Professional Development

Turtles All The Way Down

Aug 18, ’10 8:14 AM

This has nothing to do with turtles. Just in case you didn’t figure it out, I wanted to make that clear. However, I am really excited to announce that I’m joining Quest Software as a Database Expert. My official job title is still up in the air, but let’s talk a little bit about what I’m going to be doing.

I’m going to stay involved in the community. That’s a big one right there. I’m still going to be on the Board of Directors for PASS. I’m still going to run my local user group (until we have elections and I’m voted off the island). I’m still going to speak at SQL Saturdays and the like. I’m still going to blog about all the crazy messed up things that I do with data. (Have I mentioned that I really like data?)

I’m going to keep solving problems. One of the things that I enjoyed the most about the last two years at Cass Information Systems is that I wasn’t just a DBA. I worked with a great team of developers to solve a variety of problems. Some days I sat in on meetings with them to just give advice based on prior experience. Some days I would be tuning T-SQL. Some days I would be working to help design the optimal solution to a problem using a combination of C# and T-SQL. Solving problems is something that I love. I never want to stop doing it. In fact, I made things change because of the problems that I would be able to solve; these are problems that have been running through my head for a long time.

I love code. I really mean it – I love writing code. There’s nothing like opening up an editor and whipping up some code to solve a problem. I wanted to download a bunch of PDFs, I figured out how. This new position means that I’ll have the opportunity to combine the things that I love – community, problem solving, code, and data – to do some really cool things.

I should stop bolding the first sentence of every paragraph, shouldn’t I?

Let’s make this a bit freaky for you: I’m not going to be working exclusively with SQL Server. In fact, I’m not even going to be working exclusively with RDBMSes.

Did you guess it yet? That’s right: I’m going to be working with cloud databases and NoSQL.

Since you’re reading this right now, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been writing a lot about MongoDB, other NoSQL databases, as well as PostgreSQL lately. I’m exploring the world around me and writing about what I’m finding out. This is an amazing time to be looking at different ways to store data. I’m incredibly excited by all of this new technology. People notice that.

You too can have fabulous prizes. A lot of people have said it before. Hell, I’m going to be saying it this Saturday in Nashville: show your passion. People notice it. Even if that passion leads you away from the fold, follow it. When you write and speak with passion, people will take notice. When you share what you’ve learned with passion, people will take notice.

I didn’t respond to an ad on craigslist. I’d like to think that this opportunity came about because of the time I spend with you, the community, the time I spend blogging, and the time I spend presenting. These are all things that I love doing and now I’m going to be paid to do them. I’m not sure it gets any better than this….

Comments (28)

Presenting for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter

Jun 7, ’10 8:36 PM

Wednesday, June 16th, I will be presenting for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter.

The Live Meeting starts at 1PM EST and will last for around an hour. You can click on this glorious link to attend.

Title: Taking Control of Your Career

Abstract: Raises, promotions, and job offers don’t happen by accident; you need a plan. Through careful planning you can create and reach impressive goals. But what’s the point of reaching your goals if nobody notices? “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply when you’re building your career.

In this session I will show you:

How to set achievable goals
The importance of planning your career
Methods for recording and communicating your accomplishments

Comments (4)

Knowing and not Knowing

Jan 14, ’10 9:00 AM

In the IT field, people have the expectation that we’ll always have an answer or a solution. The problem is that we usually don’t have the answer. A lot of the time, we don’t even have the beginnings of a clue. Your reaction when you don’t have an answer speaks volumes. I’m going to use a story to illustrate this point.

The Story

Adam and Bill work together at Amalgamated Spats. During a design meeting Adam mentions a product that could solve some of the problems the developers at Amalgamated Spats are facing. Although Adam is a specialist, he has a great deal of work on his plate and Bill is designated to develop the features. Bill isn’t a specialist, he’s a generalist. Bill is a great developer, but he’s unfamiliar with this specific product.

Over the course of development, Bill makes great strides. Unfortunately, there are some features that he isn’t able to solve programmatically even though they are included in the product. These features are features that were sold as part of reason to use the product. When Adam and Bill’s manager talks to Bill about his progress, Bill tells the manager that he wasn’t able to get the features done because it isn’t possible using the product. The problem is that the features do exist in the product, they just weren’t available the way Bill was using it.

Adam and Bill’s manager is upset that they’ve put so much faith in this product. While the manager trusts Adam, Bill has been working with the product day in and day out, trying to implement these features – why wouldn’t Bill tell the truth? As a result, Adam loses credibility. He can get that credibility back, and certainly will, but for a while it’s gone.

The Problem

There are a couple of problems with this situation:

Bill has effectively thrown Adam under the bus (we call this bussing). Adam has lost credibility with the manager because he gave “wrong” advice.
Bill said “No” when he should have said “I don’t know.”

Of these, the second is far worse. Ultimately, the first problem will go away and Adam will gain that respect back and everyone will be happy again. But the second problem speaks volumes.

It’s Not Okay to Say “I don’t know”

But I just said that Bill should have said “I don’t know,” right? Wrong. Saying “I don’t know” and ending it at that is not acceptable. In this crazy software development world, it’s our job to find the solutions to problems. Did you read that correctly? I didn’t say that it’s our job to code the solutions to problems, it’s our job to find the solutions to problems. Sometimes the solution is to use an existing solution or feature which you can only find through research. Do you see what I’m getting at yet? “I don’t know” isn’t acceptable but saying “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” is perfectly acceptable.

What’s the difference?

When you say “I don’t know” and you stop there you’re effectively throwing your hands in the air and giving up. You’re not only admitting that you don’t know, but that your lack of knowing is the end of it. It ends the conversation

If you say “I don’t know, but let’s find out,” you’re telling the other person that you don’t know the answer and it bothers you. It bothers you so much that you’re going to find out the answer. You’re advertising your inquisitive mindset and the way you solve problems.

What Should I Do?

The next time someone asks you a question where you don’t know the answer, tell them you don’t know. Be completely upfront about it. Follow that up with “but I’ll find out.” Then, actually find out the answer. Research the problem, research the product, and consult with experts – even if you think you are one.

Comments (3)

Shameless Self Promotion

Nov 17, ’09 8:30 AM

or How to get Yourself Adopted from the Animal Shelter

A Trip to the Humane Society

Way back in 2001, I took a trip to the local humane society. Ostensibly, I was going there with my girlfriend at the time to look at kittens. We were resolved about not getting a cat that day. This story wouldn’t be interesting if we didn’t get a cat, so I’ll spoil the ending for you and let you know that we did take a cat home that day.

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to visit your local humane society, but I will let you know that it is a series of cages filled with the cutest animals you have ever seen. The kittens are particularly cute balls of fuzz that either nap in a ball of kittens, meow in a pile of kittens, or frolic in some kind of tumbleweed of kittens. On that magical day, my normally cold heart was warmed by frolicking kittens and I took one of them out of a cage and brought her to one of the little rooms where you can acclimatize to an animal and make sure it isn’t going to try to claw your face off.

Sure enough, this kitten did not want to claw my face off. Instead she wanted to run in circles, meow, rub up against my leg and beg for attention. The very reason I pulled her out of her cage was because she was perched at the very front of the cage, waving one tiny paw through the bars, crying for attention. In short, she was a vocal kitten.

The Pay Off – For Someone

Eight years later, I still have that kitten, although she has grown to be the largest cat I have ever seen. If you are reading this after 5 PM Eastern time, there is a very good change that this cat is perched behind my head on the back of my desk chair. She still gets a lot of attention because she still calls out for attention – she shows me the toys she has “killed”, the socks she has shredded, and makes me aware of the random other things that cats do when people aren’t watching.

The point is that she knows how to get the attention and praise that she wants. Over the years she has learned the most effective ways to annoy the heck out of me and still get a positive response. Because my cat demands my attention, she gets it.

What Does This Have to do With Anything?

The point is – if my cat can figure out how to get attention and praise, you can get attention and praise (or free tuna). More appropriately: you can make your accomplishments known and profit from them.

Your Accomplishments

First off, it’s important that you start keeping track of your accomplishments. A few months ago, I mentioned making a personal development plan. One of the things in your PDP should be a list of your accomplishments. It’s going to be silly for you to make a list of your accomplishments once a year. Instead, I keep a list of my accomplishments in a text file. You could just as easily use a spreadsheet, One Note, Outlook, or any other record system. The point is that you’re recording your accomplishments.

Record and Review

Any time I do something that I’m particularly proud of, I add it to this list. If I’m not at home, I’ll send my self a reminder email from my phone to add whatever I’m pleased about to my list. The key about my approach is to record everything that you do and review it later. Don’t think, just record it. Did you fix a server and resolve a production outage in 30 minutes when it could have taken 24 hours? Record it. Re-write a stored procedure to use 95% fewer reads? Record it. Save the company $10,000,000 by shipping flanging skrill production to Denmark? Record it.

The point is, you’re recording it. You can filter it later.

I like to review this list of accomplishments weekly, at the very least. This keeps my recent accomplishments fresh in my mind and it helps me focus on my goals. A lot of the time, I’ll open up a copy of my PDP and have it in front of my while I review my goals. This not only helps me determine if I’m on the right track to meeting my goals, it also helps me keep track of whether or not my long-term goals and my current situation are aligned. This also gives me the chance to revise my PDP as the year goes on, rather than marching forward foolishly thinking that my goals from three months ago are still one hundred percent valid.

At the end of the day, you won’t get anywhere without making people aware of you, what you’ve done, and what you expect in return.

Comments (1)

Pragmatic Thinking & Learning Reviewed

Oct 8, ’09 9:00 AM

From the moment I started reading this book, I had a hard time putting it down. I read it far into the night. I read it waiting for oil changes, tattoos, and computer reboots. I re-read parts of it while I was still reading it. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I took a lot away from it.

Overview

First of all, what is this book all about? After all, we all should know how to think and learn by now, right? Well, that’s the big kicker, as it turns out. A lot of the things we were taught about learning might have worked growing up. And a lot of that was wrong, too.

There are a lot of websites, blogs, books, magazines, articles, and wags out there who claim to have the secret to make you a more effective person if only you follow these ten guidelines. Pragmatic Thinking & Learning isn’t one of those books. It’s not a how to book. It’s not a tutorial or instruction manual. It’s a reference manual.

How Does it Work?

This book is endorsed by cheesy DBAs everywhere.

Pragmatic Thinking & Learning is based on copious amounts of research on learning backed up by real world results. This is more than one lone programmer’s ideas on how we should learn. It’s based on research across a number of fields – from nursing to the cognitive sciences – and references are provided to all of the source material. If you were so inclined, this would be a great introduction to a variety of theories.

One of the most important things that Pragmatic Thinking & Learning stresses is that, just like programming, we need to constantly be refactoring our thought processes. Instead of focusing on something that works, Andy Hunt stresses the importance of looking at how something works, why it works, and what could be going better. As much of the process of effective learning comes from unlearning bad habits while learning good ones. While many authors leave it at that and let the reader decide how to unlearn, Andy provides strategies, backed by research, to make change possible. He stresses the importance of engaging the whole brain and provides ways to do so. This book is chock full of exercises that are designed to get the reader geared up and refactoring their thought processes in no time.

Verdict

Pragmatic Thinking & Learning is a great book. It’s going on my shelf next to Getting Things Done and I plan on re-reading both books in six months to see what I’m doing wrong, what I’m doing right, and what I can be doing better. This book will be a distinct asset to re-working my process. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to rethink how they’re doing things and thinks that there is a better way.

Comments (1)

Your Own Personal Development Plan

Sep 14, ’09 9:00 AM

It’s September. I think that means that autumn is upon us. It also means that it’s time for me – and my coworkers – to work on our Professional Development Plans. I’m not going to lie, I love the idea behind doing a PDP (I’m already sick of typing Professional Development Plan). You should probably think of the phrase Personal Development Plan instead of Professional Development Plan whenever you see PDP. Why? Because you don’t work with me, probably.

What Are You On About Now?

A PDP is basically a big list that you agonize about for days on end until you rush through it at the very last minute and turn it in to the owners of your company only to say, 5 minutes later, “Oh, shit! I completely left off the only project where I actually did any work!” Unfortunately, this description does nothing for you because you weren’t sitting in my cubicle during the 45 minutes I frantically slapped my PDP together. (Just kidding, boss, I carefully crafted my PDP over several long days. After hours. On non-billable time.)

No, Seriously, What is a PDP?

The point of a PDP is to help us proactively manage our career. As a consultant I’m not always working directly with people from my company. Not that I can blame my clients, but my career advancement isn’t really their top priority. Even when I am working with my fellow consultants, they’re usually reporting to me and are more concerned about their needs than my long term career goals. This PDP thing serves as a road map – something to revisit and revise throughout the year to help me stay on track. It’s incredibly important to have a good grasp of your goals, especially when you don’t have a lot of contact with the person doing your performance review.

Roadmap. Think of a PDP as a roadmap. A roadmap you’re drawing on as you move forward. You’ve probably also got some sticky notes (those cool ones with arrows) pointing to highlights along the way. I’m hoping that your career is filled with pit stops like the Christmas barn that’s between Columbus and Cleveland along I-71.

How Do I Do This Thing?

I’m going to assume, for the sake of argument, that you have never done one of these before. That’s okay. It really isn’t a difficult process, but you’ll probably want to take about a day for this, certainly a few hours.

What Have You Done?

Basically, the first step is to review what’s happened. If you’ve never done this before, this could take a while. You’ll want to take a look at your career and your major accomplishments since your last review. Make a list. Also make a list of everything you’ve learned over the last year – this could be your successes, your failures, your missed opportunities, anywhere you had the opportunity to learn. The important thing here is to make a big list of everything. If you can think of somewhere that you feel like you should’ve done something but you didn’t, make a note of that too.

I write about what I’m the most proud of first. This gets the juices flowing, so to speak. By writing about something that I’m proud of and passionate about I’m going to fill myself with energy and ideas. I’m going to describe every little thing about what I’ve done. And when I’m done I’m going to want to keep talking about all of the awesome things that I’ve done because I think they’re fascinating. Once I’m full of energy and enthusiasm, I’m going to keep on writing until I don’t have ideas. And that’s what you want.

How Did You Get Here?

Don’t stop with a list of accomplishments! Move on to the next step make a list of your key strengths. This is going to be very important later on. The key is to actually look at your own abilities and be honest about your skills. Are you really an Excel expert or do you just know how to use the auto sum feature? Be brutally honest. It’s okay. Being honest gives you the opportunity to learn more.

This used to be my favorite part of doing these kind of reviews until I realized that I was breaking all of my skills down to minute specialties in order to have more bullet points. Just be honest. Don’t mention every nook and cranny of C# that you know. Just write down “Strong C# development skills” – you aren’t trying to impress anyone with the list of esoteric APIs you’ve memorized.

What Could You Have Done Better?

This is the part where I literally ask myself “What could I have done better over the last year?” It’s a rough question to ask yourself, but the key here is that you probably have answered this question without even realizing it when you made a list of everything you’ve done over the last year. Remember how I said to include your failures, missed opportunities, and anywhere you had the opportunity to learn? Well, you can elaborate on these opportunities here. When you’re making this list, remind yourself that these aren’t your failings, they are really just places that you could have done something better. Everyone drops the ball every now and the. It’s okay. The key is to get back up and learn from what happened.

Once you have a list of places you could have improved, go over the list and think about each item one at a time. How can you get better? Is there a book you can read? A class you can take? Is there someone you can talk to about mentoring you?

What are your goals?

You need to be thinking about your goals. What do you want to do?

We’re not talking about what you want to do for lunch. You need to be thinking about what you want to be doing with your career. Think about the next year, the next three years, and the next five years. Do you want to be running your own department? Starting your own consulting company? Retired?

For some help in setting your goals, take a look at the idea of SMART goals. Basically, you want to make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. The important thing to keep in mind is that the farther out the goal the less specific it needs to be.

How are you going to get there?

At this point, you have a list of everything you’ve done well, everything you could have done better, and your goals. Now it’s time to set up plans to achieve your goals. Make sure that your plans and your goals are realistic. Share these goals with a mentor, co-worker, or friend to get some input and guidance. It’s important to get some external validation. I know that I have a habit of being too hard on myself and I set up goals that are a bit out of range, so I seek the advice of a few trusted advisors.

I make it a point to review my plan and goals every month. Once every three months or so, I meet and talk with a few people – mentors, friends, and the owners of my company. The whole point of this is to stay on track and make sure I’m working toward my goals. If I’m straying away from my goals, or if I’m accomplishing them faster or slower than normal, it’s good to re-center and get back on track.

What’s Next?

Every year conduct a review. Look at yourself critically, but honestly, and always strive to keep improving and keep your career and your goals aligned.