Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • 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.

  • A 2020 Look at Software Developers

    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

  • Evaluating Life at Work

    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.