Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Interviewing Avatars

    Imagine that you go to interview a candidate over Skype or even a phone call and the first thing you see or hear is: “Hi, my name is Hank, and I am an avatar. I will answer all your questions about Nick factually and completely, as if you’re talking directly to Nick. Are you still looking to fill this position?”

    That’s a quote from a blog post about HR and hiring issues. In this post, the author talks about a new system that allows a job seeker to use an avatar as a way to quickly apply for thousands of jobs. While this might be nice for the applicant, would any of you want to interview an avatar? Maybe you would a few times, or maybe you’d even start to like this as a way to get some basic information about a candidate. Of course, if the candidate has loaded up all sorts of technical facts from Inside SQL Server or How Would You Move Mount Fuji, then maybe you’re less interested.

    One one hand this is scary. On the other it’s awesome. I’d love to be able to answer some questions and provide some data about my career and goals and let an avatar go through initial screens. I wouldn’t want this to be used anywhere past the initial interview, but certainly it would help me to present a little more of myself in an interactive format. It could be a nice brand, and how fun would it be to interact with Steve’s avatar?

    In some sense, we might move in this direction. After all, this just levels the playing field between candidates and employers. Plenty of recruiting and HR people use their own software or algorithms to make quick decisions about a large number of applicants. I certainly know that you need to stand out with your brand and ensure your resume and online profile attract attention and this could help with that.

    Think about this. Is there a way to better present the data and information about ourselves, using technology to respond and help ensure that the position is a good fit for each of us? Hiring managers might use this, why not us? Actually, they are using Alex and Mya. Would this be a better way for you to control and show off some of your work? Even have the avatar show how you solved problems or responded to different situations? While this seems silly or science fiction, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this type of avatar-avatar interaction being used early in the process to decide if both parties should move forward.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Intrinsic or Extrinsic

    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.

  • Learning Goals–April Update

    Here is the update: I did better.

    Extended Events

    I did a little more multi-tasking this month, ensuring that if I rode the stationary bike for exercise, I had my tablet and watched some Pluralsight or read some content.

    Here I learned a few things:

    Predicates

    These short circuit, and this means that we want to write our predicates to end early if possible. We also want to write our predicates to look at local data before global data so that we can stop event code as early as possible.

    There is also a 3000 byte limit, so be careful with structuring the event predicate statement.

    I also found that u_tables.sql lets me rebuilt the default sessions for an instance. It’s in the install folder. That’s handy as there are times that I’ve removed the default sessions or changed them and I’d like to get back to the beginning.

    Event Sessions

    The structure for event sessions is like DDL for other objects. These are always created with events, but we can remove all events. I’m not sure why you want the placeholder, but it’s an interesting anomaly. I suspect that this is a hole in the DDL parser.

    I also learned you can drop sessions without stopping them. Convenient? Sure. However, this means that I could make a mistake and not get a question about dropping a session that I, or someone else, is using.

    Changing event or target configuration means dropping and adding back the item. That’s good to know. No way to alter an event predicate.

    Python

    I made it a point to do some coding every week, and work on Python. I did some fundamentals, ensuring I understood how modules work and are imported. I spent some time on variables and mutable/immutable items. I wanted to be sure I understood how these worked compared to other variables. It’s good to know that some of the assignments don’t create a new variable, but merely set a pointed to the existing item.

    I set up a Jupyter notebook in Azure, which was interesting. I need to use this more, and perhaps do some coding here on the Advent of Code or other projects. I solved a couple more days of puzzles, which was fun. These are challenging, and it took a little time to work through items.

    I didn’t do this every week, as I had some travel this month, but I did make an effort to work in python a bit more.

  • In Depth Learning at the PASS Summit

    This past week the pre-conference sessions for the 2018 PASS Summit were released. There’s a good list of topics and speakers, returning and new presenters, that you can choose from. If you’re planning on attending the Summit, I would review the options and if any of these are relevant to your position, I’d bundle the cost of a session into your request for Summit funding. I’ve seen plenty of people ask for the registration fee without a pre-con and then try to negotiate additional funds later. Do yourself a favor and ask for everything at once.

    Are these sessions worth the time and money? Most are, and a single day packed with information is often easier to digest than a full week. However, you’ll still have days of random learning slots during the regular conference, so plan on spending a day learning and then shifting into a different mode for the rest of the conference. There is a lot of information presented in an all day session, and you’re likely to miss some of it. Most presenters provide a good set of materials to go with the class, but you should plan on taking lots of notes and then spending a few hours here and there across the next month reviewing and practicing what you’ve learned.

    I’ve often found that a pre-conference session is the best way for me to dive deep into a topic that I haven’t had the time to investigate on my own. Time is a precious resource and finding time in my busy work and family life is hard, especially for a full week class. I’d still like to get to a week long sqlSkills class, but I can’t seem to find the time. Maybe after next year when I have no more children at home and fewer commitments.

    I used to take a computer to classes, but the last few years I’ve moved back to paper and pen. I find that sketching out notes by hand is quicker and easier, I ignore typos, and somehow the act of writing cements things in my mind more. I’d recommend you try both, though certainly having your phone around to take a picture of something is incredibly handy at times. I’ve tried OneNote and a digital pen on a laptop, but again, it’s not as quick or smooth as pen on paper. The one thing I did like is that I could add pictures to my notes.

    A conference is a large investment, whether you make it or your employer does. Adding in a day of training on a topic is often a relatively small incremental increase. It’s worth the time and cost, if you’re already going to be gone for multiple days. I’m not sure if I’ll get to a pre-con at the Summit this year, but I’m hoping to get a day of watching and learning on a single topic in at one of the events I attend this year.

    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.