Voice of the DBA

Tag: career2

  • DBAs Need to Learn to Develop

    My first exposure to computers was as a child, learning to program in BASIC, Assembler, and Pascal. From there I moved into other areas, such as networking and system administration. I learned about a variety of technologies before focusing on databases, but I found that my knowledge from other areas of computing helped me be a more successful DBA at quite a few jobs.

    Last year we put on a number of SQL in the City Seminars where Grant Fritchey and I talked about development practices. We give a variety of advice and practices that you can use, but one of the best things that we say in our half day event comes from Grant. He says that DBAs need to “Follow the local development paradigm as much as possible.”

    I completely agree with this. I think that many of the practices of building software, as flawed as they might be, are good ideas that many developers use on a regular basis. They know how to work in a flexible manner, tracking their code and keeping it under control, and fixing problems in a rapid manner. As immature as the software development process can be, there are things that we, as DBAs, can learn.

    As SQL Server continues to grow as a platform, there are more and more enhancements, many of which involve programmatic capabilities expanding. I highly recommend that DBAs think about learning more about programming, and specifically a .NET language, if you’ve never used one. If you have, consider brushing up those skills.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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

  • Budget for Training

    I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is refreshed, ready to tackle the new year. Many of you might have made resolutions with the calendar change, and I’d urge you to consider making one more: a resolution to learn something new in 2014 related to your career.

    I’ve been tackling the Powershell Challenge for a little over a month now, and one of the things I’ve found to be problematic is scheduling. With vacation and the holidays, I haven’t had a set schedule in my life. More importantly, I hadn’t scheduled myself specific times to work on Powershell and fell behind in my challenge.

    Andy Warren, co-founder of SQLServerCentral, has a talk about building a professional development plan in which he notes that we need to budget both time and money for our plan. It’s important that you not only commit some time, but that you schedule it. You may also need some money, and you ought not to be afraid of investing in yourself, especially if you are looking to move into a new area, or find a new job.

    I haven’t done a great job of making time for my career over the last month, but I have realized that I need to do so. I am looking to schedule specific times on specific days to work on my skills over the next few months. My plan is to take 2 lunches a week and dedicate that time to working on PoSh. I’m hoping that putting myself on a schedule will help me focus and get through my challenge.

    I would encourage you, on this, the first full week of the new year, to take an hour or two and plan out your learning for the year. My recommendation is you pick at least two six week time periods across the year. During each of those periods, schedule 2-4 sessions a week to learn. They can be half hour to hour slots where you work on a specific skill and improve your knowledge. You could start with one of our Stairway series if you’re looking for ideas. Give yourself at least a week or two, and probably a month, between sessions to recharge. Be sure you are also looking out for opportunities to put your new skills to work throughout the year.

    You are responsible for your career, and today is the first day of the rest of your career.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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

  • The Powershell Challenge–Notes and Observations

    It’s been a month and a half in real time since I started the Powershell Challenge. In that time, I had a business trip and 9 days of vacation and the holidays that impacted the event. After a week of working on the book, I ended up sporadically getting back to it, partially as I lost the book for 2 weeks after vacation.

    I’m still working my way through it, and as my schedule stabilizes, I’ll get back to regular posts. However, I wanted to make some notes on the issues I’ve seen and the challenges of professional development (PD) from my own experience in the last month.

    Vacation is vacation

    For me, vacation is really vacation. I have tried hard across the last 10 years to learn to enjoy vacation and not work during that time. I rarely check emails, and if I do, I typically don’t respond. I also leave the computer closed most of the time.

    This means, for me, that professional development also gets stunted. There were times in the past where I dedicated some time to professional development while on vacation, but as my kids approach adulthood, and I mature, I have typically stopped doing that.

    You can choose to spend your vacation as you wish, but with time off for family visiting, skiing, and ranch projects, I didn’t do any PD.

    A Schedule Matters

    One of the challenges I face is that I have a hectic life. As a result, when I try to fit things into that schedule, something else gets moved. Across the last month, I’ve been making more of an effort to exercise on a regular schedule, and that’s often been at lunch. Unfortunately, that’s pushed off the Powershell Challenge more days than I’d like to admit.

    I need some routine and schedule, and the holiday season (Thanksgiving-New Years) was disruptive to me. I didn’t think it would be as much of a problem as it was. I thought I could just sit down for 30 minutes and I’d find the time easily.

    I was wrong.

    I need to schedule time to do this each day, and I’m looking to get back to that next week.

    Momentum

    In line with scheduling, I think momentum matters as well. Just as with exercise, if you put it off for a few days, it’s much easier to put it off for a few more days than it is to get back on track and back to work.

    When Thanksgiving intruded, I lost momentum. When I came back and was pressed for time, I put off a few lunches. When exercise became a bigger priority, I put it off even more.

    This is why I do regularly talk about scheduling some time to learn. I think once a month won’t work, though perhaps you can make once a week work. I suspect for me that I need to schedule more regular time, such as every 2-3 days or M-W-F and stick to it. I recognize a balance is important, and I’d likely do this for 4-8 weeks and then take a break for a few weeks before tackling something else.

    I’ll see if I can implement this in the new year.

    A Place

    This might not matter for many of you, but it does for me. I started the Challenge by sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop and the book.

    My desktop for the last year has been a standing desk, that has the keyboard and mouse lifted off the desk surface with boxes. However, there is no place for a book at my desktop. During the holidays, I rarely had my laptop open, and in fact it was often in the bedroom near the bed. Having a book open in bed, or at my standing desk, didn’t work.

    I need to use my laptop regularly with the book and that was an issue for me. I’ll get that back on track next week.

    Summary

    We do need to regularly improve our skills if we work in technology. Or medicine or engineering or law or accounting or a number of fields. Some fields make that easier, but in technology it is mostly up to each of us to motivate ourselves and find time.

    I encourage you to tackle something like my Powershell Challenge, but think about budgeting and scheduling time in order to succeed. I’d also encourage you to schedule in breaks in your life when you aren’t driven to move forward in some direction and just enjoy your life.

  • Breaking Down Barriers

    Developers are a pain. They have no idea how to properly write queries and test them against a database. They constantly deploy poorly written code.

    DBAs are control freaks that impede progress. The DBAs never let anyone get code written in a timely manner and slow down development.

    Both of these are similar stereotypes that exist in the world. I realized that a short while back when I had the chance to talk with Scott Hanselman at an event. He noted that developers are as antagonistic towards DBAs as the reverse is true. We both realized that this is a problem, and that those of us that write and speak perpetuate these views of the world.

    I know that we should work better together, and despite making jokes about bad developers, I really don’t dislike developers. This week, I wanted to get some ideas and thoughts from the rest of you about how we can change things.

    How do we get DBAs, Developers, as well as sysadmins and Sharepoint administrators, to work closer together?

    That’s the poll this week, and I’m looking for specific things you’ve tried or have found to work that break down barriers. We are all working in technology, and we can all do a better job of trying to ensure that we, as an industry, prove that we are extremely valuable to our employers.

    I’m also calling on DBAs to be the bigger people here and make an effort to work in a positive way with developers. If you find development practices problematic, then explain why in a calm, respectful manner. If you find deployments to be destabilizing, practice them more often. Try to work with developers, not against them.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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