Top Ten
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Top Ten
I used to love the David Letterman's Top Ten list every night when I was a young adult. Eventually it became the only thing that I watched on the show, and still occasionally catch it, and still enjoy it.
So when I saw Peter Coffee's Top 10 Stupid Things that Smart IT Pros Still Do, I had to check it out. It's a nice slideshow of ten things with a cartoon, caption, and then a sentence or two to put it in context.
They're interesting, some of them I find myself doing, others I'm sure are extremely prevelent. However with some of the things I've written about lately and focused on the past few weeks, one of them stood out in my mind.
#2 - Act like an employee, not like a member of a professional community.
This one speaks to me, and more to Brian and Andy here at SQLServerCentral.com. We started this site as a hobby, a way for us to write and give something back to the community. We intended it to be a for-profit business, but we didn't expect to make a lot and we wanted to be professionals. And there are many others like us. I know I complained on Monday about some MVPs, but the majority of them are professionals giving back to the community.
I can still remember being in grad school, getting my career going and a good friend of mine was an electrical engineer. He was working on his PE (professional engineer certification) and I was amazed at the work that he went through. But I also saw many of his colleagues and other engineers putting in similar efforts, working on their careers and giving back to their community.
All too often I see IT people not taking their careers seriously. Only getting certified if an employer requires it. Not posting in newsgroups. Not even taking classes, attending conferences, or trying to innovate.
Not everyone needs to try to be an MVP. Or start a web site. Or speak at a conference. But you should be a part of the profession, give back in some way, try to move things forward, or at least make yourself better at what you do. Even if you hate your job, you can further your career until you find something else.
That's why we started the SQLServerCentral.com training center, because we believe in professional development and we think we can do a good job helping you move your career forward. You don't have to use us, go to the PASS Summit, take some other training, including local MSDN events, read a book.
Don't just be an employee drawing a paycheck.
Steve Jones
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Just wanted to say that your recent comments in this and other editorials regarding professionalism, giving back, etc. have been great. In fact, you've inspired me, as a first step, to join my local PASS chapter. Steve also has a recent article called "Professional Development" that addresses this issue as well. Thanks for the information and inspiration!
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Glad you enjoyed it and PASS is a good place to start.
Now come the conference and I'll buy you a beer
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My theory of IT is that we are in an INFANT stage. There have been people that have trained in different disiplines that because of their analytical minds transitioned over to IT and have been quite successful. The fact that this is permitted is both wonderful and problematic at the same time.
Mankind has been building structures for thousands of years now. It is mostly perfected and I am ignorant to that business but I believe that it is easier to cost out a project because of all the experience. The uncontrollible factors such as weather are variables of concern and changing fixed costs of materials and labor difficulties are issues; however, if you want a house built in Frisco, most developers could put it into a square footage cost. Conversely, if you want an application built to sell goods online and you want to insure that there's adequate traffic to your site, you'll get options from free code to custom built sites and tools for $ 39 to register the site for traffic to thousands of dollars per month. I realize that the prices I'm referencing are value based, but my point is and anyone having built and large scaled project realizes just how difficult it is to provide a great "square footage cost".
Currently, there is no certification that is granted by the state for IT professionals. I think that there should be. Perhaps, if a single body provided certification, it could focus on principles that would have to be cemented that are NOT product specific. Normalization from theory to practice to de-normalization for data warehousing. More than a text book, there should be a code book by the state the provides the general guidlelines. A person showing competancy in that understanding now will require individual software certification to show applied theory to the syntax of the product in question. Many times, I've been interviewed and DBA's believe that they have a certain skill question set that identifies knowledge. This is based on their experience. What if their experience is in clustering while another's is in performance tuning and another's is in capacity planning and so on. IF we had an agreement that there are 20 questions that EVERY DBA should know AND these questions were exposed, then the candidate would be required to do his/her song and dance and answer those questions. Sure, because they would know them they have an advantage; yet, being able to articulate and expound and then relate their resume back to those 20 points would be your decision tree as to whether nor not they are a fit.
In conclusion, I agree we should start acting like professionals and strive for excellence; however, Because there are 50 different groups like this that never work together it is eblematic of the problem of a lack of unity that is usually driven by the government. That is why there are regional boards that are excepted by the educational system or state government boards for the CPAs, Attorneys, Engineers, Doctors, etc... The state doesn't take us seriously so we need to push for such an organization, test structure, and professional licensing. Thank you for this format of expression and I do greatly enjoy what you have provided for me.
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All good points. One overlooked is the size of the community, it's scope. There are many 'out there' who give back directly within their own organizations and amongst colleages. This is done via mentoring abnd assistance personally on and off the job. No blogs, no websites, no organizations and most of all no fan fare. It is their unpublished efforts that have laid the foundation for the blogs, websites and organizations. After all, IT is over 50 years old but the 'technology' and value of good old 'person to person' interaction has not changed - well the description has at least, now it's called 'face to face' !
One particular point for mstat: Keep the govenrment out of it !!!
The only thing government does well is "Take something somple and complicate it".
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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