Voice of the DBA
There is a skill that I think DBAs and sysadmins will need to develop: cloud cost analysis. I've thought this was important for quite a few years, and I've been (unsuccessfully) lobbying for cost information to be gathered and analyzed in . Hopefully, this work will get done soon, as I see more companies asking their technical people to provide analysis and justification of the resources being billed for in the cloud. Basecamp analyzed its costs in 2023 and . I've seen other companies decide they were saving money in the cloud. Many, however, are likely unsure of the total return they get...
info_outline Another View of DevOpsVoice of the DBA
Chocolatey Solutions Engineer said, "DevOps isn’t something you do, but rather, it’s a way of doing things. What works for us here, may not work for you there, so you adjust." He then went on to say that DevOps is a way of working that reduces time to introduce changes, while at the same time making changes traceable, accountable, and revertable. I've seen many companies try to copy what another company has done, especially with regards to DevOps and software development. I see companies copy the organization of teams from , , or others. Often quite a bit of time and effort is spent...
info_outline An Experimental MindsetVoice of the DBA
I wrote recently since I've found far too many people who didn't know Git well (or at all) and they seemed hesitant to experiment and learn. Is this because of being too busy? Do we have so many people who are working in tech where "it's just a job" and not because they enjoy technology? Or has management in too many places beaten people down to the point they don't want to try things? Perhaps your coworkers are resistant to change (or lazy) and you don't want to discuss new ideas with them. Read the rest of
info_outline Re-platformingVoice of the DBA
Re-platforming is the process of moving a system to a new platform. Imagine taking an ASP.NET/SQL Server website and moving to Azure Functions on Azure SQL Database. Or maybe taking a Java client/server app with Oracle and moving it to a series of microservices against MongoDB. Those changes could be a net benefit to your organization in the end, but they aren't quick or easy. They're often fraught with various challenges that can cause a lot of stress while creeping over budget. There's if you embark upon a re-platform. Often this takes place when an organization is looking to modernize...
info_outline Protecting Off HoursVoice of the DBA
to allow employees to protect themselves from unreasonable calls and emails from work during off-hours. You can read more about it, but a bill was passed to allow employees to ignore calls and messages without repercussion It is expected to pass, though I don't expect this to do a lot for bad bosses. They'll find ways to hint or imply that you need to respond, and might even remove your chances of advancement/promotion/raises. While you can sue, that rarely works out well for anyone. From the various reports I've seen, I'm not sure if this includes salaried workers or just hourly...
info_outline Growing Skills at WorkVoice of the DBA
Redgate released the results of their recently, and I was part of . As we were talking, one of the things that struck me was the high number of people who had picked skills as being a challenge for their organization. In a single environment, , and it was listed as . While this industry is full of self-taught individuals who have spent time learning new technologies and tools, it's somewhat amazing that training continues to be an issue. Many organizations limit their training budgets and time allocated to employees while continuing to expand the number of technologies and platforms they use....
info_outline Navigating the Database LandscapeVoice of the DBA
The title of our keynote session at the is Navigating the Database Landscape, and I'll be delivering part of the talk, along with Grant Fritchey and Kathi Kellenberger today, Mar 13. This is based on the , as well as our experience working with customers and implementing DevOps solutions over the last decade. The talk was mostly written by others, but as I rehearsed the session, I found myself wondering about how I'd approach my job if we returned to being a DBA or developer. When working in technology today, there are many challenges outside of actually learning about any of the particular...
info_outline Is This a Good DBA Job Description?Voice of the DBA
I saw this on one of the syndicated SQL Server Central blogs: . This is mostly a list of things, but it covers a lot of the general types of things that many of us expect a DBA to do. However, my question is whether you think this is a good description for a job opening. Would you ask someone to fill this list of things? Maybe a better question is whether you could use this to evaluate candidates, and how would you go about asking questions or gauging a fit based on this. Perhaps you should ask yourself how you evaluate others and if there is a good way to rate them against a list of daily...
info_outline Assistants in the Age of AIVoice of the DBA
When I started working for a living, there were secretaries in many organizations. These were people who actually did a lot of correspondence (written or verbal) and busy work for managers or executives. Over time, as email and computers became commonplace on desks, I saw fewer of these positions. As more people started to send email, we had to actually alter software to allow assistants to impersonate their bosses and manage the volume of communications that many of us deal with. We're in a new age of assistants with the emergence of Generative AIs powered by LLMs that can appear to respond...
info_outline Creating Candidate InterestVoice of the DBA
It can be hard to find candidates for positions these days. I know there are a lot of people looking for jobs, but are they the ones you want? Are they a good fit for your team? Those are hard questions to answer when culling through resumes, conducting phone screens, and sitting in interview rooms asking questions from a template. What can be even harder is to compare different candidates when multiple people may interact with the candidates. Even if you do all the work, you're busy. Can you make good comparisons of different individuals that you've spoken to across a few weeks, in between...
info_outlineGE is an amazing company. They seem to have so many divisions and produce a wide variety of products. Their financial investment success amazed the world and made Jack Welch an icon to many businesspeople. I remember reading about revolutionary management techniques at one of their jet engine plants that dramatically increased efficiency and performance of that location, similar to the ways that DevOps can produce better software. They have transformed the company from light bulbs to televisions to nuclear power and more across the decades.
And they're not done yet. GE is building a workforce for the 21st century, teaching many of their employees about data science and machine learning. The company is working to retrain scientists and help them explore new ways of using AI techniques to build better software. There are machine learning and data analytics courses available to employees, with the aim of creating hybrid employees that add digital skills to the knowledge they already have in other areas.
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