Tag: career

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.

For most of my career I’ve been a full time employee (W-2 in the US) or worked for myself with my own business. I’ve rarely been a consultant or contract (1099) employee, and what experience I had with those situations didn’t suit me. I don’t like the lack of security and certainly don’t like being responsible for the sales portion of finding work.

Many people like contracting, and in fact, some make a career of it. There are companies that help you find work, and many large companies employ people for years as contract workers. There’s an interesting article on the impact of this at Ars Technica. It looks more at hotels and other service work, but this is common for technology workers as well, especially at many of the large, common names. If you look through the comments, you’ll find a few examples.

I do think this is starting to be something that workers have to contend with, and it’s been obvious how hard this is over the last month. This might be especially true as companies can find ways to better specify work and hire people for their expertise at less than full time hours. This does save them a lot of long term costs and commitment, which is a change from what I expected when graduating from university.

I’ve said this in a few talks, but ultimately I believe that each of us should be treating all jobs as temporary, ensuring that you take care of yourself and plan for your future. While a company might provide benefits and some retirement help, you should ensure you are paying attention and saving where you can. In the US, healthcare is a mess and expensive for contract workers. Outside the US things are better in some places, but you should still ensure you plan to take care of yourself if the company doesn’t.

It has always been hard for workers throughout history. Many companies exist to make profits for their management and owners, often at the expense of workers’ treatment. Despite that, there are some amazing companies out there that do a better job of existing as a partnership with workers than others. My employer, Redgate Software, is one of those, and I’m lucky to work there. We’re hiring, good luck if you apply, and tell them I sent you.

I hope all of you reading this can find a good employer that treats you well and gives you work you enjoy doing each day. If you don’t  have that, invest in yourself, work on your tech and soft skills, apply for jobs, be diligent in your questioning of the hiring team, and cross your fingers. There are great employers out there, and best of luck in finding one for yourself.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

Hiring staff is hard, and certainly it can sometimes be a challenge to find good people to build software and manage systems. Many of us want to be those good people, and we are looking to improve our own skills. I think that’s one of the reasons that SQLServerCentral has become so popular. Many of us want to become better at our jobs.

It can be hard to determine what to learn and where to invest your time. I’ve talked with plenty of people that have worried about various Microsoft technologies and their longevity. Notification Services is the classic example, but I know people that have been wary of SSIS, Power BI, Azure, and more. It’s daunting to consider spending 100 hours across the next year on some technology, only to find it’s not likely to help you get the job you want.

Recently there was an analysis of the coding tests that were given to developers by various companies. This is interesting to look at from an employee view, when thinking what skills to work on. One thing I see is that SQL is constantly in demand. It ranks on the second most test language, only behind JavaScript. That ranking makes sense in that lots of companies need help with web technologies, and there are lots of these jobs.

What I’d also say is that most every job out there needs SQL. Whether you are a web developer, a mobile or client side developer, you use Java, Python, C#, or anything else, you’ll work with a database. Even many of the NoSQL class of databases have added SQL as a query language for developers.

SQL, for all of its shortcomings, is a standard way of working with data. It’s a skill that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon and the more you can build efficient queries, the more likely it is that you’ll impress someone in the next interview. Read our T-SQL articles and practice answering questions in the forums, and you might be surprised at how much of a T-SQL guru you can become.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.