Voice of the DBA

Tag: career2

  • What are you worth?

    Each of us is reponsible for negotiating his or her own salary for a position. Often we don’t have much leverage to exact a higher salary, and even if it’s deserved, so many companies don’t have the flexibility for managers to pay higher salaries than what is set in some range by their HR group. That’s discussed a bit in this post from Chris Shaw that looks at hiring and salaries.

    I’ve always felt that the way we handle salary was developed by owners and managers, and the process benefits them, not the employees. We rarely discuss salaries at work, with disclosure sometimes forbidden. Your salary adjustments over time seem to be highly based on your current salary. That means that your starting salary often determines your future salaries at a company, regardless of your abilities relative to others or the market. Even changes in supply and demand may not affect your salary.

    A few companies have set salary ranges publicly within the company and some even disclose salaries among employees. It sounds strange to many of us, but I’ve talked with a few people that work in those environments and it’s not a big deal. You earn your salary or you don’t, and if you do a good job, no one complains. If you don’t do a good job, then many of these companies are quicker than most to ask you to take a pay cut or leave. Personally, I like that type of environment.

    I doubt we’ll have open disclosure going forward, but fortunately many of us have the ability to change employers easily with our skills if the markets change and we feel we’re underpaid. The flip side is that there can be competition for your job and companies might find it easier to let you go and choose someone else that provides the company a better value.

    The only advice I would give most people looking to negotiate salary these days is that you should ask for what you’re worth, even if it seems high to you. The worst thing that usually happens is the employer says no and offers you a lesser amount. However, if you don’t ask, you won’t get the salary you want.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • Failure

    Tim O’Reilly has written some great pieces over the years on many aspects of technology and change. I’ve followed him for years and I’ve enjoyed many of his thoughts and views on our industry. I think he’s thoughtful and truly envisions the amazing things that technology can do to change the world, mostly for the better. I think it’s worth randomly reading through (or listening to) some of his thoughts.

    He recently wrote a long piece on the failures he’s had in business with his company, O’Reilly Media. It’s an interesting tale that looks at process, at mis-communications, and business. I think about my career, looking back on past decisions, looking at the way in which companies I’ve been associated with are run, and at the way that others around me have worked. I realize that there are many failures to go with the successes in my life. The piece made me take a good, hard look at my past, drawing parallels to the ways in which leadership at O’Reilly has worked as well as how it has come up short.

    This week, Mr. O’Reilly’s look back led me to this question, which I don’t expect to get many responses from. However I do hope it makes you think, and examine where you are, how you got here, and perhaps where you’d like to go from here.

    How have you failed in your career?

    Maybe you should compare your own experiences to those of Mr. O’Reilly, and think about how you might manage your own business, the business of running your career, differently.

    Like many people, at times in my career I have bounced  from job to job, often taking a position that was available rather than deliberately thinking about my future and moving in that direction. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last ten years, it’s that I should think deliberately think about what I like and don’t at work. I should honestly state to myself what I want to do and what isn’t worth the pay. 

    I re-examine my career each year, and seriously consider alternatives. I’ve been lucky in that I work for an amazing company and have a great job. No other alternative has measured up against my job so far.

    However I also realize that I’ve had some failures before this success, and I hope not to repeat many of them in the future by learning from my past.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.6MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #54–Interviews and Hiring

    TSQL2sDay150x150It’s the May T-SQL Tuesday, and this time it’s a great one. This month the host is Boris Hristov (@BorisHristov) and his topic is one that’s near and dear to me. He’s asking about interviews and hiring, and I have a lot to say on this topic. I could talk about both sides of the table here, and I’ll have to choose one for today, but I’ll give a few more stories over at The Modern Resume.

    This is the monthly blog party in the SQL Server community. The second Tuesday of the month is when you need to publish a post, on GMT time, and then link to the invitation. I’d encourage you to participate.

    I Don’t Know

    I’ve interviewed lots of times in my career. I’m not sure why, because I’ve often gotten great performance reviews, and I think I’ve been well liked at my jobs. Perhaps it’s my own restlessness, but it seems that I’ve often found myself in some situations where I needed to move on for some reason. Quite a few of the times it wasn’t my fauly, but However I’m picky, and so I’ve usually interviewed with lots of companies before deciding to take a job.

    A few years back I was unhappy with my current employer (they’d been acquired) and set up 5 or 6 interviews across a couple months. I often get responses from resumes I submit, and usually secure an interview after a phone screen. A lot of my writing at The Modern Resume is based on my success in getting interviews and job offers.

    The interview I got was at Raytheon Polar Services, the company that manages the infrastructure for the South Pole research station at McMurdo. A developer friend I’d worked with at a previous job had spent a couple years there, including a summer at the South Pole and he helped me get the interview.

    oval-conference-table-wood-southwest-airlines-2

    I walked into a room like the one above. My friend and his boss shook hands with me and we sat down. About 9 or 10 others filed in and took seats around the table. They introduced people and said they would go around the table, allowing the various developers to ask questions.

    The first person to my left looked at me and asked me, “what is ACID?”

    I started to answer. “It’s Atomic, Consistent, …”

    I couldn’t remember. I was sitting there, this great opportunity being offered to me, a friend’s recommendation, and I was stuck on the first question of the afternoon. With a room full of developers watching me.

    “I don’t know what the rest of the acronym stands for, “ I said (if you don’t, look it up), and then I proceeded to explain that the idea of ACID in databases has to do with transactions and ensuring data integrity and consistency. I also explained that I could google the exact terms, and would after the interview.

    I didn’t know, and I admitted it. I try to be honest in interviews, hoping that I can get the company to be honest with me. It’s a joint interview, and I interview the company as much as they interview me.

    However I also know that I don’t know everything. I’ve had multiple questions over the years where I didn’t know the answer, and I just admit I don’t know, explain how I might solve the issue. Someone asked me about a complex networking issue one time and I didn’t know the answer. I admitted it, but also told them I had a friend that was a CCIE and he’d be who I’d ask about networking issues I didn’t understand.

    When you don’t know, admit it. However don’t stop there. Explain what you’d do. Show how you can learn, or solve the problem. Would you ask other developers on the team? You can do this, but not too often. Would you research? How long do you work on it before you ask for help? Do you admit when you’re out of your depth?

    Often I’ve found that showing you can admit faults, can learn, and have plans to drive yourself forward help. Of course, you can’t be woefully under qualified. If I interviewed as an MDX developer, I could talk for days on how I’d learn and the people I could ask for help, but outside of an entry level position, I wouldn’t be qualified to work in that area. Hopefully, however, I’d have made that clear in a phone interview.

    Admitting you don’t know is OK. Just don’t stop there.

  • Better Training

    I was talking with some data professionals recently about training and the value of college, work, or some other method of entering the technology business. I have a few thoughts about the different ways of teaching people about this business, and I’m curious what you think.

    What do you think of traditional computer science? Colleges have students study computer science theories, languages, and more. Build small software projects, write pieces of operating systems and more as part of their curriculum. Students also still have the requirements of other core classes like science, language arts, etc., but does this train them well? I almost think that students ought to be charged with working on real projects, perhaps open source projects, and tackling some small part of the system. Perhaps an older student needs to do project management work, or architectural specifications for less experienced students that are actually programming. Is that good preparation for the real world?

    What about a vocational school that teaches students with real projects? If the students are required to work in the same ways that companies do, given requirements, asking for milestones and deadlines, providing some training, but not all, would you consider that better preparation than anything else?

    Ultimately the best preparation I’ve seen for IT is to immerse people in actual work situations, having them solve real world problems. The best way to do that is actually set up environments where students are forced to build domains, set up clusters, write code that actually would be used to manage a server or produce an application. In essence, run students through an apprenticeship.

    Or maybe the best solution is to actually offer more students apprenticeships where they can learn in the real world.

    I know there’s no one way that works for everyone, but I think that we certainly can find ways to better equip the majority of potential employees than we do now.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio (2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.