Tag: career

Who are we? I think we often don’t have a good view, since most surveys struggle to get 1,000 responses. I know many surveys think that’s a representative number, but I think it feels low. I wish we’d get more data at SSC, but too few people participate in our efforts. The one place that seems to do a great job of getting responses is Stack Overflow. They released the data on their 2020 survey, and an article at Freecodecamp summarized some things.

Everyone looks at this data differently. For example, in the top loved languages, I see these: Rust, TypeScript, Python, Kotlin, and Go. Of these, I’ve really only used one. The most dreaded language is VBA, and I’d concur, but the most wanted language is Python. More developers want to use this than any other. Interesting numbers, but these seem more like emotional items, not practical ones. If we look at what pays the best, the Perl is at the top. I don’t know anyone that primarily works in Perl, though to be fair, I’m Microsoft focused. At least in the tech clusters, most have some relation to some SQL technology.

The database section is very interesting to me. This is my field, and I wonder how developers look at the world. The most loved db is Redis, and I’m not surprised. It’s key-value, blazingly fast, and relatively simple. I went through a couple courses at Redis University and found it to be a neat platform. SQL Server is 7th, with 50% loving it compared to 66% for Redis.  It’s also 8th in dreaded and 12th in wanted. Interestingly, while Oracle and DB2 are dreaded, Couchbase and Cassandra are up there. Redis is the least dreaded, though still 30% of developers dread this. My guess is that developers just struggle with databases in general and get annoyed by having to deal with them.

The other interesting data point in the results is about searching for a solution online. Just over 50% of the people are happy to find a link they’ve already searched on Stack Overflow. That makes me wonder if we aren’t really learning to code better, or if perhaps we don’t bother because we can just search. For a lot of programming research I do in R, Python, and other non-SQL places, SO is a great resource and often gives me a concise, useful answer.

Maybe this is the future of programming? Learn to search and what things to use, and don’t bother memorizing deep syntax or pattern specifics? I don’t think that works for SQL. We need to learn to be better. Perhaps this is why developers dislike SQL because it has few keywords and requires more programming skill to build efficient solutions. Those might be harder to search for on the Internet.

Most developers work overtime, but it’s balanced among the time scales. Only a quarter of people do this every week, which I think is still too much, but at least this isn’t the vast majority. I think 15-20 years ago that would have been different. At last 60+% are slightly or very satisfied. Still about a quarter aren’t satisfied with their jobs.

There are other interesting items in there, and if you are a developer, or you’re looking to grow your career, it’s worth spending a few minutes with the data, and looking at how you view the world compared to others. I don’t know that I’d try to follow the crowd, but I’d certainly think a bit about how I view the world compared to others.

Steve Jones

One of the more interesting things that we do at Redgate is regularly ask workers to evaluate their environment. We use a company, called Thymometrics, and periodically employers as asked to rate various factors, both in terms of how important are they to us, and how satisfied are we. I tweeted the general dashboard, but essentially there are a series of sliders we use to rate things, between a max and min. No scale, just a visual choice of are things more or less important. Am I more of less satisfied.

The range is factors are here:

• Work Environment
• Wellbeing
• Salary
• Benefits
• Culture and Values
• Giving Something Back
• Leadership
• My Manager
• Personal Growth
• Recognition
• Redgate’s Purpose
• My Team
• My Role

When I log in, I can see how I last set things. I can also reset everything to the middle and re-evaluate how I view the world. Usually I look through and see if I want to change my satisfaction. Rarely do I think that some part of my job situation has changed in importance. However, at least once a year I do reset things and start over.

While I know plenty of people see this as a pain in the sitting part of the body to go through, I appreciate it. This lets me evaluate how I feel about my job situation, and about my company. I get to think for a few minutes about whether I am truly satisfied with my position and how I am treated by this organization.

This is a somewhat formalized process. I checked with the team that looks at this and they get anonymized rollup of data, unless someone puts in a comment and asks for a reply. Even then, they don’t send the raw data to managers, but attempt to mediate if there are issues. It’s a good idea, and really, this is what I do and recommend for others.

At least once a year I take a serious look at my employment situation, in conjunction with how my personal life is going and think about what I like and don’t. I think about my other options, and discuss this with my wife. Is this the best way to live my life? So far it has been every year, since I think I have one of the best jobs out there. That doesn’t mean I should assume there aren’t other options or ways that I might want to change my job.

I think you should do the same thing yourself, at least once a year. Honestly evaluate your situation, ask others about theirs, and make the best decision for you. After all, you only get one chance to go through this life. If it’s not working, plan to make a change.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

One of the problems that I’ve seen in many parts of life is the belief that things must proceed a certain way. I caught an article on ways teachers have made school less fun for kids because they adhered to some rule or belief too tightly. I think many of those stories are true because I’ve seen some strange teacher behavior with my kids over the years.

In the tech world we’ve gotten our share of gatekeepers who think that a developer or sysadmin or some other person doing a job should do it a certain way or use particular tools. I caught a tweet that embodies the frustration some people have with those gatekeepers. Jez Humble quoted this and built a thread on this, including admitting he’s contributed to the problem. I know I have as well.

If you think back in how you’ve worked with others, interviewed people, onboarded a new hire, or even disagreed with another person, are you a gatekeeper? Do you have strong, core beliefs that you think everyone should follow? Or are you adaptable and flexible, willing to consider slightly different thoughts, protocols, or ways of viewing problems?

I think that many of the advances and incredible achievements in the world have some from someone thinking differently. Someone, or a group of people that grow, change, or alter something in the world make the biggest differences. We have best practices, we have standards, and we have good, solid ways of working in many cases. We also learn to become better over time in many cases, changing the way we work because of the growth in our knowledge.

I think teams ought to come to some consensus and agreement. We have to make decisions and move forward in our efforts to build software and systems. However, we also need to allow debate, discussion, and civil disagreement. I argue for many points at work, winning people over on some, and losing other debates. I don’t always like it, but I can live with it if more people disagree with me. I think that most of us can do the same, as long as there are rational reasons for the final decision.

Being a gatekeeper often involves having power and abusing it because you can, rather than building and generating some sort of group agreement. Real leaders find ways to work with their people, not force them to fit a mold.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

As I was looking to build career goals for the new year, I think mostly about technical topics. That makes sense, given my focus and job, but I ran across an interesting thread on Hacker News that asked about skills to work on in 2020, and not necessarily technical ones.

I did find it interesting that one of the first comments was self improvement, and quite a few comments on cooking, both as a skill to learn and a way to save money. There are plenty of comments on other non-technical skills, but since this is a technical site, I wanted to focus there.

We’re over a third of the way into the year, and we’re dealing with a pandemic. Business is slow, many people have lost employment, and it’s possible many more will. Fewer companies are hiring, so there is a need to stand out more if you find yourself looking for a new job.

With that in mind, what types of things would you work on if you knew you’d need a new job by the end of the year. Let’s say that you have seven months to prepare to look for a new job on Jan 1. What would you work on?

Leave a comment and let us know today.

Steve Jones