Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • 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.

  • Next Person Up

    I have a friend that has had a lot of success in technology. This person was a consultant when I met them, working hourly as I was. Over the last few decades, they have found new opportunities and joined a few large corporations. Eventually this person became a vice president, managing a division. It’s an impressive job, with a big salary, lots of travel and perks, and a lot of work.

    I had dinner with this person recently and they lamented all the hours and stress that comes from a high profile job. Working lots of hours, constantly in touch with others, and pushed to do more. In some sense, this person felt their situation wasn’t that  different than some IT jobs they’d had in the past, though with less pay but similar hours.

    I thought about that for myself. I’ve certainly worked 100 hour weeks while on salary. I’ve slept with a beeper on my chest while on call because I knew it would go off multiple times at night and I’d shut it off quickly without waking my wife. I’ve had the stress and pressure of management pushing and pushing.

    I’ve learned to say “no” quite well in my career. I’ve also learned to find another job when I felt abused. It’s worked well for me, and I think it’s the better way to handle things. That being said, I have never made a huge salary, certainly not anything close to what my friend makes. At the same time, I haven’t felt trapped in a long time, and when I did feel trapped in the past, it was my fault. Usually I learned to move on fairly quickly.

    The thing to remember is that you have to ensure your work and your compensation make sense for you. The trade has to feel fair, because many organizations don’t care if you don’t. I’ve not met many companies that would let me work half as much for half pay, even if I cut some benefits. They aren’t set up to adapt there, and they usually have options.

    For every great job, or at least any well paid job, there are often plenty of other people willing to do the job. For employers that don’t value individuals, either you deal with it, or they will remove you and pick someone else. The higher you go into the org chart, the more true this is, and often this is where the sociopathic tendencies of some executives take over.

    I wouldn’t judge anyone else for choosing their situation, but I do caution you to think about what jobs you take and make the conscious decision to do them. Don’t let yourself get caught into a bad situation, which can sometimes be easy to do, especially when a larger paycheck is dangled. Pick the work that suits you and your family and that you enjoy doing each day.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Goal Progress Report for March 2020

    I made goals at the end of February, when I returned from sabbatical. Since then, the world has been turned upside down with a pandemic, and I’ve been struggling to cope.

    However, here is the progress report.

    Reading

    As I write this, I’ve had a reminder from Outlook on my screen for two days. The reminder is to work on goals, but I’ve managed to not do this. Mostly because I’ve been busy and haven’t had the time to actually combine career work with work work.

    In addition, at the end of the day, I’m worn out. I’m not looking to tackle another project. Even on weekends, I’ve been taking care of some other things and haven’t wanted to work on something. I haven’t had the mental focus.

    That being said, early in March, I did get through 4 chapters in Pro Power BI Desktop, actually following along and building my own reports.

    No other progress. I’m falling behind here.

    Projects

    One of the things I wanted to do was build a Power BI report. I actually started, though not from a database. That’s easy to correct later, but for now, I just used Excel. I got a partial report completed, but I was struggling with display v aggregates. As a result, I stopped for now, hoping to do more Power BI work.

    Falling behind here, but the whole world is. I’m giving myself a break and hoping to get more momentum in April.