I was reading recently about hiring teams and there was a great quote about coders. It said that a great developer will never say they are a 10 (on a scale of 1 to 10) because there us always so much more to learn about a particular technology.

Do you consider yourself a 10 in SQL Server? Or even some part of SQL Server? I was watching a very popular, and well respected SQL Server expert talk recently and when a question was posed about how ADO works, this person said that they weren't going to try to answer. This person was very well versed in some particular parts of SQL Server, but wasn't going to try to be an expert in others and suggested that the questioner find someone else to ask.

To me that's one of the real signs of an expert. They know what they know, but more importantly, they know what they don't know. They stick inside their boxes, which may be large, but they know when to ask for help in other areas.

As SQL Server has grown over the last decade, and the breadth of the product's capabilities have exploded in the last 5 years, it seems to me that the majority of us, maybe all of us, are likely to only become experts in a small part of the platform's capabilities. And if that's the case, are we 10s?

I know that I have a broad set of knowledge about what SQL Server can do, but not a very deep set of skills in any one area. I am comfortable with that and while I'm confident, I'm humble enough to recognize that I don't know everything. I do, however, know where to get answers, or who I can ask for help.

Steve Jones

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