This editorial was originally published on Apr 3, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is out of town.

Yep, I'm not advocating the most efficient way to do things. Not in your SQL code, mind you, but in some other areas. There's more to your job than coding, and it doesn't always pay to be as efficient as possible

Meet with people.

Not meeting meet with people, in a conference room at a scheduled time, but just an ad hoc meeting. A "dynamic DBA meeting", stop by someone's office or work space and take a few minutes to talk to them. Understand what they do on a regular basis, their pain points, their likes and dislikes.

Invite them to lunch, or some other social event outside of work. Or just bring your clubs to work (or borrow one) and take someone to hit some golf balls at lunch. Even if you have no idea how to do it, laugh at yourself and spend a few minutes with someone that does enjoy it.

I'm not trying to find you a new best friend, though if that happens, it would be great. Instead I think that it's just important to develop a bond, a well-rounded relationship with those that you need to work. Especially those knowledge workers whose knowledge you need. Remember that to build an application, secure the data properly, even to just understand the data, often you'll need to ask questions of the people that use the data. Even older developers or DBAs might not get things right and you'll need to go to the source.

So make sure that you try to create that bond with someone new and don't just spend all your days being as efficient at writing code as possible.

Steve Jones

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