October 13, 2015 at 12:21 pm
I started my career as a junior SQL DBA. I was very excited and I was working very hard with a lot of passion. As I was learning new things, I really enjoyed getting more and more work from my senior DBAs and TL. I was always tried to deliver on time as per schedule. I often spent a lot of weekend and off work hours learning new things. I setup a lab at my home and I almost implemented everything withing the scope of my technology at my home lab. I also completed required certification and became certificated DBA. Within about couple of years, I became an excellent problem solver and well respected individual within our organization. I got promoted as a senior DBA after about three years of joining. I was very excited and happy that time. We used to be five DBAs that time to support about 2000 databases within our organization.
But then in 2008, our work got outsourced to a big IT service provider company which I will not name here. They laid off two DBAs and other two DBAs changed their job voluntarily. So after about a year, I was the only one DBA on site supporting our client. The rest of team members were in another country and they were also supporting other clients. They didn’t hire any onsite replacement for those talented DBAs who left our organization. They made me Team lead and I was the main point of contact to client. I started getting shitload of work(please excuse me words here but it is true.) and I started spending a lot of my personal time outside working hours to resolve issues and to implement new projects. I started getting depressed feeling because of work pressure and because of my inability to spend much time with my family and friends. Even I was not getting enough time to learn new things and to keep myself up-to-date with current technology. I tried to stay away from people from client side as much as I can because they were giving me more and more work without worrying about my capacity, health and decreased performance due to workload. They somehow started taking me granted. I took vacations in order to overcome this feeling but it didn’t help. After coming back from vacation, I used to have thousands of emails and tens of projects waiting for me or my guidance. Because I was not able to deliver on time, my credibility and respect with client started going south. I started realizing that it is not my fault but it is because of my employer’s tactics to save money by getting rid of talented people onsite and hiring fresher level people offshore. Offshore team was there but they were not good at taking decisions and taking initiative to get the work done.
I then gave up and resigned from my job. I gave notice of five weeks with the hope that my employer will hire more people to replace me but unfortunately I didn’t get anyone to do knowledge transfer. I did KT to my offshore team lead.
I got another job right away(my current job) and but I am facing same issue here too. There is no offshore tem and client-employer relationship here but we are very much understaffed here. I started getting overwhelmed with work and getting thoughts again about changing job but I am worried that I will feel the same on my next job too. Also due to workload and lack of time, I feel like my knowledge is not very much current with my technology. I am feeling very much down in spite of a lot of hard work and dedication towards my work in last 8 years or so. I am feeling like a loser because I am not happy with my work and at the other end I am not able to provide much time to my family. Also my health is going south due to stress and tension.
Anyone else felt this way or feeling this way? How did you overcome this situation? Any advice will be helpful. Please respond...
P.S. – I know that this is mainly a technical forum but I still posted this question here because I am certain that I am not alone with this feeling and surely someone else with same background felt this way.
October 13, 2015 at 12:31 pm
I wish you well. You may need to talk to a professional (psychiatrist) to help with the depression.
I have never been in your position as your problems are the reason I do not want to be in management.
Good luck.
October 13, 2015 at 1:04 pm
Hi Djj,
Appreciate your response but I want to say that I am not in any management position. As I mentioned in my post, I am working as a DBA currently and I am part of a team which is understaffed.
I used to be a TL on my previous job but here I am not.
Thanks.
October 13, 2015 at 2:58 pm
Taking your story at face value, assuming it's not all in your head, it sounds like your current and previous job are on the crappy side of the bell curve. However, it's common, and we've all been there at some point.
The truth is that successful IT professionals make their own luck. Read this article and google more about what it means to "make your own luck".
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2004-07-25/winners-make-their-own-good-luck
I don't think anyone would fault you for seeking a better job, and perhaps you should have left when your original coworkers did. But you probably need to speak to a friend or career counselor to help sort out what it is your looking for and why you get stuck in the same rut time after time.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
October 21, 2015 at 8:29 am
Sorry to hear what's going on. It sounds really tough.
Personally, I'd first try making changes to my current position. Explain to them where things are off the tracks and why. Make positive suggestions for improvements. Set some goals for when these things need to start happening by. If they don't, time for step two. Find another job. A good DBA is very difficult to find. Lots and lots of organizations are looking for them. Assuming you're not in Dubuque where the number of companies might be small (not picking on them, just using them as an example of a small, isolated situation), you have choices. Exercise them.
And when it comes to family, just walk away from the job. "Sorry, no on-call for me this weekend, taking my son camping." Assuming appropriate notice, work will deal with it or they won't. If they won't, see step two above.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
October 21, 2015 at 10:08 am
I've been there, and my wife is going through it right now. I would start with not taking work home with you -- if you're not getting paid to work after hours, don't do it. You and your family are infinitely more important. If you want to study new things in tech in your personal time, fine. But taking work home is increasing your stress for no reward. Counseling might help, it's worth trying.
My suggestion would be to start with mapping out your day and your duties. Work out how your time is used in broad terms, then go to your boss and explain your workload vs incoming projects. Try to get a policy in place that ALL new projects must go to your boss for prioritization. If he starts dumping everything on you, then ask him what vital thing you should stop doing. It's possible that your boss and higher management don't understand how slammed you are, this will help show what's actually going on. If the out-sourced help isn't helping, then management needs to either (A) hold their feet to the contractual fire and get them to be actually useful, (B) find another out-source firm that is useful, or (C) start re-building internally. Saving money by out-sourcing seems to rarely be a true savings.
Risking your mental and physical health IS NOT WORTH IT. When I told my friends that I'd given notice at a job that I'd been at for nine years, they said "You haven't been happy there for a long time." THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME YOU NOTICED THAT?! But I left there, had a lot of trouble getting another job (it was just before the 2001 tech bubble burst), but I'm in an infinitely better place and life now.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
October 21, 2015 at 10:24 pm
I started getting lot of work and I started spending a lot of my personal time outside working hours to resolve issues and to implement new projects.
In the modern business environment you should only do the hours you're paid, and research required to solve job-related problems should only be done and paid within working hours. Think of it as when you hire a lawyer; it's not possible or expected that one should know everything and so the client pays for any research time as appropriate.
Obviously you can work on your career outside of hours but don't do work. Doing work outside of hours has important implications: the company's liability and health insurance may not be covering you, the company may be missing out on government/taxation research and development rebates, and you may even be breaking employment law (people can't work for free after all, it's called slavery).
I gave notice of five weeks with the hope that my employer will hire more people to replace me but unfortunately I didn’t get anyone to do knowledge transfer. I did KT to my offshore team lead.
This is a standard trickle down effect and nothing to concern yourself over. People leave poor companies. Poor companies have poor managers. Poor managers take neither care or attention to detail in their jobs. They have poor hiring practices and often hire poor staff. They have no idea how to conduct a KT.
Because I was not able to deliver on time, my credibility and respect with client started going south.
IMHO your credibility only drops when you promise the earth and don't deliver. To avoid this, don't promise what you know you can't deliver.
Anyone else felt this way or feeling this way? How did you overcome this situation?
I have a list. Emergencies in at the top, the middle is split to equal portions of business-as-usual work and self-directed improvements (to reduce business-as-usual work and which are often yearly KPIs themselves), and new requests go down the bottom.
If scheduling needs to change to accommodate someone then I refer them to my manager. It's the manager's job to let other people down when they haven't hired enough staff to get the job done, not yours. Also only the manager can approve overtime payments, and even if you're on a salary, you don't do overtime without getting paid (remember?), and regardless of whatever weasel garbage they put into the contract. Courts consistently uphold cases against companies that exploit 5-10-15 minutes of additional work to mean hours and hours week after week.
When it comes to estimating times I don't over-commit myself. I make sure my estimates account for everything including rollbacks. 5 short tasks spread out over 5 hours is 5 hours, no matter how long each individual task takes, because it's unlikely you're going to be productive context switching in between (plus it's dangerous).
I don't haggle estimates; if the boss thinks a 5 hour job takes 5 minutes then the boss can do it. I do my job my way to my standards and I can confidently explain them. I would (and have) walked away from companies that felt cutting important corners at the risk of my job was acceptable. At the end of the day when things go wrong you're the one who is going to get the blame no matter what, so make sure you have yourself covered.
Oh yeah and I delegate, even if I know other staff won't do a perfect job, sometimes that's good enough plus they need the opportunity to learn and grow themselves. If I'm doing a rote task, I try to automate. And if I'm doing a rote task that a customer can do and I'm not adding any value, you can bet your butt that the customer is (likely) to get access to do it themselves in the future.
In short, I say, "No", and you should too.
October 23, 2015 at 8:06 am
As above, talk to your manager about priorities and stop taking work to home.
If possible get some training time so you won't have to do training in personal time, so your mind wander off.
October 23, 2015 at 8:48 am
Often times in the aftermath of a corporate acquisition or downsizing, executive management will simply stop investing in specific divisions or teams, because they are not considered important to be bottom line. They'll do whatever is minimally required to keep it operating until they decide what the next move is. Perhaps the application you are supporting is legacy (another team is currently building a replacement?) or perhaps it's a line of business that operates at a loss. If that's the case, then it's time to take your skills and move on where they are valued more.
That's what free market capitalism does best; it provides economic incentives to move resources (oil, steel, labor, talent) from where it is undervalued and over supplied to where they are in short supply valued most. At least that's what I consider the most important aspect of capitalism. Don't feel guilty; make the move and don't look back. If you don't find your ideal job, then somebody else will.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
October 23, 2015 at 1:16 pm
I've been there. I was a DBA for about 5 years and worked in very different environments. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to be a good DBA; it takes a ton of effort to create an environment where a DBA can be happy and successful. I had a DBA job for about a year and a half where the environment was complete anarchy. I would get calls at 3AM to find out that someone whose rights I removed from Prod were re-granted those rights by someone else and they, again, caused a bunch of damage. I would get yelled at because I did not respond to calls fast enough while I was on vacation. Just madness. I left that company and was in a similar (not nearly as bad but still bad) situation for a huge bank.
There are great DBA jobs out there. If you are a good DBA then the jobs are out there for you to take. Don't feel bad about making another move. I took a job once and quit in 6 weeks because I have high standards and refuse to settle. Today I have a job I love and they really seem to like me. I work from home except for days like today where my boss is taking us out for steak.
Get involved in PASS. Network with the SQL/BI/Data community where you live. The awesome jobs are out there. There's tons of them. You're not a niche book keeper, you're a DBA and if you're good it's there for the taking. That's my $0.02.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
November 11, 2015 at 5:43 pm
My wife always says "you're not saving babies."
I haven't worked in areas where lives were at stake, so I can relate here. There is always more work. There is always something else to do. You have to just let things go, learn to let them go, learn to tell your boss you can't get them done.
This isn't easy, and it takes some re-adjustment of your view of work and your job, but it can be done.
I do like Grant's advice in that you should try to work with your company, but be prepared to leave. In fact, even if you start to work things out, look for other positions. It can be helpful to interview, and learn you have good skills, or you need to work on things. Either way you learn. The best time to get a job is when you have one, so take advantage of that.
If you want to build skills. Take 15 minutes here and there and learn something. Pick a few questions in the forums and try to solve them. It doesn't matter if it takes you weeks. I started learning Python with the SDTIG. I'm two meetings behind, working on Ch 6 still after 3 months, but that's life. I solve little problems here and there, and I take solace and excitement when I do.
http://www.meetup.com/San-Diego-Technology-Immersion-Group-SDTIG/events/223458320/
November 12, 2015 at 12:54 am
Steve what do you mean by " The best time to get a job is when you have one, so take advantage of that" ... I don't really understand that but I am very curious about its meaning??
November 12, 2015 at 3:04 am
First of all – congratulations for asking for the help. It isn’t easy and you do feel entirely alone when you feel like this.
However, there are an awful lot of people out there who have gone through something similar. It is never exactly the same for two people but there are commonalities.
I’ve been through something like this myself, many years ago and a little more recently. I know several people who have gone through such events too, to different degrees (some a lot less, others a good deal more severe). It eats at your self-esteem and makes you doubt your own abilities. You confidence evaporates and you believe the whole world is oblivious.
So, it is important to realise you aren’t the only one. Different people have different limits. Some people can appear to brush off any amount of stress while others appear to be made of glass. All it means is that they all have different things that will stress them. It might be that they never encounter the situations that will cause those issues. Or perhaps they have learned ways of dealing with these stress points. Everybody has them.
So, the deluge of work from different parties. I’ve been there too. My mistake was believing that I should be able to do this work, because people were passing it my way, expecting it to be done. In my case none of these parties were really aware of each other, other than at a peripheral level. So, as individuals they couldn’t understand why apparently simple tasks were taking so long to achieve. Keep them all informed – equally. Send an email to all of them (and your own line manager), detailing what each of them have asked you to do and ask them to sort the priorities between themselves. Suggest a list, based upon what you believe is more important or easier to complete (for a quick win). This will give them something to start with. You may end up with a deluge of emails as they copy the world into the discussion, but at least they’ll be aware of your workload and the reasons behind it. They may on occasion change your priorities while you’re in the middle of something. That’s fine, it happens. As long as you let them know something has had to give and be suspended then they have no cause for complaint. Keep them informed. They may not like the time things take but they’ll know why it is so.
Give generous estimates – initially! It doesn’t look good if you give a tight estimate in the hope of pleasing the person that requests the work and then have to go back because it takes longer. It might be taking longer because of higher priorities, because you didn’t think of something or just because that’s the way it is. When you start regularly completing tasks within your estimate it makes you look better to the others and you feel better too. Feeling better is a large part of working better. Once your self-esteem recovers you can feel more confident about your estimates. Keep a log of what you work on, what you estimated it at and what events impacted upon the completion.
Working extra hours. It happens on occasion but it should never be a regular thing. If your job demands that you regularly exceed your contracted hours then there is something wrong, and it doesn’t mean that the ‘something wrong’ is you. Either the workload needs to be reduced, more people need to be employed or you need additional tools or training to help with your workload. The contract you signed is supposed to work both ways. A lot of companies only pay lip-service to the ‘work/life balance’ thinking – you need to make sure it is more than just a phrase to be bounced around. Talk to your manager and provide the details of your workload. The emails detailed above should help with that. Managers generally have managers above them, giving them grief too. So your evidence can be used by them up the line, to ask for more resources and prove the requirement. Of course there are managers who don’t listen or want to know, thinking that they’ll look bad to those above them. They’re also suffering stress like you, but not dealing with it properly. If you can’t bypass that manager then that is when you start thinking of other employment.
When you aren’t at work you really aren’t at work. I know a lot of people who check emails and suchlike while on holiday. “I’m on vacation next week, but call me if you need to” – not a chance. I would never allow somebody to call me and I treat others the same. Unless you own the company and plan to retire 20 years earlier than the official retirement age make sure you switch off from work whenever you can. Yes, there can be exceptions but they have to be for truly major events. I know of a government system (many, many years ago) that was in danger of collapse and the only Developer who truly understood it was in the Far East on vacation. They sent somebody out to find him. It was truly exceptional and would have impacted the Government’s finances. That type of situation is rare (or should be). Getting a call because a database job has failed and nobody else knows how to run a finance report shouldn’t be a good enough reason. There shouldn’t be just one person who knows these things – that’s a resource issue within the company.
Some companies have Occupational Health departments, to help with issues such as stress. If yours has one, use it. If not, see your doctor. You will be amazed at how many cases they see – you aren’t alone. You should see the stock of anti-depressants that the average pharmacy has. That doesn’t mean you need such things but is an indication of the size of the issue in modern society. Talking can be all that is needed and can be such a relief to find somebody who understands. They may be professional or not – whatever works for you.
You’ve done the difficult bit – you’ve dragged this out into the light where we can have a good look at it. There is too much stigma attached to such things and as a result too many people suffer in silence, believing they are at fault.
What do I do? I remember what it felt like to feel so low and I try to keep a sense of proportion. My wife used to be a nurse and once had to hold an artery closed with her fingers. She let go – he died. That is true pressure and I try to compare that to the situation I’m in – my software rarely puts lives at risk. I once wrote a software package that checked drug interactions, ensuring a pharmacist didn’t dispense a combination that could be fatal. That was the only time I’ve ever written software that compared to that type of pressure. The difference was I could take time to test it and walk away from it every evening.
A friend of mine once told me there are two types of fitness – physical and mental. They are both important and should both be looked after. Look after yourself and your immediate family as a priority. Work to get the money you want to do the things that you want to do. Don’t work for the sake of work, which is how it feels when you start to get stressed.
A couple of weeks ago I thought of submitting an article on work-related stress to SSC, because I do believe it’s an important subject that is general ignored. I don’t think I’ll bother now – I think I’ve written it all here!
Look after yourself and let us know how you get on. Don’t forget – you aren’t alone in this, a lot of people know what it’s like.
November 12, 2015 at 4:25 am
BL0B_EATER (11/12/2015)
Steve what do you mean by " The best time to get a job is when you have one, so take advantage of that" ... I don't really understand that but I am very curious about its meaning??
When you're not desperate you can take your time and find the right fit. That's how I made my last transition. It took me about 18 months to find the right new job. But that's OK because, I wasn't out of work. I could afford to picky. I turned down a couple of offers that, had I been out of work, I would have jumped at. Yet, they were actually bad positions, for me at least. Having the job as my cushion and my backup, I could afford to assess any offers calmly. I finally ended up at Redgate, and it was worth the wait.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
November 12, 2015 at 6:11 am
Grant Fritchey (11/12/2015)
BL0B_EATER (11/12/2015)
Steve what do you mean by " The best time to get a job is when you have one, so take advantage of that" ... I don't really understand that but I am very curious about its meaning??When you're not desperate you can take your time and find the right fit. That's how I made my last transition. It took me about 18 months to find the right new job. But that's OK because, I wasn't out of work. I could afford to picky. I turned down a couple of offers that, had I been out of work, I would have jumped at. Yet, they were actually bad positions, for me at least. Having the job as my cushion and my backup, I could afford to assess any offers calmly. I finally ended up at Redgate, and it was worth the wait.
I like that mentality, thanks for explaining Grant.
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