I find it extremely easy to sometimes lose sight of the important stuff. The day-to-day grind can seriously get in the way. I think this is a big part of how we find ourselves having so many silly intra-organizational turf wars. The developers don’t like how the DBAs do things. The DBAs are frustrated with the SAN Admins. Round and round it goes. I think we all tend to lose sight of the ability to see things from another point of view.

This is a picture of the Teutonic Knights. They’re kind of a special Prussian off-shoot of the Knightly Orders from the Crusades, think Templars or Hospitalars. I had just been reading about them in this excellent book on the Holy Roman Empire.

They look great don’t they? Mighty and powerful. Riding with them in the Northern Crusade (yeah, there were Crusades in places other than the Middle East) must have made you feel pretty amazing. After all, you’re campaigning to bring those heathen Slavs into the fold.

That’s one perspective.

The other perspective is that you’re a Slav who is pretty happy with his current religion, thank you very much, and over the hill comes this mob of armed and armored monsters slaughtering all & sundry.

Every so often in your career, DBA, Dev, Analyst, doesn’t matter. I think it wouldn’t hurt to assess how you are doing things, why you’re doing them, and the impact that’s having on those around you. The single worst statement that can be made by an IT professional is “We’ve always done it that way.” That’s not a justification for continuing to do something the same way. IT is constantly changing. We’re going to have to change with it. This means stopping the resistance to the change. However, it also means looking at how we’re implementing the change.

I’d prefer to neither be the Teutonic Knights or their victims. Instead, I’d prefer it if we found a way to work together since we have a common goal, maintaining our business.