First, only support Women in Technology if you want to. It’s an idea that appeals to some, but not to everyone and if it’s not your cause, that’s fine. I don’t think less of you for not supporting the cause, but I would if you bash it. There’s no reason to do that.
What is WIT? Karen Lopez has a great writeup, and one I agree with. We want to make sure people that want to get into technology can, and not feel that their interest in the field is “wrong”.
Many of us have worked with distributed applications at this point in our careers, with different parts of the application located on different physical servers. Some of us might have worked with applications that actually have different servers in different locations, potentially even different countries. That can be challenging, dealing with different time zones, different collations and regional settings on servers and more.
While many of us are not looking to implement cloud computing now, we may do so in the future, but not for simple cost reasons. There’s a piece about data gravity in the cloud, and how the law can drive the location of data in some cases. Just as many companies that wanted to offer gambling services moved to countries with fewer laws about that business, I would expect that we see some companies moving pieces and parts of their data to other countries to take advantage of more lax or lenient privacy or other laws in the future.
Most companies won’t bother trying to avoid laws like this right now, but at some point in the future, the cost of moving an application to another country might be tiny. We constantly build better tools for distributed development, deployment, and management, and whether it’s a cloud infrastructure, or just a rented VM, we may find that it becomes worthwhile in some cases to move data, not just for cost reasons, but potentially to reduce the costs of compliance with local laws.
It’s hard to know whether compliance with the law will ever significantly affect the work a DBA does, but I certainly expect that we will have distributed applications with their various components more widely distributed to challenge us in the future.
Steve Jones
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
Brad recently wrote an editorial about the career-life balance and asked you to think about whether or not you might be focusing too much time on your career. I write fairly often about the need to manage your career, and learn more on a regular basis. There’s only 24 hours in a day, so how do you fit it all in?
The simple answer is use the 4th dimension: time.
We can’t fit it all in. There’s no way that any individual can work full time, raise a family, be a good spouse, find time for their friends, pursue a hobby, learn more about their craft, and more in a year. However we don’t live in a single year; we live across time.
There are times in our lives when work is busy. There are times in our lives when our home life is busy. Hopefully those times don’t overlap, but that is not always the case. We have to learn to find some balance over time, and work on our goals, not necessarily in parallel, but perhaps sequentially. Spend more time on different parts of your life, at different times in your life.
If your job keeps you extremely busy, then perhaps you don’t focus on learning more this year, or you take on less personal commitments. If you really want to work on a hobby, or coach your kids in sports, or run a marathon, you might need to take on less at work for a period of time. If work is slow, and you are bored, perhaps you ought to spend more time educating yourself on SQL Server and improve your future prospects.
There are only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 (or 366) days in a year. However we live for many years, and we ought to remember that when we have a busy life. Push back, learn to say no, and learn to be more efficient to fit more things in, but don’t try to fit everything in.
You only get one life, so enjoy it while you can.
Steve Jones
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
I think most of us know that the world is not really a meritocracy. We know that the value of many things is not necessarily intrinsic to the item; value is based on perception. That’s a large part of the economic theory of supply and demand. The more people want something, the more it should cost.
I ran across a piece that surveyed some salaries and it shows that people working with cloud platforms are commanding higher salaries, even when the underlying technologies are the same. It seems crazy, but that’s the world we live in. Perceptions drive a lot of things in the world, especially the ones that don’t seem to make sense.
Should you specialize in cloud technologies? In one sense, the platform is not a lot different than what you might run in your local data center. Virtualized machines, connections and deployments to remote networks, and limited access to the physical hardware. There are subtle differences, and learning about them and working with them, could be good for your next job interview, when the HR person or technology-challenged manager asks you about Azure.
Part of your career is getting work done, using your skills and talents in a practical and efficient manner. However a larger part of it, IMHO, is the marketing of your efforts and accomplishments. The words you choose, the way you present yourself, these things matter. I would rather be able to talk about SQL Azure as a skill, and then relate that to local Hyper-V installations of SQL Server than the other way around.
If you are considering new work, or interesting in the way cloud computing might fit into an environment, I’d urge you to take a look at SQL Azure or the Amazon web services. You can get a very low cost account for your own use, and experiment. You might even build a little demo for your next interview that impresses the person who signs the paychecks.
Steve Jones
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
Voice of the DBA 