The Quiet Part
Voice of the DBA
Apparently, Meta did what a lot of employees suspect their management will do: use AI to lay off people. In this case, there is that Meta used it's AI-integrated HR platform to make decisions about who to let go in a layoff. The rumor is that the AI used productivity metrics to choose who was the target of the layoff. As with a lot of AI failures, this appears to be another case of poor communication guiding the AI, or the AI not actually taking individual situations into account. A number of the people terminated were on maternity/paternity leave, which is a protected activity. Others may...
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Are You Working More Hours?
Voice of the DBA
Recently, I noticed my son was coming home later and going to work earlier. He typically works a 9/80 schedule as a software engineer, but at times he might work extra hours on a deadline. His company tries hard to keep employees working a set schedule without overtime. Unless there is a need, after all, this is software. However, when they are on a deadline, management warns people, and they try to manage overtime to reasonable levels to avoid burning out employees. I asked him if he was extra busy or if AI was encouraging extra hours. He told me this was a short-term project with a few more...
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Finding Bad Queries
Voice of the DBA
was in July, hosted by Brent Ozar, and it was a great topic: In the age of AI, when lots of people will get queries written by others (people or AIs), how can you easily and quickly review code? Review is already a challenge in the software world, and I am sure it's going to be even more challenging as people let machines author more database code. Lots of you might hope that an AI agent will write better code than your average developer, but I don't know if I'd count on that. There is a ton of poor query examples on the Internet and that's where AI models are trained. You need some sort of...
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Fixing P1 Queries
Voice of the DBA
When we look at the performance of software, we use to indicate the latency of an issue. A P95 problem is one that exceeds the time that 95% of the other queries take. In other words, this is the 5% slowest things happening, which can include database slowdowns that impact your application. For many years in software development, we have tended to work on the P95 or P90 issues, the slowest items. This is primarily because those can make a big difference to the system's performance. If I fix the slowest things, then the system feels faster. Certainly, I know lots of DBAs and developers will...
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Building Your Own Software
Voice of the DBA
Lots of AI usage has been spent inside companies on building new software. Sometimes people are trying to rebuild existing software. I've seen more than a few articles say that , or , or some other SaaS isn't going to survive because people can vibe code their own replacement. I know a few people trying to do this, with very mixed success. I saw , where he noted that most products wouldn't exist if everyone were an entrepreneur. This is because the great products exist precisely because an entrepreneur had a great idea and followed it through. They made mistakes, they learned, and they spent a...
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Make It Routine
Voice of the DBA
The first one is hard. The rest are boring. I heard this statement from someone recently, and it sounds like something a technical person would do. It's been a goal of mine, or maybe a direction to aim for, though I sometimes think that goal is more aspirational than actual. It can be hard to do that for every task. The first time I tackle something, it should be hard. It's new work. It's a new process/code/thought/action/etc. It's unfamiliar, and I spend more time on it than I want. After that, I'd hope I could repeat the thing again in much less time. That's the goal, and that's what we aim...
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Another Model, More Data Loss
Voice of the DBA
This past week I saw an article on eWeek that the newest OpenAI GPT-5.6 (Sol) model has deleted local files and live data. Files I'm less worried about, but data concerns me. There are lots of file backups, and certainly version control should be enabled for any developer tasks on which an AI works. However, data is harder, since it can change quickly, especially in live environments. There are different reports, some of which seem like more human error issues than the model's, but we should account for human error when we use models. In one report, a model had access to a live production...
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What is CPU Usage?
Voice of the DBA
I had a request from a customer recently who asked if we could give them a report of their database server instances and include CPU usage. This request was filtered through an account executive, so something was lost in translation, but I was confused and asked for clarification, as asking for CPU usage is kind of like asking how fast you were traveling in your car. There needs to be more context. If someone asked you for a report of CPU usage for a database, what would you expect? How would you report this? I'm sure the person asking might make a difference. A fellow DBA, your DBA manager,...
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The Mythical Bus Accident
Voice of the DBA
What if I got hit by a bus? I'm sure many of you have heard some variation of this, or used it, or maybe your boss told you to be ready in case you (or someone more important) gets hit by that vehicle. This is the "," and it's often used in reference to preparation for unforeseen events. Not literally someone getting hit by a bus, but perhaps a sudden accident that takes someone away from work (hopefully not fatal). Perhaps it's someone leaving for a new job. Maybe it's retirement, which is something my boss and I at chat about periodically. Don't worry, I'm not planning on retiring anytime...
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Security and AI Fail
Voice of the DBA
The AI boom is still growing like crazy. Many organizations are trying to learn how they can use AI to improve operations and become more efficient, at a reasonable cost. Plenty of companies are spending crazy amounts of AI tokens, sometimes blowing their yearly budgets in months and not necessarily receiving substantial value back. Some companies are trying to train AIs to understand their operations and perhaps reduce their other costs, primarily labor. Still others are tip-toeing in the waters of AI LLM use and conducting smaller experiments, with limited access to AI technology. Meta has...
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