Professional Development for the SQL Server Technologist
This series of posts is dedicated to enhancing your soft skills. For many technologists, the day-to-day grind of work tends to keep us focused on the SQL Server part of work and causes us to overlook the Professional. While we, as technologists, spend the majority of our time honing hard, technology skills, but it’s important to remember that we are first and foremost employed to add value to the business processes of the organizations we work for. In this series I will cover a wide variety of topics, including soft skills like management, teamwork, communications, time management, and negotiations, as well as semi-soft skills like budgeting, project planning, project estimation, and so forth. And let’s face it, people who are good at the soft skills while also having strong technical skills often see better career growth and more opportunities than those of us who are purely technical.
To begin, I provide some homespun wisdom about effectiveness and efficiency in our jobs. These words are, of course, loaded with meaning and have produced multitudes of academic papers and big-name, New York Time best selling books. Everyone wants to be more effective and more efficient in their job. While I might bring up some of the more imaginative ideas and innovative concepts at other times in the series, I want to be direct with you today. Just as the simplest concept for financial well-being (“Spend less money than you earn!”) is sometimes the hardest to implement, so too the simplest concept for effectiveness and efficiency can be hard to make a workplace rule.
The first and most elementary rule of efficiency is to spend the majority of your time working on projects that are your forte. Management studies have shown that people aren’t just 50% or 80% more productive when working on what they’re best at, they’re actually 300%+ productive compared to activities where their skill is merely “satisfactory”. Here’s an example, if you’re really good at crunching code, do not spend lots of time attending and running meetings. Delegate that to another member of your time or find someone on your team who does enjoy that sort of thing. If you’re exceptionally good at performance tuning or designing databases into relational integrity works of art, do not spend all of your time writing requirements. You’re simply ruining your sweet spot for productivity.
Of course, many of us are on the prowl for a promotion or better job, which often require us to spend more time working on activities that are outside of our forte. I’ll address how to get back to your strong points when your job asks more of you in a future post.
Now, there’s a similar easy and elementary rule for achieving high degrees of effectiveness. The primary point to remember in being effective in your job is to focus your activities, at any given time, to only two or three things on which your performance will be judged. This might sounds simple and easy, but I’m constantly surprised how many people find it almost impossible to say “No” when more work comes their way (and this also applies to their personal life at the PTA, with the kids’ activities, with the church or volunteer organization, and so forth).
It’s very simple. If you cannot focus on successfully closing out a small set of activities, you’ll fail once you reach the point of being overwhelmed. Think of a juggler who seems quite competent juggling three balls. But when they try to juggle five balls, they’re lucky that they can keep one of them from falling to the ground. Plus, anyone watching is thinking “That person can’t juggle at all!” because they never saw the juggler successfully keeping three balls in the air. So, learn how much you can handle and then, when asked to do more, respond with “I’d love to take on this new project, but what of my existing projects has to be put on hold?” Taking on too many projects has the additional very detrimental effect of upsetting your work/life balance too, because most of us try to complete more projects by spending less time recuperating or with the family.
As with efficiency, we’ll come back in the future to specific techniques you can use to stay on task and limit the number of active projects you’re responsible for, even when management is asking you to take on more than you should.
In the meanwhile, think of other soft skill questions you might have and I’ll address them in future posts.
In today’s podcast, Kevin Kline talks about the difference between influence and authority, and why IT professionals need to work on their influence to succeed.
You can view this video in higher quality or your favorite portable formats at:
Ok, I admit it. I’ve done about as good a job publicizing my monthly professional development column, Plays Well With Others, as NBC did when the transitioned Jay Leno back to the Tonight Show.
So I’m going to try to better, henceforth and forever more! Two entries ago, I talked about the The 8 Characteristics of Exceptional Leaders. This month, I’m drilling into the characteristic on that list that generated the most controversy in emails and messages – “Absolute Integrity”. Many people took issue with the concept that integrity can be learned, instead believing that integrity is innate, like a sense of humor or a dancer’s rhythm.
What do you think? Read the article here and weigh in with your opinion! (Be forewarned – the PASS website is free, but does require registration. And I encourage you to do so since there are many other great resources there to take advantage of.)
Let me be direct with you. I love SQL Saturday. If it were a woman, I’d marry it. (Avoiding all extraneous thoughts of what my real wife would say, etc etc).
Check out this fun Flickr Feed from the recent SQL Saturday in Chicago or these picks by Jorge Segara (blog | twitter) to see the sort of fun that’s in store. But who can argue with a day of free SQL Server training and a chance to network with great presenters and a wide swath of your peers?
Keynotes are more fun when the put-downs fly!
I’ve tried to support SQL Saturday as much as I can since Andy Warren (blog | twitter) launched the program a couple years back and have spoken at several. You might say to yourself, “Self, Kevin works for a vendor. Don’t they want him to speak at as many SQL Saturdays as is humanly possible?” Well, Mr. Self, you’d be mistaken. You see there’s a keyword in the name that might reveal why my employer doesn’t provide unlimited enthusiasm for me to speak … it’s the SATURDAY part of the whole thing. Yes, of course, my employer wants me there. But they also recognize that Saturdays are my own and that, if I spend a day or two there on the weekend (including the travel time), then that’s a sacrifice of my own choice. I would still need to be at work and on task bright and early on Monday morning. Not that they’d make me, it’s just that my job is the sort that work is never simply skipped, it is only ever deferred. So if I took a comp day, which they’d gladly provide, I’d still have to finish the work somehow, someway. All of this goes to say that I really, really love SQL Saturday, the community vibe that it creates, the volunteers who drive it, the folks who attend. So I’m happy to give up a few days throughout the year to support it.
Come to Nashville in August!
Guitar, Cowboy Boots, Cowboy Hat, and Tight Denim NOT Required
My good friends Joe Webb (blog | twitter) and Louis Davidson (twitter) have been angling to host a SQL Saturday here in Nashville for quite a while. As co-leaders of the local PASS chapter in middle Tennessee, it made a lot of sense to host an event like this. I wasn’t at all resistant to the idea, I just didn’t want to do the work myself. However, they did a great job of getting the ball rolling and even took on the majority of work themselves. Together with other volunteers in our local chapter – Shelton Dickson, Roberto Lopez, and Christina Leo – we’ve all set to work to host SQL Saturday #51.
The event will be hosted on Saturday, August 21st at the shiny new facility of Nashville State Community College located at 120 White Bridge Rd. Nashville, TN 37209:
If you’d like to attend, check out all the details here. Joe Webb and Christina Leo get all the credit for logistics.
If you’d like to speak, read the details in our call for speakers here. Louis Davidson is running the program selection process.
If you’d like to sponsor, sign up on-line here. This one is my responsibility.
It’s free to register, there is a $10 fee if you want us to provide lunch. And remember, seats always fill up fast!
If you’re going to attend and you have a twitter account, be sure to tweet using #sqlsat51!
New Orleans Morial Convention Center
900 Convention Center Boulevard
New Orleans, LA USA
I'll be there with bells on! Look for me at the Ask-the-Experts lounge or the Quest Software exhibit.
CONFERENCE AGENDA
Wondering if you should go? It’s all about the education. So check for the most current and detailed conference agenda at https://northamerica.msteched.com.
Can’t make it in person? There’s still good things in store for you! Tech·Ed Online offers on-demand technical sessions recorded at our Worldwide Tech·Ed events that explore all aspects of current and soon-to-release Microsoft technologies, tools, platforms and services. View TechTalks, Panel Discussions, and Breakout sessions delivered by industry experts and leaders, engage with community influencers on Tech·Ed Blogs, and share your onsite Tech·Ed experience on the photo page.
The MacGyver meme is making the rounds and I was kindly tagged by my buddy, Thomas LaRock ( blog | twitter) – that most famous SQLRockstar, who wisely chose to tag me early in the process, lest he receive another round of disciplining like the last time. I’ve also seen several other good MacGyver Moments from Aaron Bertrand (blog), David Stein also known as Made2Mentor ( blog | twitter ), and Denny Cherry also known as MrDenny (blog). I’m looking forward to reading the bloggers that they tagged to see what others in our community have cooked up. In case you haven’t heard, your MacGyver Moments are those times when you improvised an excellent solution to a problem using non-traditional materials, techniques, or tools – like the time I repaired my flux capacitor using bailing wire, chewing gum, the tears of Glenn Beck, and the sweat of a master ninja.
I'm a bit more like MacGruber than MacGyver
Necessity is the Mutha of Invention
Believe it or not, I’ve got a long history of doing things MacGyver style. To begin with, I grew up without two nickels to rub together. That means you have to improvise – a lot. Once I hit teenage years, I was constantly tinkering with all things mechanical and electrical trying to stretch their useful lifespan beyond any conception of “reasonable use”, much like my teenage dating experiences. For example, I once cobbled together garage workshop fan from the leftover parts of an electric pencil sharpener, a frame made of bailing wire (yes, bailing wire), solder, and handmade cardboard fan blades. Shamefully, it did not include any duct tape. But it worked great! I had to do that stuff all the time out of necessity, such as with my series of malfunctioning cars and dodgy electronics. Hey, my MacGyver experiences also taught me that admitting to owning a “Plymouth Horizon” is, when trying to impress the ladies, about the same as sporting a 4″ gravy stain on your “Howling Wolf” t-shirt.
Aaaah, the Plymouth – a vehicle truly designed somewhere between the third and fifth ring of Hades. I can’t even count the number of jury-rigged fixes I put into that thing. One that stands out clearly, because my friends used this to prank me on several occasions, was the repair to the broken door handle on the driver’s side. Since I couldn’t afford replacement parts, I used bailing wire (I could always count on you, my old friend) fixed to the inner locking mechanism and a key ring as a handle dangling invisibly from the bottom door sill. About a year after that (around 1986 or so), I discovered junk yards and was able to rip a barely used mechanism from a Dodge of the same body style for $3. I became pretty well known at those junk yards – I blame Chrysler. Quality was not job 1 in those days.
Creativity and Innovation can be like that. No buck teeth in my case.
Geek Creativity
Like my friend Brent Ozar, I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) growing up. I was always the “DM”, that is, the guy who administrated the game, while all my friends played characters on the adventure. But D&D, like many good products, was designed to suck the dollars right out of your product by producing an endless stream of new adventures to play and supplements to purchase. I, on the other hand, wasn’t gonna spend a dime of my money on that. So I created my own adventures (called modules). As I got better, I constructed campaigns (i.e a related sets of modules) and from that, a related set of campaigns into an entire Tolkien-like world (this is called a mileau) which I called Aquilonia. My buddies loved it and, realizing that bragging about geekness creates an inverse coolness effect, can brag that I won some contests at regional conventions for game design.
Code Creativity
Back in the day, I remember wondering if I should stop doing things differently than my buddies and peers. For example, we were assigned to write a program that would find the day of the week based on passing in any pre-Y2K date in one of my COBOL college courses. (No mocking please – COBOL was big back then). Everyone in the class, and I mean everyone, wrote very large programs that delivered the day of the week through very large (and, imo, cumbersome) IF-THEN-ELSE structures. My program had two elegant WHILE loops and thirty-eight lines of code based on the premise that our calendar repeats every 14 years and that all months contain at least 28 days and at most 31 days. I got an A+.
SQL Server Improvisation
Back when my IT shop had bragging privileges as one of the largest enterprise installations of Microsoft SQL Server (in the v6.0 and v6.5 days), we were faced with implementing some sort of way to do bi-directional replication. The product did a good job of standard transactional replication, but bi-directional replication was only possible through a major rewrite of the application. Instead, we cooked up a way to make it work – SQL Server would allow us do outward transactional replication as the transactions occurred. We were able to bring the data back by also enabling sync replication (which is non-transactional) every evening. Thus, we got bi-directional data flows without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on third-party tools. (I must also give kudos to the team I worked with and who made this solution work, particularly Dwayne Seiber, who is still lead DBA there.)
Summary
Creativity, innovation, and improvisation are what you make of them. You must make the choice to pursue them. Yes, necessity often forces to seek out MacGyver moments. So does laziness in some cases. How many master developers do you know who’ll work very hard to fully conceptualize their program before starting to write it, saving time in the long run. Now that’s creative laziness! But MacGyver moments also stretch our abilities and call us to higher achievements.
The Modern Language Association hasn’t made up all the new rules yet to govern how one blogger should reverence, er, reference another in their blog posts. But they should! Let’s get that ball rolling for them.
I’m not exactly sure who started this format, but it’s my favorite. When writing a blog post in which you mention another person’s blog, let’s do it like this:
“blogger name (blog_hyperlink | twitter_hyperlink)”
So, we might read a blog post by my friend Kimberly Tripp (blog | twitter) that might look something like this:
“…the Scottish Terrier was so well known in early American society that as recently as the 1910′s, Manhattanite nannies instructed their young charges to be good else the “Scottish Terrier” would eat them, after a lengthy session of slobbery nuzzling and years of canine devotion. It is for this very reason that I’ve given my Scots/English husband, Paul Randal (blog |twitter), several variations of the nickname “Scottish terrier”, “scotty”, “snotty”, and “scotsnots” until such a time as needed for me to roll up the newspaper, give him a good spanking, and stick his nose in …”
Well, you get the point. And didja notice that I worked in not just one, but TWO entire examples of the blog-reference syntax?!? I can hardly believe my own craftiness. I went to university for four years to learn that y’know – and to learn how to funnel beer – but I digress.
The Call To Action
One thing I love about the SQL Server community is our very community-ness. (I also like the fact that you’ll let me invent stupid words on the fly without too much criticism.) So, let’s make the glob, {ah! damned dyslexia!} , blog reference business even easier by having you (yes, YOU) post your own blog & twitter links as a comment here.
I repeat – post a comment here containing your name, blog (with embedded hyperlink to your blog), and twitter (with embedded hyperlink to my twitter, er, YOUR twitter account).
I’ll then repost a brand new shiny article with a full compendium to everyone’s blog & twitter hyperlinks (except Brent Ozar’s (blog | twitter) ) which you can save to some obscure cranny of Outlook or WordPerfect to call up at a moments notice when the urge to both blog and reference other bloggers strikes you.
Thanks and looking forward to seeing your blog reference soon!
Notice the bluetooth ear piece fashion faux pas? Yes, she's truly a geek.
I’m happy to report that Barbie is now a cognizeti, a digerati, … yes even an IT Professional! This year’s new Barbie is Computer Engineer Barbie.
Several months back, I encouraged all my friends and followers on Twitter to vote for the IT job for Barbie in Mattel’s recent public job selection for the eponymous doll. That encouragement was founded in an experience I’d had years earlier – becoming a dad to a very beautiful baby girl. When I was growing up as a kid, I clearly recall how odd it was for a woman to have a career outside of a handful of “traditional feminine jobs” like teacher, nurse, telephone operator or secretary. It wasn’t until years later, as a new dad, that I realized how asinine this preconceived notion really was (and, in fact, still is in many cultures around the world). I even wrote about this a few years ago in my personal blog, where I mentioned how I’d love to see my daughters grow up and take on an IT career.
Sadly, many IT professional societies report dramatic imbalances in gender demographics. For example, the IEEE Computer Society reports that their membership is only 7% female. Similarly, universities in the USA shows about a 10% representation of female faculty and 14% of their students in computer-related majors.
One of the things I’d always found to be rather amazing about PASS was it’s strong emphasis on Women in Technology (WIT). In fact, as far as database professional societies go, PASS was the first to work hard to make WIT prominent within its culture (although I believe that the International Sybase User Group had a WIT group before PASS). I’d like to also give credit to the women within PASS who made this happen. I can’t even begin to list them all here, but without them, WIT at PASS would not have been possible. A few women who immediately come to mind include Rebecca Laszlo, , Kalen Delaney, Denise McInerny, Kathi Kellenberger, Stefanie Higgins, Lynda Rabb, Kimberly Tripp, and many many more.
All of these outstanding women deserve accolades for making PASS a welcoming place for women. Don’t think that it’s a big deal? You should attend an IT conference without a strong WIT community – you’ll see the difference in 30 seconds flat. (I’m not going to name any names here. But attend the top conferences for certain IT companies headquartered in Redwood City, California or Armonk, NY and you’ll see what I mean).
So, thank you ladies, for making PASS in particular and the overall Microsoft SQL Server community much better for everyone by making it better for women. I hope to see this trend continue and for your contributions to continue to improve our community.
Those TPS reports are due at 3:30 pm sharp, Mister!
If you’ve ever dealt with a manager who questioned your every move, hijacked meetings, nit-picked over inconsequential details, or made you jump through endless hoops of administrivia, then you know what I’m writing about.
This article is part one of a two part series. Part one deals with identifying how and why managers become micro-managers. Part two, coming in the next issue of the PASS Community Connector, gives you strategies you can use to survive and even thrive in these scenarios, and also tells you when to cut-n-run.
There are already questions showing up on the post. So come join the fun. Post your own questions or experiences, and help the community grow.
