I’m sure I’d learn something, I think this is also less useful for now. I’d like to attend this late.

    The Finalists

    I’m really down to three choices now: T-SQL with Itzik, Azure with Denny, or Power BI with Meagan. These would all improve my career, and help me with my job, as well as being relevant. They’re all relevant, but also in areas that I struggle to really focus on for a long period of time.

    I’d like to think there are other resources I can use for Azure, and I am thinking to just try and go through some study here to take the exam, so I’m going to cut Denny’s. A hard choice, but that’s what I need to do.

    For the other two, I don’t really know what to do. I went back and re-read both descriptions a bit, trying to decide what I’ll learn. I know I’ll get in depth T-SQL from Itzik, and I would like to improve my query skills. I often find myself amazed by the queries some of the people post in the SQLServerCentral forums. However, I also know that Itzik does this class for different events. Even thought I skipped it in the past, I think I might get another chance. In fact, there are a couple pre-cons for the Data Platform Summit.

    Therefore, I’m going to sign up for Meagan’s class, update Power BI Desktop, go through the last couple articles in the Stairway, and see if I can learn a few things about building reports.

  • Social: Respecting Names

    This is a non-technical post, and my opinion. If you don’t want to read it, please ignore future posts with “Social:” at the start of the title.

    My nickname is Steve. Actually, it’s my middle name, but it’s a name I chose and I decided that I wanted to go by that moniker. I used to dread the first day of school as a kid when teachers would take attendance and use my name. I didn’t want them to use it, and I’ve certainly had my share of giggles or jokes directed my way during my youth. It got to the point where I learned in high school and college to go to class early and have a private moment with a teacher and ask them to call me Steve.

    It was annoying, stressful, and honestly, rarely a problem. However, a few times I had teachers that refused to use nicknames, and I hated going to their classrooms. Heck, I likely thought I hated them. I’m not sure how far that hatred would go in different situations in the real world, but I had no respect for those individuals and tried to never interact with them.

    In some sense, the world has changed a lot. My kids have gone to school with classmates that have all sorts of names, from different cultures and strange spellings. They accept them all and address them however they wish to be addressed.

    To me, that’s one sign of progress. Names that would have been made fun of or blatantly laughed at over and over during my childhood, are just accepted as the way it is. I see this even in my rural county.

    These days in a professional environment, I couldn’t imagine ignoring a co-worker’s wishes. If someone asked me to call them Jack when their name is Joseph or Sally when their name is Sandra, I would. I coached a kid for a couple years as Katie. She asked me at some point to call her Kate, and I did. Her Mom forgot constantly and referred to her as “Katie”, and I could see how annoyed the young lady would get. I remembered my experience and acceded to her wishes.

    When I read Randolph West’s recent article, I was reminded of my youth, reminded of how I wouldn’t ignore the wishes of someone I knew well, and questioned why I, or anyone, wouldn’t just be polite to others and address them as they would prefer.

    I find the idea of referring to a singular person as “they” to be strange. But how hard is that to change? If Randolph asked me to call them “Buddy”, would I object? Why is a pronoun harder than a noun? It’s not, and I’m working to adjust.

    I find the same thing to be true of other references, nouns or pronouns, that people find objectionable. Often I don’t think the term is offensive, but that’s my view. Is it really that hard to change my language, my writing, my speech to treat someone else as they’d like to be treated?

    It’s not. It might be annoying for me. It might be uncomfortable. Heck, I’ll make mistakes. I’ve apologized to Kate a few times. Not that many because I learned quickly, and she was worth the effort to learn to do better.

    I think most of us feel it’s worth the effort for those that we are close to, or that we know. Why would it be harder to adjust for those we don’t know, and respect their wishes.

    I’m sure I’ll mess up with Randolph, but it’s on my mind to do better. I actually typed “him” above and caught myself, adjusting to the unfamiliar “they”. I even learned to ignore the grammar checker and let it know that I know better in this case.

    Learn, adapt, grow. Many of us do this all the time in technology. We ought to do it in our dealings with others as well.

  • Seeing the World Differently with a Coach

    I ran across an article recently that got me to stop and really think about how I proceed through life and who my coaches, confidants, and mentors are in the world. There are a few people I lean on, and while I don’t get the same advice from them as in this piece, I did find this to be a series of things in this post that made me stop and think.

    Leo Widrich is a coach to CEOs, founders, and executives.  Last year he coached 101 people and wrote about a few takeaways. It is an interesting read, and paints many of these executives with feelings, emotions, insecurities, and other frailties that I have. I suspect many others feel the same way in their lives.

    Each of these items made me think a bit, but perhaps the one that had the most impact on me was to think about non-attachment. I think this might be my biggest struggle, to accept difficult situations, and not lash out or get upset, but let the emotions wash over me, experience them, and then let them go. I struggle to do this without some sort of reaction, or most often, overreaction. I have recognized this a few times as I get older and gotten better at experiencing things without a out sized emotional response, but I still have work to do.

    Maybe the best quote for me was at the top: “… people have heard me say that I think it quite reckless and silly for founders and other executives to go through their life and business world (when you can afford it) without a trusted mentor, coach, advisor or therapist.” I actually think this is something most people need, especially those in stressful situations. I don’t know you need to pay a life coach, though a therapist is often a good idea. A good adviser, someone trusted and with your best interests at heart is invaluable as you go through life. I think I have a couple of them, and I’m glad I do.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Follow Wheaton’s Law

    I’ve tried to live my life as someone that treats others well, respects them, and cheers for them to succeed. Even before I heard it, I think I was unconsciously following Wheaton’s Law (apologies for the slightly off color language).

    I think about this often in my life, as a minority in most places I go for work or in society. I’ve had a lot of success, I’m intelligent, am comfortable talking with people, and many things go my way. At the same time, I’m not any better than anyone else. I try to say hi to the facilities staff at Redgate in the same way I do with my fellow advocates. I may sit and chat with our cooks or cleaning staff just as I might take a moment to chat with a developer.

    With the dramatic changes brought about in our world by the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been thinking about the way that many people are interacting with those who work in much of the public world. Especially service workers, who these days may be deemed essential and are often the contact we have with lots of businesses, as cashiers, delivery people, and more.

    This article upset me. Many people that have the least power, the depend on their jobs the most, with few other options, are often treated poorly by the people they encounter. I’ve seen poor behavior in the past in many situations, but the current pandemic and the push back against wearing masks has made things worse.

    The entry level workers, those making low wages and doing many of the service jobs in our world, don’t deserve to be poorly treated because you don’t like the policy of some business. This certainly includes people doing manual work in our offices, acting as assistants, or some other non technical job. Treat other people well, as you’d want to be treated if someone didn’t like the way you were instructed to do your job.

    Steve Jones
    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.