Voice of the DBA

Tag: career2

  • Branding Yourself for a Dream Job–Powerpoint and Questions

    I had a few people ask about the deck, and I’ve uploaded it here: Branding Yourself for a Dream Job.

    I also had a couple good questions at the end after people had left, so I thought I’d put them here.

    What about a picture on my LinkedIn/resume?

    I have had a few people ask this in the past, and I forgot to cover this in the talk. My only advice is that if you want to put one up, use a professional picture. Have someone take one.

    Other than that, it’s a hit and miss prospect. We all have prejudices, and hiring managers/HR people are no different. If you’re a women, or old, or a minority, you might have some people exclude you based on your picture.

    Personally I don’t see much benefit to adding a picture. Keep that information back until you need to disclose it.

    Does it matter how many blogs I have?

    No. However you will likely want to maintain them, so don’t tackle too much. I would suggest no more than 2, one for your career and one for something else.

  • A Week Before Networking at the PASS Summit

    It’s a week before the Networking Dinner at the PASS Summit. Andy Warren and I are hosting the event next Monday, October 26th, at the Yard House in Seattle. The address is at 4th and Pike, just a few blocks from the convention center.

    Register here if you can come.

    There’s no cost, other than you covering your own food and drink expenses. We would like registration just to try and ensure we have enough staff at the restaurant.

    This is a great chance to network with fellow data professionals. If this is your first or second time at the PASS Summit, please come and meet some people.

  • The Poor Soul

    This editorial was originally published on May 11, 2011. It is being re-run as Steve is away at SQL in the City.

    I recently had someone post this after I made a comment about someone taking responsibility for their database server.

    “So Steve, what would you recommend then for those poor souls?  As being one of them it drives me nuts to constantly be told I can’t get more training as it’s not my true job position yet I’m responsible for making the databases work. “

    I’ve been in this spot a few times, in and out of IT. I’ve been tossed into cooking or bartending jobs without training and had to learn quickly how to do the job, and I’ve had the same thing happen in IT. In a few cases the companies knew it was a bad situation and they eventually got me training, in others they didn’t. Here’s the advice I have for you.

    Ultimately you are responsible for the job. Tough love, but you’re being paid for that job, so you are responsible.  That means you have to learn how the technology in your environment works and how to solve the problems you have.

    First, get your resume up to date. Make sure it is ready for submission, and you are prepared to get fired every week.  Keep an eye on the job market and save some extra money, because to me, the financial security for my family comes first.

    Second, learn to restore data and then make sure you have backups in place. This is secondary because if you have a failure quick, you want to be ready to get a new job. But ultimately no matter what breaks or doesn’t work, getting data back first is crucial.

    As you go through all of this, you might be fighting fires. So while you practice restores or document the environment, you might be trying to fix things and asking questions of others, but invest the time to get yourself into a solid position.

    I’d also talk to my boss regularly. Every time I found a place I didn’t know something, I’d make a note and let my boss know this is a hole. Maybe I can learn it, maybe I can’t, but I could use help. That might be the best ROI for conferences. Go, make friends, get contacts that can fill your knowledge holes. Or find consultants you can call.

    Steve Jones

  • Choosing Your Tasks

    This editorial was originally published on May 13, 2011. It is being re-run as Steve is out of town.

    I have been working for SQLServerCentral for nearly a decade. I started in 2002 and in that time I have had to define my own job most of the time. Early on Andy and Brian had a list of things they thought I should be doing, and there were certain things to get done each week, but it was a general list.

    This Friday I thought this was a topic for a good poll. Answer this question:

    What percentage of your time is self-directed?

    By self-directed I mean the tasks that you choose to do because you think they need to be done for some reason. This is opposed to the specific tasks that someone assigns you and gives you some deadline for finishing. If someone asks you to “tune the server”, I don’t consider that a specific task, and you would have to pick items to work on, and determine how much time you spend on them, that’s a self-directed task.

    Do you have a good amount of self-directed time? When I used to manage a series of production servers, I usually had at least half my time as self-directed time. I could look at poor running queries, contact groups with proactive ideas for improving performance or preventing problems. I even had time to schedule DR testing. That took a lot of investment over time. I had to understand each system, set up monitoring and standards, build in data capture and analysis routines, and of course, plenty of alerting mechanisms.

    I think that a great production DBA will have a lot of self-directed time after 6-12 months on the job. A development DBA, however, will likely be constantly responding to code requests and enhancements, which is one reason I prefer the former job.

    Steve Jones