December 14, 2015 at 11:25 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Years of Experience
December 14, 2015 at 11:49 pm
Hi Steve,
I have 2 mottos (motti?): 'Festina lente' (make haste slowly — otherwise you make sloppy mistakes and forget things) and 'always be learning'.
For the latter, there is always something that you could learn deeper or better (at the moment, the interplay between indexes and performance tuning) and something that you can learn new (for me this year it was In-Memory-OLTP and table-partitioning).
For the most part, the job is the same, but it can always be done faster, more reliably or in ways that are easier to support. I, too, sometimes look back at old scripts and wince.
Another aspect of experience is teaching and you know that you are experienced in certain fields when you can explain that field clearly and simply as well as being able to answer any questions that are thrown at you. We had a new fellow with just 6 months' experience in Access and I enjoyed instructing him.
All the best,
Sean Redmond.
December 15, 2015 at 12:25 am
Agree. I use some of the features for less than a couple of days each year. Doesn't mean that I have 9 years of experience but I do have 9 years worth repeating the same 2 days worth of experience.
Unfortunately too many companies see frequent job changes as detrimental. I cant remember which of the forums veterans it was who made the comment that a short job was anything less than 5 years. Ouch! Whereas to me 90% of the new skills are learnt in the first 12 months, maybe even less, depending on the individual.
Having seen some of the articles and blogs by alleged self proclaimed "authorities" I would say that there are those who only have a shallow skill set. This for the most part is not a problem if the company doesn't want to invest, but solutions created do tend to be less robust, less automated, requires more hardware, recovery for BCP/DR would cost a lot more, and lacks speed.
December 15, 2015 at 12:47 am
I sometimes hear people say that the new features in the particular technology that they use is not appropriate for their area of work. I tend to think that there is often an opportunity missed where that new technology can be looked into and confirmed as being inappropriate.
That way the individual keeps abreast of advances in their specialist technology and the company has done a reasonable assessment of the applicability of a given technology.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 15, 2015 at 6:31 am
Sean Redmond (12/14/2015)
make haste slowly
That's the key item for me. When I don't breathe I make mistakes.
December 15, 2015 at 6:58 am
Two thoughts:
Sometimes it isn't just learning about new features, it's about learning features that have existed for some time but you've just never gotten that "round tuit". Just the other day I learned how to implement some existing features of Visual Studio and C# that have made my job easier and made me go back and re-code some things. Nothing earth-shattering (build configurations if you kust know), but up until now I have rarely used them or used them only minimally.
Also, there's benefit in learning the basics of some out-of-the-job-description skills so you can more effectively help others. We have people who are WAY better than I at doing statistical analysis. But I've taken the time to learn from them so I can create more efficient data sets for their purposes instead of just throwing a bunch of raw data at them.
I go to work, play with cool toys and every so often something useful pops out. Can a job get any cooler than that?
____________
Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
December 15, 2015 at 7:36 am
Sometimes being a consultant (especially a self-employed consultant) can be a skills trap. As a consultant, you're hired for skills you already have, and nobody wants to pay big bucks for you to 'play around'. A temporary employer isn't interested in investing in your career, they're interested in what you can do for them right now.
The flip side is that a lot of consulting companies will grossly oversell your skillset to get a paying contract. They'll sell you as an expert in xyz language, when you've only looked at the Wikipedia entry for it.
December 15, 2015 at 7:53 am
paul.kemner (12/15/2015)
Sometimes being a consultant (especially a self-employed consultant) can be a skills trap. As a consultant, you're hired for skills you already have, and nobody wants to pay big bucks for you to 'play around'. A temporary employer isn't interested in investing in your career, they're interested in what you can do for them right now.The flip side is that a lot of consulting companies will grossly oversell your skillset to get a paying contract. They'll sell you as an expert in xyz language, when you've only looked at the Wikipedia entry for it.
In all fairness people applying to permanent jobs do the same thing 😛
December 15, 2015 at 7:55 am
In all fairness people applying to permanent jobs do the same thing 😛
Very true!
December 15, 2015 at 8:12 am
Quality experience is always better than quantity. I have interviewed a lot of people who, on paper, looked pretty good but after 30 minutes I had no idea what they actually did for a living. I'll take the guy who was a passionate DBA/Developer for 3 years over the person who did little more than collect a paycheck for their services any day. The passionate ones are the ones who come up with better ideas and/or go the extra mile.
On that note.I think going to user groups, PASS, participating on forums like this, and such counts as legit experience too. I once saw a job description where they wanted someone from the SQL Community who mentored, attended SQL Saturday, etc. That sounds like a great place to work.
That's a conundrum. Do you want to change jobs to get new experiences and grow? Some people become consultants for this reason.
That's why I became a consulant.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
December 15, 2015 at 8:25 am
paul.kemner (12/15/2015)
The flip side is that a lot of consulting companies will grossly oversell your skillset to get a paying contract. They'll sell you as an expert in xyz language, when you've only looked at the Wikipedia entry for it.
Not the good Consulting companies. If the consultant lacks the skills the client will go elsewhere. Not smart business.
I would add that there's recruiters that do this too. I have been on interviews that I was not qualified for because the recruiter misrepresented the requirements to me and misrepresented my skills to the company. Those recruiters lose two potential clients.
In the end, honesty usually wins. That's one of the best things i've learned in my 20 years in the work force.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
December 15, 2015 at 8:28 am
I recently left a job I held onto in the healthcare industry for nine years for a new position working in the retail industry. My old job had become too compartmentalized and routine, but my new job is working with a team of great people, building up a Kimball modeled data warehouse from the ground floor. I've always been one to expand my learning beyond the limits of my daily routine, and now I have an opportunity to put a lot more of it into practice. Just this morning we were discussing SSIS frameworks and Clustered ColumnStore, and what a buzz it is to break out and focus on something new and interesting.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 15, 2015 at 8:32 am
This topic has been at the forefront of my mind for a while now. I recently left a very interesting DBA role in a bleeding-edge DevOps environment* to come to a more senior Production DBA role at a global behemoth. Great pay, good benefits, amazing commute, reasonable hours. However, they're almost exclusively using SQL 2005 and 2008 R2, and they have an extremely risk-averse approach to upgrading or changing anything so change happens very, very slowly.
Obviously there's always a lot to learn wherever you are, and I have plenty of areas I could do with improving (I'm on it!), but I do worry that if I stay here too long I may start to go backwards and be less marketable. ("Too long" = more than a year.) I don't want to keep changing jobs every year because I don't think that looks great to an employer, but I like to have options.
* the pay wasn't great and the politics were terrible :-D.
December 15, 2015 at 8:47 am
It's all very well to say you should keep up with changing SQL Server stuff, but the reality for many of us is our companies either refuse to replace a working database (very smart, actually) or simply refuse to pay Microsoft's frankly exhorbitant SQL Server prices.
And no, Developer Editions don't help since all you get to do is play with the pretty toys but never put them in production since your budget won't cover $15k+ replacement costs. Especially with this new "per core" pricing BS. That's just *cruel* :crying:
Our company will probably stick with Server 2008R2 until I retire. Sigh...
December 15, 2015 at 8:47 am
Beatrix Kiddo (12/15/2015)
... * the pay wasn't great and the politics were terrible :-D.
I think if I had Beatrix Kiddo working in my office, I'd make EXTRA SURE that the politics and pay were to her liking! Did they let you carry a katana in the office? 😉
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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]
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