Tag: career

I write a fair amount about career issues. It’s one of the largest tags in my word cloud, and I’m proud of that. I’ve seen too many people in bad jobs for too long, had a few myself, watched my wife work far too hard at times, and lost friends because of a lack of time. All of those experiences have caused me to really think hard about life and how I approach work.

Don’t get me wrong. I like work, I enjoy what I do, I have a great time writing code and queries and think technology is a great career choice. That being said, it can be a hard job. There are demands to work long hours and holidays, often to deploy changes when the workload is low. Some years, I’ve worked as many holidays and weekends in this business as I used to when working in restaurants.

That being said, we often think of this as an “easy” job in many ways. We work in offices. We’re well compensated. We don’t have a lot of physical demands, and we can do this job will into our later years if we choose. If you’ve ever worked in a job that requires more physical effort such as construction, you appreciate the ease with which our days pass. If you’ve ever had a boring job, such as staring at the x-ray screen in airport security, you’ll likewise realize most of us are lucky that we get to exercise our brains.

That doesn’t mean this job isn’t hard. In fact, burnout and high stress are real problems in technology. While some industries might worry about their people getting enough done when working remote, our industry has too many people that don’t know how to stop working. I thought about this as I was reading a post on burnout and looking out for yourself.

Many of us that work in technology are too sedentary. We sit at desks, we work odd hours and often subsist on poor diets that we’ve built during a lifetime of late night coding sessions. We also accept more blame, demands, stress, and accountability than we should. While I don’t know too many people that have had serious health issues from this work, I do know a few. I also know far too many people that have passed away before they reached 50.

The downsides of this work can creep up on you. I know I felt a little burned out last year, from too much travel, too many balls being juggled, too much pressure. I made a conscious effort to slow things down and I’m much happier this year. I try to exercise and eat (slightly) better on a regular basis, balancing that out as best I can.

We work to live, not the other way around. Whether you need fewer responsibilities, more exercise, new hobbies, better connections with friends and family, strong mental health care, or something else, make sure you take care of yourself in this life. It’s the only one you get.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

I’m out at the Redgate Data Privacy Summit today, so I’ve republished Mercenary.

I was listening to an interview recently that talked about life and why many of us do what we do. It was a piece that also discussed some of the problems with modern US society and some of the potential unexpected consequences of the way that we have evolved in this country. As the discussion between the individuals proceeded, there was one question that stood out to me.

The question was about intrinsic v extrinsic motivators. One example given was playing the piano. If you sit down at home and choose to play because you enjoy it or it relaxes you, that’s an intrinsic motivation. There could be all sorts of reasons why, but essentially you’ve made a choice to participate because you want to do so. If you go play at a bar because you need to make money, or your parents force/push you to play, or something other reason that pressures you, those are extrinsic motivators.

To be clear, one isn’t necessarily better or worse than the other, but they both affect you, as a person, differently. There are also likely a variety of different intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that you have for many of your actions. The world and life isn’t as simple as choices being the result of one of the other. Often our decisions are a blend of both.

Today, I wanted to ask you to think about the reason you’re in your career. I assume most of you are working in technology, and you have various reasons for entering this work, some of which may not be valid anymore. Perhaps you’ve found new reasons to continue to work with data. You don’t have to publicly answer, but think about this.

Why do you work with computers? Because you have to or you want to?

I’m sure this is a blend of factors for you as it is for me. I started with computers because I wanted to. I didn’t have to work with them in school because we didn’t have them at first. Even through much of my university work, computers were not ubiquitous and certainly were not required for most of my classes. I chose to work with computers and technology because I really enjoyed it. Even later, since I needed a career, I chose to work with technology instead of other industries and picked databases, which weren’t my initial choice. I did move to databases primarily for money, though I’d done some development work and enjoyed the database aspect of it.

Today, I do need to work, so I have some extrinsic motivation to continue on this path, but I also do enjoy technology, and I’d like to think that I’d continue to do this type of work even if I could make enough money in another area. My wife is different, and without money pressure, she likely won’t ever come back to technology.

Think about your motivations and pressures today. I’d be interested in how you feel if you’re willing to share. Whether you are or not, take a moment and consider how you really feel about your career.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.