I Need a CS Degree. I Don't Need a CS Degree
Voice of the DBA
For a long time I've felt that my recommendation for people wanting to enter technology wasn't to go to college and get a degree, but rather start to learn on your own and get an entry level job (help desk, tech support, etc.) and start to work in the industry. That's a good way to both experiment and understand what you're considering undertaking as a career, as well as limiting your investment. It's also nice to get paid to learn something. College is great, but it's also expensive. I find that for many people, it can be hard to get a good ROI from college these days. The fast rising cost,...
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The Cloud Security Problem
Voice of the DBA
Your management gets a great demo from a cloud vendor and decides that the organization needs to implement the new service/application/etc. quickly. Your team tries to comply, furiously learning and experimenting with integrations, software changes, infrastructure configuration, and more. Things get deployed are working. Clients and management are happy with the new capabilities and you breathe a sigh of relief. After a bit of time there's a security issue and all of a sudden there's blame pouring down on everyone. The vendor takes a hit because it's a public security problem, but the reality...
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Databases for Executives
Voice of the DBA
There's an article at Forbes about the . Disclosure, it's by my boss, but I think it's still a good read. These are points we've learned from research and work with customers and prospects at Redgate Software. These points come from you, as well as from executives with whom we work, but there are so many people in organizations who don't think about the complexity of data, so it's a good one to pass along. The five things are (if you don't want to read): data is growing, getting more complex, there are multiple database platforms in most estates, teams struggle (duh), and data is a business...
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Knowing Your Total Reward
Voice of the DBA
For much of my career as a younger person, I was mostly concerned with salary at a job, along with the opportunities for my career. I really wanted to know how much money would hit my bank account and cared most about that. I also wanted to know if I would learn something or get a better title or work with a technology that might help me in the future. That drove me through quite a few jobs in my 20s and 30s, leaving some for more money and more opportunity. As I got a family, I became more concerned about healthcare since that industry is a mess in the US. Often when I looked at a job, I...
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When Companies Fail
Voice of the DBA
I own a Tesla, which is essentially a computer on wheels. Much of the way the car works is driven by software, which I love. New features have appeared and minor fixes come through in the same way that they do for apps on my mobile device. It can be annoying to wait for an update to install, which has happened when my wife or I start the update remotely and don't realize the other is planning on driving. Fortunately, I can set these to run overnight from my phone and they mostly disappear into the background. I don't worry about Tesla failing, at least, that hasn't been on my mind, but I ran...
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Tech Debt Perils
Voice of the DBA
My wife and I have been thinking about some new audio equipment. We've been a little unhappy with our Bose soundbar because of the software flakiness and sporadic network connectivity issues. In looking around, I saw a Sonos product, but after reading a bit about the company's recent history, I decided to look elsewhere. Sidebar: if any of you have recommendations that aren't high-end $$$$ audio, let me know. Read the rest of
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The Vast Expansions of Hardware
Voice of the DBA
At the recently, one of the talks looked at hardware advances. It was interesting to see a data perspective on hardware changes, as many of us only worry about the results of hardware: can I get my data quickly? In or out, most of us are more often worried about performance than specs. However, today I thought it might be fun to look at a few changes and numbers to get an idea of how our hardware has changed, in the march towards dealing with more and more data. Big data anyone? In thinking about disks, I saw a chart that looked at the changes from HDD (hard disk drives) to SDD (solid state...
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The Modern Algorithm of Chance
Voice of the DBA
These days algorithms rule much of the world. From how supply chains are managed to how vehicles run their engines to the media that many of us watch on the various streaming services. I assume that most of you know that algorithms drive what you see on social media, on YouTube, and even the search results you get, and what you see might be different than what I see. There is a constant search for a perfect, or at least, very targeted way of getting you what you want. Or at least what the algorithm thinks you want. However, is that the best way for algorithms to be designed? It is for the...
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The Role of Databases in the Era of AI
Voice of the DBA
I'm hosting a webinar tomorrow with this same title: The Role of Databases in the Era of AI. and you'll get some other perspectives from Microsoft and Rie Merritt. However, I think this is an interesting topic and decided to try and synthesize some thoughts into an editorial today, partially to prep for tomorrow and partly because I'm fascinated by AI and how it will be used in the future. Read the rest of
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Everything is Code
Voice of the DBA
with this quote: “The content updates had not previously been treated as code because they were strictly configuration information.” This is to a US Congressional committee in trying to explain how they grounded much of the airline industry a few months ago. That was a mess of a situation, and apparently, the vendor didn't think their configuration was part of their code. That's an amazing viewpoint to me. The fact that any developer or manager thinks that their configuration data isn't a part of their code is worth testing. Yet, I see this attitude all the time, where developers, QA,...
info_outlineMost of us will have more than one job in our career. In fact many of us will likely find a new job in the next five years. I hope I'm not in that group, but I recognize that it's a possibility. We never know when our situation will change, or our employer's situation will change. That is one reason I recommend you keep your resume up to date and continue to work on improving your skills.
I saw an office hours short recently from Brent Ozar, in which someone had asked him if they should apply for a job even though they didn't meet all of the requirements or know all of the desired technologies. Brent recommended the person apply, and his reasoning was that often a DBA (or other data pro) often gets asked to do a variety of tasks in an organization. The DBA job often crosses lots of boundaries and may end up working on a Active Directory issues, reporting, ETL, and more. When A DBA leaves a job, the organization looks for a replacement that can handle that same wide variety of things.
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