Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Prepping for Mastering Index Tuning with Brent Ozar Unlimited

    I got the chance to sign up for a few courses from the Brent Ozar Unlimited team and took it. I struggle to find time for training, between work commitments, travel, and family time, it’s hard to fit in a day or two. I’ve almost given up on going to in-person classes mostly because of the time involved.

    I’m trying this online, both to learn something and see how the experience is. I’ve watched Brent present many times, and I think he does a good job of explaining concepts. While I suspect there’s a good amount of things in this course that I’ll already know, my experience is that it’s both good to get reminded of concepts from a different point of view as well as get some tips/tricks that I might not know. I’m always amazed how I might learn one small thing in a beginner session that I never knew.

    Signup

    The signup is simple. Go to the class page and add this to your cart and pay for it. The process is simple, and you get a good agenda as well as a schedule. I really appreciate the schedule, including the breakdown into what’s covered during different blocks.

    There are multiple dates/times to choose from, but this is online during the workday, Eastern US time, so plan accordingly. For me, this means a slightly early morning, but since I can turn up the speakers and walk to the coffee machine, this works out well.

    There are other classes on their home page, including Database DevOps, PowerShell, SSIS, and Data Science. There are plenty of more mainstream DBA/developer type SQL Server classes as well.

    Prep

    A couple weeks before the class, I got one of those automated emails from GoToWebinar. I’m used to receiving 3-4 of these before an event, so I promptly ignored it.

    Then I got a second one a few days later, and I decided to look at this one. I managed to actually read this section:

    “To get ready, go here:
    https://BrentOzar.com/xxxxxx
    And read the “0.1 Before the Class” module. There’s a ton of prep work and instructions in there for you, including a few videos to watch to prep, and you can download the slides to follow along. ” 

    I removed the URL, since I’m not sure this is public, but in any case, I clicked the link to find a description of the class, in usual well-written Brent style. There was also a series of links on the side, for various slides and labs.

    The Before the Class is a page with 4 videos from Brent that are supposed to prep you and give you some background. It’s 69 minutes, so I set aside some time and got moving.

    And I ran out of time. I watched 3 of the videos, but ended up not getting the fourth one done before the class because of family and travel commitments. I should have tried to watch more in short periods, but I kept putting things off. I know a lot of this stuff, but if you’re new to the class and want to learn this, spend the time to get some basics down.

    Testing Equipment

    I didn’t bother, mostly because I use GoToWebinar every few weeks, between my work or watching other things. As a result, I know my PC works. If you don’t do that, make sure you set things up.

    Contact and Notifications

    I went back and looked. I got these notifications:

    • A confirmation of the purchase
    • A 2 week notices that asked me to go to the class page, and also get started on Slack.
    • A 2 week (minus 1 day) email that asked me to read the “0.1 Before the Class” module.
    • Two 4 day notices, a day apart (one was a 3 day notice). Not sure if this was correct, but these were roughly the same.
    • An email the day before the class with a VM URL and credentials
    • A “start in 1 hour” notice

    That might seem like a lot, but I think this is pretty good. I might miss one of the advance notices in a busy world, so it’s nice to get the second one. I could glance at it and delete it if I had read the previous one.

    There’s a good amount of prep stuff out there, and Brent has each module of his class recorded, so I could have gotten ahead and watched some of the class ahead of time. I could have also played with labs a bit, though he warns you IN CAPS to be careful about not breaking some things.

    Overall

    The process before the class was well done. There is a good amount to help me prepare, but I won’t know until I get to the class if the prep was good enough.

    Looking forward to starting. Actually, but the time this publishes, I might have started, so we’ll see.

  • Learning Goals–May Update

    It’s 5 months in, and this is hard. I find that the time I’ve picked each week sometimes gets bumped by other items, which do have a higher priority. More on this later.

    Extended Events

    An epic fail here for May. I started with one week and managed to get an hour watching part of a PASS session and building a few questions. However, the second week I got busy with some family stuff that impacted my work week. With deadlines and travel the third week, I skipped this.

    The third week I was gone, and the fourth, well, only a little focus, though I did start to write a short piece on using Jon Kehayias’ script to convert a trace to an XE session. We’ll see if I get this done.

    Fifth week, not sure. That Tuesday will be in the June update.

    Python

    Not a lot better than the XE stuff. Week one I had some family issues get in the way of my Friday learning and ended up skipping this as I was away from home. With a busy weekend, I didn’t make this up.

    Week 2 I was prepping for week 3. Week 3 I was gone.

    This brings me to week 4. While I like to try and do something, I really didn’t get much done during the week. I am looking to add Python questions to the mix on SSC, so I have taken a little time during the week to build a couple questions. Going through basics like lists and dictionaries helps me come up with things that I think people might not know and can get inspired to learn a little with a question. That helped me get a few things done this month.

    I did take time to go through part of a Pluralsight course in week 4, about 90 minutes of total time, some of that pausing the course so I could generate a question and practice some Python skills.

    I keep a few browser tabs open with Python links to try some problem solving, but I keep not making time.

    Moving Forward

    I didn’t travel much until mid May, but I had a very busy life outside of work and didn’t make much time to learn away from work. Fortunately my work is related to these topics, so I can take a little time for learning.

    As I close out the first half of the year, I’m somewhat disappointed with progress. I definitely continue to learn, as my job requires it, but I’m not getting the focused time in these areas. Looking forward to next year, I want to aim for topics that are more tightly integrated with work so that I get more practice. Here, even though I’m doing something, I’m not as focused.

    For June and further, I’m going to shift my times around and pick what I think are quieter times for me to get something done. Since I can ride a bike at home and watch Pluralsight, I’ll pick those times for at least passive learning. Then I’ll set aside a shorter time period, 30 minutes, for practice at other points in the week when I have found myself with time.

  • Lessons for all of us

    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.

  • Editorial Republish: Mercenary

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