Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

  • Remote Sharing and Learning

    Lots of technical people have spent time learning something on a computer. The idea of remote learning isn’t new to many of us that have watched events online for some time. Many of us have had the chance to watch some remote session from Microsoft, Redgate, or some other software vendor. We might learn online from some site like Pluralsight, or maybe we even attend some of the virtual chapters that PASS supports.

    At this time, more of us than ever are remote from others, not just for learning, but most of our daily work, meetings, reviews, discussions, and more. Learning to be effective, and ensure you still perform at the level your employer expects, can be a challenge. I ran across a piece on how to run great workshops, which I think contains some good advice for many meetings, not just workshops or training sessions.

    Much of the advice in the piece revolves around prep and practice. You should ensure your tools work, have documents available, ensure everyone can connect and access the technology. Things we probably should do for in person meetings.

    We tend to do a lot of group work in my company, and I’ve found that being remote is sometimes a challenge. Everyone is now remote, which makes this more equal, and we’ve adapted well. I attend some of the group standups and reviews, where each team shares some progress. We’ve gotten good at switching presenters and keeping things on track, though this is more a one-way delivery of information rather than a discussion.

    While we can share documents, it is hard to sometimes tell what other people are looking at or referring to when they are speaking. Asking them a question is helpful, but it can also be intimidating for some people to ask for clarification, especially if three other people have already asked at different times before. Communication is a challenge when people are remote, and over communicating can be important. Explain what you’re looking at or doing, and ensure you have a summary or a recording to re-watch. This can be invaluable in ensuring that everyone can access the same information.

    I attended a conference a little over a month ago that used a shared whiteboard, which I thought was a great idea. I wonder if that would be useful in some of our meetings. Having someone take notes is good, but being able to review to ideas on a whiteboard is something I’ve often appreciated. I’ve used whiteboards to explain or clarify things in live meetings in the past. A virtual one might be nice to use, though with some easy way to tie together thoughts from different individuals. We sometimes group edit Word or Excel docs, but that often has us looking at different sections of the document, not the same one. Likely a communication issue, but still an issue.

    We need to learn to get better and working together remotely. It’s a skill that will matter more and more over time. After this pandemic ends, I suspect many more organizations will adopt more remote work, which means more remote meetings. Learning to effectively present and absorb information from virtual events of all sorts is going to matter more in the future.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • A Day in the Life of an Advocate

    I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to work from home, travel to lots of events, set much of my own schedule, and I work for an amazing, supportive company. I’m incredibly proud of the way Redgate Software has handled this pandemic crisis. From strong leadership, a commitment to employees, the Community Circle, and the very strong work by our Core services team to ensure technology has helped us continue to operate as a business.

    We maintain an internal company blog where lots of information is shared by individuals and groups. Each week we compile a list of important posts that are sent to all employees on Friday. It’s a way to understand different things that are happening inside the company, since many of us are focused on our own jobs and might not know what others are doing. Recently, I was asked to write a post for the blog on a day in the life of an Advocate. I was happy to tackle it, but included Kathi, Kendra, and Grant as well, since we all share that title, but have very different jobs.

    What do we do? For the most part, we do what the title says: we advocate. We advocate among the public for Redgate, and, as Microsoft Data Platform MVPs, we advocate for people to use the Microsoft data platform. At the same time, we advocate for customer needs inside of Redgate, liaising with developers and others to influence what and how they build software. We advocate at Microsoft on behalf of all the customers that want new features and struggle with existing ones.

    For all of us, this might be through meetings, presentations, written content, emails, and more. In some sense, we are communicators that move information and knowledge around. All of us have done that throughout our careers, and it’s what many of you do as well. In fact, I think some of the most successful technical professionals I know are great communicators. They many have great technical skills, but they also have the ability to communicate well with others.

    I saw a famous software developer once recommend that anyone really wanting to be a developer ought to major in a subject like English (or your language of choice) to learn how to analyze writing and communicate your thoughts back to others. Certainly you need technical skills, but most of us really need to learn how to work well with others. A soft skill, but a vitally important one.

    That’s most of my day as an advocate. Communicating. Hopefully many of you find that I do it well and have learned something, been inspired, or even entertained by my work. I look forward to continuing it for many years.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Are You Ready To Change Your Work Environment?

    It’s Friday, it’s been a long few months, and I’m wondering what you think of work now that many of us are telecommuting. This week, I’m wondering if you want to answer one of these questions?

    • If you are telecommuting full time for the first time, do you want to continue doing so?
    • If you are telecommuting full time for the first time, are you ready to go back to an office?
    • If you’ve been working from home for some time, are you ready to go back to an office with people around?
    • Do you just need a variety in your working environment?

    These are questions I’ve asked myself many times across the last few decades. My thoughts and answers have changed a bit over the years, and even now they’re different than they used to be a few months ago. Right now, I want to go back to an office more often than I used to go. I usually go to the Redgate Cambridge office four times a year, and the US offices rarely. I think after this, I’d like to get to each office in the US a couple times a year and four times in Cambridge. I miss talking to live co-workers. I might feel differently when this shut in ends, but I miss having some people around.

    For almost ten years, I drove to an office every day while my wife worked at home. I was jealous, and wanted to telecommute full time, but none of my management would allow it. Then for almost another ten years I worked at home with my wife. She traveled quite often, and I struggled with the loneliness of being by myself. I often went to lunches with friends or sat in a Starbucks and worked, just to have some other people around. The third phase of my work environment has me at home alone often, but also on the road regularly, so I haven’t struggled with the times I’ve been alone in my office for weeks.

    I don’t know how things will move forward from here. I’m sure something will change, and I look forward to societies finding ways to open things up over time. I know we’ll adapt and cope, but I also know that even the most introverted of us is a social creature and we do need some contact with others. Today, I wonder if your views of how we want to work have changed.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • A Remote Work Guide

    It seems that the vast majority of people I know in the data professional world are working from home these days. Actually, I think more people are working remotely than ever before. I don’t know how much will carry over into the future, but I certainly think more companies will think about having people work from home more often. This might be the thing that finally gets many managers accepting remote work as a normal way for employees to get things done.

    Across the last month I’ve seen lots of advice and thoughts about how to adjust to remote work. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I’ve been full time at home for seventeen years at this point and my wife did it for nearly twenty. We’ve had a lot of experience, and learned a lot in that time. While thinking about the advice I’ve give to others, I noticed this guide from Gitlab for their employees on adjusting to working at home and wanted to share it.

    I think this guide has some good advice, though certainly finding space and finding separation between work and home life can be tough at first, especially with kids at home. I think it took me 2-3 months to really adjust to the new routine when I started full time at home, and even now, I can struggle at times. Usually I have the gym, coaching, travel, and other activities to break up life and get me away from my office. That’s not the case now, and this tweet from Scott Hanselman sums up things for me. This isn’t the same as my routine has been for over a decade. This adjustment is hard, and we should allow for fits and starts from both ourselves and others.

    Many of us technical people are somewhat introverted. I know I am, despite all the public speaking I do. It’s easy to retreat a bit into our own world right now, which isn’t necessarily the best thing. As the guide notes, experiment with some changes and new things. I have to say that I never thought a virtual coffee break or happy hour would be something I’d try, but I look forward to my 9am happy hour with Redgate staff every Friday. Don’t stop engaging completely, and as you find structure, experiment a little here and there.  Loneliness can creep up on you.

    If you’re a person that likes the written word, the SQLServerCentral forums have some great discussions. Feel free to join in to something fun, like coping, baseball, or anything not about SQL, or stick to technical topics if you like. If you prefer video, I’d urge you to reach out to a friend or family member, or even someone on Twitter, for a quick chat. I’ve made it a point to reach out to a few people every couple days, usually text or messaging, just to check in and say hi. It’s been helpful to me.

    Remote work is a challenge in and of itself, but this isn’t the same as normal telecommuting. Try some different things, build some routine, and remember to take care of yourself and your family in this challenging time. If you have tips or tricks that have worked for you, especially those of you in small spaces, share them with others in a comment today.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.