The Trade Deadline Must be Drawing Near

Okay, so there is no trade deadline in SQL Server like there is in professional sports, but there have been a lot of big moves lately that reminds me of the fury of trades you see right before the deadline in sports. And not just DBA’s moving from one company to another. These are big names making big moves. The movers are moving and the shakers are shaking!!

The first big move I noticed was Jimmy May (Blog|@AspiringGeek) moving from the ACE Performance Team to the SQLCat Team (Blog|@SQLCat), both within Microsoft, which also includes a move halfway across the country to Redmond, WA. More recently was the announcement of Thomas LaRock (Blog|@SQLRockstar) making the move from Production DBA at his now former employer to SQL Server evangelist at Confio Software. The biggest announcement came today though.

The Big Announcement

I usually avoid blogging about topics that everyone is talking about, and I’m sure the blogs are on fire today about this announcement. But this announcement has personal meaning to me because I know so many people involved. It came early this morning via Twitter and the blogs of Brent Ozar (Blog|@Brento) and Paul Randal (Blog|@PaulRandal) at SQLSkills.com. The announcement is too big for me to do justice to it here in a mere few words, so I urge you to read the official announcements at http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/06/im-joining-sqlskillscom and http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/Brent-Ozar-joining-SQLskillscom.aspx.

Okay, the URL’s kind of give away the big announcement, but there’s probably very few people that haven’t heard about this by now. Yes, Brent Ozar, whose name has become almost synonymous with Quest Software, has been given an offer he can’t refuse. I don’t know any respectable SQL Server Professional that would turn down an offer like this.

Circling back around to sports, I was telling my wife about the announcement this evening. God love her, she’s not a techie, but she’s really good at feigning interest when I get talking geekspeak. She’s heard me talk about Brent and the team at SQLSkills.com before, so she was able to follow. I put it into words that I knew she would understand. I told her that getting an offer to join SQLSkills.com for a SQL Server Professional would be like a baseball player getting drafted by the Yankees and named to the starting roster all in the same day. Well, that’s not technically true because a lot more people will join the Yankees than SQLSkills.com.

My Opinion

Personally, my take on this announcement is that it’s a perfect match!! The SQLSkills.com team is one of the best, if not the best, in the world!! Brent Ozar has demonstrated time and time again that he fits into that high standard!!

I would say good luck to everyone, but luck has nothing to do with it. So I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to how this will benefit the entire SQL community!!