Voice of the DBA

Tag: career2

  • Negotiating Salary for a New Job

    Slightly off topic, but I’m adding this one to the Modern Resume blog since I think it’s something to be aware of in managing your career, and to some extent, your brand. How you handle this reflects on you, and I wanted to note a little advice.
    I ran across this post from Brent Ozar on salary negotiations that gives some advice. It was in response to a Twitter post, which proves one great thing about where you can get inspiration: Twitter! For the most part I agree with Brent’s advice, but I have a slightly different take on how to handle it.

    Ask, Don’t Answer

    My basic advice is that you ought to get an idea of what the job is paying first, and as soon as possible. Money does matter, and it can break negotiations down if the number of too low.
    There is no good average salary for some jobs. I know that HR people like to think there is, but I have seen it quite often that the ranges for a particular job, and skillset, can vary widely in companies. I think that it’s it’s in part because the value placed on a particular job can vary widely from company to company. However, I would say that the majority of the issue is that most people are poor negotiators.
    I’m getting slightly off track here, but my first advice is that early on in the initial interview, probably over the phone, you get an idea of the salary range the company is looking to pay. If they ask you what you are making, tactfully ask them what the job pays. If they press let them know that you do not necessarily want to disclose your salary right now until you find out more about the job. Defer the discussion.
    Why?
    If you are expecting, or need, to make $75,000/yr and the job is for $55,000/yr, there might not be a point in continuing.  I’ve had that happen to me (not those numbers, but a similar experience) and it spurred me to ask them if that was a hard range or could anything be done to raise it. I have let them know that I can’t work for that number and in some cases they considered raising it, some they didn’t. However if it’s a make or break number, then it’s good to get that out of the way up front and stop wasting each other’s time.
    After that, I think I’d follow Brent’s advice and give you current salary as a multiple of 10. You make in the “60s” or the “80s”, but there’s no need to give an exact figure. Information is power, and a sharp negotiator, like an experienced HR person or manager, will use an exact number to beat you down on your salary.

    Have Reasons

    Whether you hoping to make more money, or take a pay cut, have reasons for your move. Keep in mind that anything you say as a slight against your current situation could be seen as a potential negative to a new employer. Tread carefully, but honestly in your reasons for your new salary (up or down).
    Above all, be honest. There’s no reason for you to lie about your salary, and it can only hurt later on down  the road if someone finds out. Give an honest range in which you currently fall.
    Lastly, the best argument is that they are paying you to do a job, and even if that job is paying 20% more than you currently make, if they think you can do the job, they should pay you.

  • Looking back at 2009 Goals

    I set goals at the start of 2009 for the year. They were:

  • Continue with 400 posts a month
  • Blog Daily
  • Speak at each Denver area user group
  • Speak at one SQLSaturday
  • Comment on blog posts that I think are interesting.
  • Update my blog roll to show who I think is interesting.
  • Grow the SSC audience to 1.4mm members by the end of the year.
  • Give all new articles a first review within 7 days.
  • Not miss sending any newsletters. I think I missed 3 this year.
  • Build something useful with .NET/SQL Server.

    I set a way for measuring my goals, and then had a couple updates during the year, Q1 and Q2. So how did I do? Here’s the evaluation:

    400 posts a month

    This got a little hard after the ASK SQLServerCentral site launched and I split time there. To be fair I asked more questions there than answered, but it still distracted me and ate up time. I ended up with 4628 as of Dec 19, which is closer than I thought I’d get.

    Blog Daily

    I think I blogged almost every day, or at least published something once a day. I ended up writing two or three many days and scheduling them, though I also published multiple ones some days. For the year I had 377 posts, plus one coming for tomorrow. Not bad.

    Speak at each Denver area User Group

    Complete, actually I spoke once at each group in the first quarter of 2009. That was a good goal for me. It got me out there, and while I only attended one meeting of Boulder and Co Springs, I got to 3 or 4 Denver area meetings.

    Speak at one SQLSaturday

    The idea was to support SQLSaturday and also get me out into the community. I ended up speaking at Pensacola and Baton Rouge. I cancelled SQL Connections, but managed 2 other remote deliveries, which was a pretty good number. Overall I exceeded this goal and was proud of it.

    Comment on Blog Posts

    I started out commenting on all blog posts since we really only had 3 or 4  regular bloggers at the beginning of the year. Since then we’ve grown to many more, including a lot of syndicated ones, and I don’t comment on all posts, but I try to read them all and comment where something strikes me.

    Update my blog roll

    I’ve done this 4 or 5 times, but not enough. I updated one more as I was writing this entry, but I didn’t really do this regularly enough. I should have set a monthly reminder and evaluated what I had down there.

    Grow SSC to 1.4mm members

    I failed here. Though to be fair, the rules of the game changed on me. rightly or wrongly, we’ve always required a registration to view most of our content. We had a time when you could read the forums, but not post, but as “payment” for the articles, we’ve wanted a registration. That changed substantially this year as Red Gate decided that we were alienating a number of people and we moved the “read” and “write” gates, as they were called, further back. I think now the read gate is gone, and it’s just the write gate if you want to post. That dramatically slowed down growth, and while we are still getting lots of traffic, we haven’t added a lot of members since September.

    Review New Articles within 7 days

    In hindsight this was partially a badly picked goal. I don’t have a way to determine what’s a “new” article other than memory since it’s not set up as a good workflow. It’s more like a waterfall model, and if I kick something back, it goes back to the top.

    But this was also a year in which writing seemed to explode. With so many people wanting to be MVP, so many people wanting to share, and maybe my expanded efforts in blogging and engaging with the community that I’ve often received 10 articles a week. Some are rewrites, and some are new, but it’s been a huge load and I’ve been behind quite often in editing.

    I think I failed here, not because of the workload, but more because the quality of writing has at times been horrible. I used to have relatively few writers, about 100, and they didn’t need a lot of editing. Now I have over 400, and many of them first timers. That’s OK, but they often scribble something down without proofing it, and I end up sending back more comments than they wrote!

    So I often put off editing for days, hitting it once or twice a week since it would put me in a bad mood. I failed miserably and I’m often not getting to a new article before it’s been in Q for 2 weeks.

    Not Miss Sending Newsletters

    I know I missed 1one I think that was it, though a couple were late. Let me know if that’s not the case.

    Build Something with .NET/SQL Server

    I had a few ideas, mainly redoing my own site, but never executed. This remains an unfulfilled goal.

    I think I was hesitant to tackle the process of relearning how to code in a language. It’s been a long time and while I don’t think the process of writing code would be hard, it’s the constant looking up of what methods to call, what properties exist, all the drudgery of re-learning the basic syntax and working with VS that I dreaded. I’m adding back this for 2010.

    Overall

    I think I did pretty good, and these goals were definitely on my mind. Setting them does drive you towards them if you have any ambition, so I’ll add a few more for next year.