It’s time for the first T-SQL Tuesday blog of 2025, with an invite from the first non-founder to host a party, Rob Farley. I reached out to Rob and he graciously agreed to host. His invitation this month is on integrity, leaning towards data integrity.
I still manage the T-SQL Tuesday list, and I’m always looking for hosts. I have a few scheduled for 2025, but I can use more. If you’re interested in hosting, hit me up at one of these places:
- Twitter/X (@way0utwest)
- Blue Sky – way0utwest.bsky.social
- Github Issue – open a new one
While data integrity is important, I think personal integrity really matters as well.
Integrity at Work
I used to work for a large corporation, which I won’t name here. This was a 10,000+ person organization and I helped manage part of the data group for the company. I had a number of reports, 10 or 11, that handled different aspects of production operations across a variety of database platforms.
It was a busy job, and our environment was far from stable. As is the case, things get cobbled together, become popular, and then limp along for years. This happens in small companies and large ones, but in large ones, I think it continues because when there are problems, we can throw people at the problem. We could throw resources and fix chronic issues, but that wasn’t the case at this company.
At the time I worked at this company, we had a stacked ranking system for reviews. Microsoft used to do this (and stopped), but think about ranking everyone in your team from 1-5, 1 being underperforming and 5 being outstanding. The “stacked” part comes from the need to have a certain number of 2s, 3s, and 4s. 1s and 5s were rare (5s more rare). Essentially a 1 meant you were on a performance plan and on the way to termination.
I had to rank my staff, who worked hard and kept our systems running, despite lots of incidents. We performed some large migrations and upgrades of systems where my staff worked multiple weekends, with no comp time, just meals covered.
My first integrity stand was that even though I wasn’t officially allowed to give comp time, I did, working through my staff with extra days off that were unrecorded anywhere. This might be more of a violation, and if my boss’s boss had caught wind of this, I would have been terminated. However, I felt my staff deserved something, as a few of these long weekends weren’t adding business value; they were things executives wanted to do for optics.
Near the end of the year, we had to rank our workers for annual reviews. I had most of my staff at 4s, with a couple 3s. I put in one person as a 5 for some great work they did. Justifying a 5 is hard and I thought I had a good case.
In a meeting of our IT department, the VP of Operations told us that we had too many 4s and that each director (1 level above me) would get an allocation of rankings and that each manager had to work to fit their staff inside that allocation. Anyone ranked a 1 would be outside the allocation.
My second integrity stand was to argue with my boss on why my staff deserved their rankings. According to their job descriptions and performance, I’d ranked then well, even though his quota meant he wanted me to move a couple 4s to 3s and 1-2 people to a 2 ranking. I refused, arguing with other managers whose staff I had seen underperform through the year. I told a few others they needed to absorb the 2s and 3s and not the data team.
I lost that battle and had some uncomfortable reviews (and the accompanying bonus/salary numbers), but I acted like an adult and told people I had ranked them a level higher and upper management lowered their ranking, not because of performance, but because of a quota.
As we went through the next year, management decided they needed to cut costs. They had managers compile a lot of numbers that were sent to outsourcing companies in an RFP to essentially remove IT from the company’s books. In a meeting, our CTO tried to spin this as good for workers as the winning company would hire our IT staff. The framing was that this outsourcing would save the company money.
My third integrity stand was when I questioned the way this worked in a large meeting of IT management and eventually got the CTO to admit that:
- a) everyone would have to re-apply for their job
- b) they might not get the same salary (higher or lower, you decide which is more likely)
- c) not everyone would be hired
This might work out for some people, but likely those who got jobs at a new company were risking their salary and workload in a new situation. I questioned this as being good for the company overall as we would likely lose lots of knowledge.
I left shortly thereafter, voluntarily, but I’m sure I would have been let go at a layoff that occurred near the end of that year.
I hated that job in many ways and was glad to eventually leave. I decided I would never work for a stack ranking company again.
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