June 16, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Selling Used Cars
June 17, 2010 at 1:30 am
Reminds me of a friend who was discussing a colleague. The colleague was supposed to have 10 years teaching experience. My friend maintained that she had one year's experience gone over 10 times.
Madame Artois
June 17, 2010 at 5:15 am
I think that's an excellent observation. I've been in IT management and development for over 25 years, and as you know, things have changed a lot. If you don't keep working at things, especially by using multiple variations of finding solutions, you get stuck in the past and all of a sudden, nothing you know is relevant any more. Always best to take the time to try several approaches, if just to add to your experience. And you also find out better (quicker, easier, more efficient or effective, etc.) ways to accomplish the same end.
June 17, 2010 at 5:56 am
If you want to be good at something, you’ve got to do it a lot, and with a lot of variations.
I think the "lot of variations" piece is the key here. I have seen too many people be really good -- maybe even the best -- at what they did, but the moment you threw them a curveball they became a bumbling fool. Here in the US Air Force you often hear the phrase "flexibility is the key to airpower" (Giulio Douhet). But "flexibility" is the key to just about anything -- be good at what you do, but also be flexible enough to handle the curveballs that come your way.
Nice guest editorial...
June 17, 2010 at 7:56 am
Exactly the problem with current IT management. I spent 42 yeas in IT, including 11 years in managemnt. Figured out that you can't stay current if your focus in not technical. I had to go back, and it was a good career decision. You can't be a decent IT manager without many years of technical experience, because you don't develop what I call the 'empathy' and 'intuition' needed to understand software, development, and developers. Managers can be made on the assembly line. Good developers are becoming rare. Much of my later years was spent mentoring promising, and some not-so-promising 'techies'. I even mentored my last boss for several years.
June 17, 2010 at 10:25 am
Always best to take the time to try several approaches, if just to add to your experience. And you also find out better (quicker, easier, more efficient or effective, etc.) ways to accomplish the same end.
Definitely, even within SQL Server there is usually more than 1 way to accomplish the same task.
Ken
June 17, 2010 at 1:25 pm
This is another one of those areas where you have to walk a fine line. I've done a restore, you've done a restore. However practicing it, building skills to perform it without thinking about handling fulls, diffs, logs, takes some repetition. It also takes practice on some different systems to be sure you understand the places where you need to find logical file names, move files, etc.
You want to build skill with repetition, but also be aware that there are new ways, and new techniques, to use. So you investigate and experiment as well. You have to balance the years, with the skills, to make sure both are growing.
June 17, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Repetition counts, but you also have to keep challenging yourself to learn. I am sure that someone that knew a 57 Chevy inside and out, could rebuild the engine blindfolded, new every odd noise it could make would be terribly lost at an auction these days.
I make a point of spending some time on SSC and a few other sites every day to try and learn a little more about something I already know, and learn a little bit about something I don't know much about. I call it sharpening my axe.
For the first time in my career I am in a SQL specialized (as opposed to general work that included SQL) and I am making it a point to increase the depth and breadth of my SQL knowledge. Thanks to this site, and great people like you all, I am.
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