Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

  • A Culture That Allows Mistakes

    Building a culture that promotes teamwork, efficiency, retention, and other positive attributes can be challenging. While many organizations want accountability and responsibility, it is easy for managers to tip over into a blame-and-chastise pattern. When someone makes a mistake and a deadline is missed or a client gets upset, how do you respond?

    I saw an article that gives some examples from the cybersecurity world about how to build a culture that allows mistakes and forgives them. We all make mistakes, and we should strive to correct them while working to avoid repeating the same mistake. But we will make mistakes again in the future, so how do we deal with them?

    One of the challenges with building a strong culture that is productive is with management. Far too many people react poorly when things go wrong. I find this is a similar challenge to parenting, where we often struggle to let go of control and accept that mistakes will occur. We can also worry that we will be blamed for others’ mistakes and want to push our employees or children to avoid mistakes. Often our reactions are more fear-based, for ourselves or even for others’ safety. However, we can’t completely avoid things going wrong. It’s never worked for me, either at work or at home.

    There are plenty of articles on creating blameless cultures (one, two, and searches), most of which give reasoning why this works better and hints on what you can do. For many of us, these might feel like a dream we cannot chase. With some managers, the idea of even broaching the topic might be too scary. In those situations, I might try discussing the ideas with peers and perhaps implementing ideas with them, rather than trying to convince management.

    Ultimately culture requires support from those in charge. Management has to actually believe in a culture that tolerates and accepts mistakes, while still striving to reduce their occurrence. Everyone deserves to make mistakes and recover from them. We’d like to prevent repeat mistakes, but those will happen. My goal is to work to be better over time and expect others to do the same. While I might need to move someone to a new job or even let them go, it wouldn’t be because of making a few mistakes. It would be because of constant mistakes without making an effort to change their behavior and be better.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Which Work Is Suited for In-Person?

    In this article on flexible working plans, number four makes a good point. What work is suited for live, in-person interaction? Which aspects of your job benefit from seeing others face-to-face?

    Today I’m asking data professionals to think about it. I know we can do all our jobs remotely, after all, many of us have been doing that for at least a couple of years, and some for far longer. I can’t remember the last time I actually needed to look at a physical server I wrote code for? Probably when I self-hosted SQL Server Central back in 2002-2003 and went to reboot a machine or add a disk drive. Even then, those weren’t DBA or developer jobs, but really Operations hardware tasks.

    These days many companies are trying to decide how to handle office and workers. I don’t know I’ve seen anyone come up with a good plan other than leaving everyone remote and figure out how to make things work. Every day in the office doesn’t seem great, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a good company hybrid plan. I see some groups deciding to meet once a week or once a month and that works well, but I think that’s more a reason to have some social time than it is a need for productivity.

    Not that allocating some amount of time specifically to bond socially is a bad idea. I am in favor of this. We used to do this when we were in offices every day, so why not schedule this periodically now?

    While you can do your job remotely, I wonder if there are not some aspects of development or operations that are better done in person. Or maybe, sometimes in-person. I can see brainstorming and planning as being smoother in person. Being focused and closely collaborating always feel stilted and confusing online. I prefer being in person. Perhaps pair programming or a similar arrangement is better in person at times. I know we can share a screen and code together, but doing this in the same room periodically builds a bond that I think would make remote sessions more productive.

    The only other thing that I think matters is cross-team bonding, perhaps doing some debate and discussion of how teams work together or how their work affects others is better done in person. Perhaps not every day/week/month but once a quarter or a few times a year I can see this building better relationships between people, much like in-person pair programming.

    If you have other ideas or experiences, let us know. If you think there isn’t a reason to ever go in the office, that’s something worth sharing as well.

    Steve Jones

     

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • The Home Setup

    For many years, a home setup has been something us geeky people built to experiment, have fun, maybe play games, maybe for some career learning away from work. I’ve written about various workstations, as has Glenn Berry.

    Then the pandemic hit and many of us were sent home to work. I’ve seen people working on dining tables, coffee tables in living rooms, and even on a spare dresser in a bedroom. I see big and small offices, many of which were thrown together to just get by in the spring of 2020.

    It’s a few years later, and while I wrote about the ultimate home office in July 2020, I know that there are plenty of you still at home, at least part-time. While some companies want to get people back into the office, I don’t know how many people end up working full time in an office with the need for some setup at home.

    I saw recently that Andy Yun was building a home lab for himself and his wife, Deborah Melkin (send congrats to the newlyweds! Hopefully, Andy and Deborah have nice working spaces at home, and they don’t interfere with each other. My wife and shared an office for a few years, and we both had to learn to grab a laptop and leave if the other was on a call first.

    This week I wonder how you’ve changed your setup at home? Have you set up a dedicated space for work, a desk, a new chair, better lighting or larger monitors? What tips do you have for making a home office a real office?

    Let us know what has worked, and maybe what hasn’t. Or better yet, what do you wish you had known in the spring of 2020 when you first moved into your home instead of the office?

    Steve Jones

  • Be Smart

    An engineer at Google recently claimed that one of the AI chatbots might have become sentient. Great headlines, and whether true or not, this might bring some notoriety to the engineer.. It certainly did, and it also resulted in the engineer being suspended from his job. It’s entirely possible this person might be fired. Perhaps I’m cynical, but I think the more talented he is, the more likely he keeps his job. Less talented, likely fired. This might not be fair, but I am a realist. The more value someone brings, the more tolerance for missteps.

    I give a talk on branding, and one of the things I do before giving you practical tips is to remind you to be cautious. A brand can be a very positive asset, but it can be a detriment as well. One of my stories is about Mark Jen, who Google fired after he blogged a few things about his employment. He was highly recruited and worked at Google for only a few days.

    At one point I worked in a public company, in a large Operations group of about 20 people. We were listening to the earnings call one quarter when Security staff walked up and escorted a person out of the building that was sitting 2 or 3 cubicles away from me. They security people then returned to box up the employee’s belongings once he was gone. Apparently our boss told us this person had posted some of our earnings results online while the call was going on. They were posted literally minutes (20 or 30) before the numbers were announced, however, that’s illegal and a violation of securities rules.

    Most of us know not to post passwords, IP addresses, or other sensitive infrastructure data on the Internet. Most of us should know not to post data, especially on a site like SQL Server Central. If we are looking for help with an issue, we need to mock up a situation. We might not be able to post code, and we might not be able to write about the specifics of our job in our blog. That might vary by company, and we need to understand what the rules are.

    I’ve never had an issue with this in over 25 years of blogging and asking/answering questions on forums., but I’ve followed one rule. It’s the same rule I heard someone say was their internal guidance for blogging.

    Be Smart.

    Don’t post anything that might cause an issue. Whether you are in a forum or on your blog. Even inside your company, some information might be sensitive and compartmentalized. If you have a doubt, ask someone. It’s that simple. Just ask someone who can give you a second opinion.

    I do this regularly with SQL Server information and Microsoft. There are times that I am unsure of something is under an NDA, so I ask. This includes words, pictures, and code. I do the same thing at Redgate, as sometimes things on our internal network might not be publicly released yet, so I just ask. On my personal accounts, I might ask my wife if I can post something before I do it. I’ve learned it’s better to ask permission in these cases.

    I haven’t always done that in my job. Sometimes rebooting a system or making a minor change without following every rule, but those have been cases where I had a very strong understanding of the situation and the implications of my actions. It’s not something I do lightly, and it’s rare, but there are times to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

    However when dealing with public disclosure of anything, I think you are smarter to ask permission first.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.