Brent wrote about what a good DBA looks like and challenged people to write a testimonial for them. There are some great comments on the post, and some funny ones. It's worth a read when you need a break from other work. I especially chuckled at the picture Brent used. I think ours was better.

That got me thinking: what do I want in a team? Or maybe, who do I want in a team?

I have a great team now, but we are fairly distributed and work independently. I have great co-workers at Redgate, though I don't often work that closely with any of them. I work often with some of them, for specific things, but usually it's coordination rather than the tight, back and forth I've often had with technical teams.

I realized at some point in my career that I was often being asked to do the same work. I needed to manage systems. I needed to write and tune queries (or rewrite those for others). I needed to manage security. Most importantly, I needed to find solutions to the constant set of questions, problems, and demands from others in my organization. I learned how to teach myself things, how to research, how to test, and how to talk to others. I became good at clarifying what people needed and then finding a way to meet those needs. I think I turned into part of the Incredible DBA Team, even though often it was a team of just me.

The characteristics Brent talked about were important to me.

A little. I have always felt that I could work with others if they want to learn from me and teach me things. They have to want to collaborate and get things done as a team. That led me to worry more about who I worked with than what the job was. If they compensation was good, then the decision to take a job often came down to who would I work with. After all, the work was often very similar.

Think about your situation. What do you want to see in your coworkers? I'm sure you want people that you get along with and carry their weight. Maybe you want to learn from them. Maybe you want to be able to teach them. Maybe you have specific skills you wish were stronger on your team.

Leave a comment and let us know what your ideal team looks like. As always, if you want to leave an anonymous comment, send me a PM on the site with what you'd like posted in the discussion.