Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • DAX and Power BI Stairway Live

    As part of the Redgate Community Circle, I’m going to be running a live class on DAX and Power BI, every Thursday, from 12MDT for about 30-45 minutes. We’ll see how things go.

    I’ve been wanting to learn DAX and I keep putting it off. I can google with the best of them and fumble through things, but that’s not ideal. And it might not be correct, as I’m not sure I’m always writing the code that I need, or the best code. So I want to walk through Bill Pearon’s Stairway to DAX and Power BI live.

    Join me and we’ll work through the series, learning some DAX and applying it to Power BI, which will be interesting. I will read the articles ahead of time, and download anything I need, but for the most part, I’ll be fumbling along with you.

    If  you’ve got time, join me live. The webinar link is here, and you’re welcome to join, for the whole time or just a part. I anticipate things going for 30+ minutes, but I’ll cut off at an hour. Feel free to participate and as long as we don’t have too many people, we can all discuss the article and try things out live.

    For security, I’m not directly posting details, but here is some of it.

  • Do You Have a Mentor?

    It’s partway through the year 2020 and I’m wonder if many of you are continuing with your resolutions at this point? I know that the yoga classes at my gym were already thinning before the COVID-19 crisis as people that started out coming regularly at the beginning of the new year slowly started coming less often or dropping out. I see that every year as resolutions start to fade in importance.

    Goals are good drivers, but also stern taskmasters, especially for those of us that are more type-A and driven. I sometimes avoid putting down goals because I’ve struggled to accept my inability to attain them. I’m working to accept the fact I miss some goals, but it’s a hard balance to strive. The goal has to mean something to work towards it, and it should be hard enough to stretch me, but I can’t be upset for not making it. I also can’t just accept not trying. I am never quite sure how to best tackle this.

    Earlier this year I was reading the sqlSkills newsletter and saw an editorial from Paul Randal. In it he talked about improving yourself, the different things you might try, and also the need to post-mortem your previous efforts. One other thing he mentioned was the value of having a mentor.

    I wonder how many of you have a mentor that you can call on. I know I’ve tried to help in the past with The Mentoring Experiment, Paul does some mentoring, and there other efforts out there. I think it’s valuable to get some mentoring at different times in your life, and from different people.

    I have a couple people that I know I can ask things of with regards to my career and personal growth. I’ve leaned on them at times, asking for advice or feedback on different ways to change my life. My wife is one, but there are a few others that have had quite a bit of influence on how I move forward.

    If you don’t have a mentor, I’d advise you to seek one out. Or maybe more than one. Ask someone you like, you trust, that isn’t directly supervising you (spouses excepted here), and that you think can give you honest and supportive feedback on your career, life, or something else. It’s a valuable tool to help you cope with the world and assist you in achieving your goals.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • More Time to Certify

    With all of the shutdowns and quarantines with the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft has extended their deadline to finish the MCSA, MCSD, and MCSE certfifications. Previously old certification exams were due to expire on June 30, 2020. You had until then to complete your work. Now the timeline has been extended to January 31, 2021. This gives you more time to earn the cert you started.

    I haven’t held an active certification for years. I found them useful for studying and focusing my learning early in my career, but less so now. Working towards a test is also a time sink for me, when I often don’t quite have as much time as I’d like to get other things done. Life is busy, and I haven’t been as focused in a single area in a long time.

    However, I do think that certifications can be helpful in a few ways to many people, in addition to focusing your learning. Scheduling an exam puts pressure on you and will drive you to learn more. The semi-vague requirements will force you to learn more things than you might otherwise work on, which broadens your knowledge. I’ve found that to be particularly helpful in my career, when I have a wide variety of skills in different areas.

    Maybe the one area that you can use to further your career and open doors is to point to the certification not as a measure of knowledge and skill, but of desire. It takes active effort to learn and pass a certification exam, and employers need people that are hungry to learn and grow, and most importantly, willing to do this on their own time. It’s a good point to make if you talk about your work in an interview or write something on your blog.

    In addition to extending the deadline, Microsoft has changed the fees for rescheduling and cancellation, which is good. They’re also working for more remote proctoring of exams, which will allow more people to take these tests from work or home instead of having to drive to a facility. They are also extending out voucher and discount dates.

    If you’re interested in pursuing something, let us know today. I’m considering some of the Azure role based certifications, mostly because they may focus my learning. Now I just need to find time and make the decision to actually move in that direction.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Have You Deployed an Availability Group?

    The last few weeks have been interesting, to put it mildly, with both more and less engagement online. I see more people holding video calls, both inside and outside of work, but I also see less engagement at SQLServerCentral, blogs, Slack, and some of the more common community tools we’ve had. I suspect this new way of working is strange, and it’s upset many of the rhythms that people have built over the years.

    In any case, one very important and common technology in the SQL Server platform is an Availability Group. This technology has been in the product since 2012, and unlike clustering, it’s relatively easy to set up. Not to say it’s easy, and you do need to develop some skills outside of T-SQL to understand how this works. This week I’m wondering how many of you might never have done this?

    Or maybe you’ve done it once or twice and forgotten about it.

    While we’re dealing with the various challenges of a pandemic, this is also a time where you might brush up on a few skills or learn new ones. Deploying, configuring, and testing an AG is something that is valuable to both DBAs and developers, and it’s a good skill to bring to your next interview. Every employer wants to know you understand HA/DR.

    We have a Stairway Series that can help you along with quite a few articles and blogs that people have written. There are various lab posts as well, including a good one from Ryan Adams, that can help you get started. If you don’t have equipment handy, you can build one in Azure for cheap, and even turn off the VMs when you’re not using them and spend just a few dollars a month on storage. That’s not much cost to build a valuable skill in your career.

    If you’ve built a lab, maybe you want to tackle something complex, like the scenarios that Allan Hirt writes about on his blog. If you’ve never done one, maybe try to build one, take notes and capture screenshots, and blog about it. In Word if you want to start a portfolio to send out with your resume, or on your live blog. It might be a good time to start a new blog.

    Focusing on a project like this can help shut out some of the noise in the world and engage you in a new way with your career. Hopefully you are doing well, and life is proceeding for you. If not, maybe tackle a project to take your mind away from things, and check out our daily coping tips in the newsletter.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.