A little lesson on life
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Often we are so caught up in the technical aspects of work that we forget about all of the other components about life and employment. I wish to share a story with everyone concerning myself. I have always enjoyed this site and at one point used to call all of you my co-workers. I haven't been on here since I started a new job just over a year ago and do miss it here. I hope to have a new article ready within the month, but first I wish to vent and share a recent experience of mine.
I would consider myself a fairly skilled and capable DBA a few weeks ago and today this may be just a piece of history. A quick background of myself will reveal a problem with alcohol. This may seem kind of an odd thing to share on a techie site, but please bear with me. Over the years I had flirted with going out and when things started to seem like they were getting bad I would pull back, but eventually the alcohol would win. Oh, drinking or not, I could always hold my own as the DBA.
A few weeks ago I woke up and found that I had resigned from a decent paying job. It surely wasn't a good place to work, but it was a job and was hoping to ride it out. One night I was very upset and drank myself into oblivion only to find that I had resigned the next day. Oh my! Not the most pleasant thing in the world to wake up to.
Just over a year ago I had moved to Nashville to be closer to my daughter again. The 5 plus hour drives on the weekends from St Louis were tiring. About a couple of months prior to accepting the new job in Nashville I had pulled my application from another job opening because it didn't feel right. This made me anxious and careless when interviewing on the next job.
There were warning signs during the interview process. When asking my supervisor if I would report to her she said "I guess," no job description was given (and subsequent requests returned only a list of skills required), no technical questions were asked (my favorite part of an interview!!), when asked a question I was quickly interrupted, etc.
It was a difficult place to work. I was to work as a team member for a global dba team between the US and UK. My UK counterparts were fantastic. When I first started to work, there was a sign on my bosses wall that said "She-Woman-Man-Haters Club" which was a reference to the 3 guys in the 9 person DBA group who for some reason or another were departed from the company in the last 6 months. There were 4 DBA's in the US and when I arrived there were 2, and I made 3. In the beginning their departure was common fodder for office humor. Even one of the DBA's I was working with kept saying that I was going to be fired, they are going to fire me, etc. Let's just say that things didn't start out on the best footing.
Things only got worse. I could not express myself or discuss with my supervisor because of those interruptions. It came to the point that I did not want to talk to her. She was quite entertaining outside of work, but at work and as a supervisor it was very trying. The other DBA was constantly talking to her daughter on the phone or other personal stuff. Both of them kept saying they never had time to do anything because they were so busy but the truth was that they were too busy dealing with personal stuff and socializing. I have never been in an environment where it is so strict that there isn't any socializing, but this was way past anything I have seen or dealt with before. It was almost impossible for me to do anything that took any level of concentration (tuning perhaps?). We had a few US-only DBA meetings that always ended up in a conversation about their vacation and time off. Not only was it rude, but it was also a waste of time. A classic comment one of them gave me last month in regards to vacation was "You work with two women this ain't about you."
There were some good points. Naturally, I suspected that my conflicts would come from the developers. Not the case here! They loved me and all of them gave me off the record praise. I was the only DBA that could help them with SQL, tuning, etc. They did not like going to the other two DBA's for a multitude of reasons. Just to give you an example of how lazy they are, neither one of them can write basic SQL statements after years and years as DBA's. I'm not talking about twisty little subqueries, self joins, outer joins, or mind twisting aggregates either. This is were my biggest problem came in...it was a blessing and a curse. On one side of the coin I was deemed useful by those outside my group and the other side of the coin meant that I didn't have a lot of support. One of them couldn't even use books online. They really did not seem to have any interest in being a DBA, or at least be motivated enough to learn something on their own. One of the positives is that I really learned how to keep quiet when incorrect technical statements are being made.
This all brings me back to the job description and the lack of them being able to supply me with one. Here I am a Senior Level DBA with some great experience and for the most part all I was doing was handling MOM (Microsoft Operational Reporting) alerts, Help Desk calls, and following instructions on QA and Production releases. This was a huge setback and I remember my first DBA job back in 1997 that took more skill. I coined a new phrase while working there and this was the "Operational DBA." We all know about the Development and Production DBA's, but now we have the Operational DBA. The DBA world in which I was dwelling was not defined by a job description, but by my co-workers abilities and work ethic.
Regardless of how much I disliked my job, it was a job and now wonder if I will ever do DBA work again. I hope everyone who reads this will take time in choosing a job. Not only are they interviewing you, but you are interviewing them. If you hear statements like "The data model should look like the object model," or "You don't need more than one transactional backup a day" then run. Run for your career!!
Be good and the best of wishes in your careers........
Jeff
"Keep Your Stick On the Ice" ..Red Green -
Jeff,
Thanks for that and best of luck in your career.
Steve
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I like to think that this is not only a techie place, but a community where those thoughts can be shared. Echoing Steve: Thanks for that and best of luck!
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
For me, It's like when people use AND & OR versis NAND & NOR.
You have to love what you do otherwise move on. I've run across those situations where obviously there are those who view the job as a means to a trip or a house or a new car, but then they slack or FTD most of the time.
Maybe one can go through life like that, but I find when I have had to do that in 'summer jobs' I was unhappy really.
Mind you some companies foster social interaction and events for that purpose, to avoid the urge for people to socialise during business hours.
Sometimes abrupt change is good in the long run, my select statements can't prove that at this time.
I did enjoy the story and hope that should (or when) I find myself on that bender, the end result work out as well.
Edward W. Stanley
Not especially important most of the time, but the one called on when it all falls apart.
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Thanks for the posts. There is some excitement with the unknown, and this has inspired me to write a very constructive article on job searching.
Edward, I have to ask, was the 'AND & OR' and intentinal pun 😉 Personally, I think we should all move towards bitwise operations!!
Thanks all. An old boss of mine has contacted me as well and was very supportive.
Here is another way to look at what happened...
--
-- Prevent point in time recovery
--
ALTER DATABASE Employee SET RECOVERY SIMPLE
--
BEGIN TRANSACTION
UPDATE es
SET Status = 'Resigned'
FROM EmployeeStatus es
WHERE es.State = 'Very Buzzed'
AND es.Contentment <= 0
--
COMMIT
-- Just in case...
COMMIT
-- Force the issue...
CHECKPOINT
-- And flush
BACKUP LOG Employee WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
--
ALTER DATABASE Employee SET RECOVERY FULL
"Keep Your Stick On the Ice" ..Red Green -
NAND & NOR GATES are more efficient, and require less steps, than AND & OR, chipwise and I believe therefore faster at computations ( I'm sure there might be a few who disagree with me, but right now 'I have the conch shell', so there), and can create the same data structures as AND, OR, XOR.
nice t-sql btw...
and dont forget to keep both hands on the stick, and your head up...
Edward W. Stanley
(My witty hours have past... try me at 12:01 once I've truncated)
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Jeff - took some courage to share that - thanks and do well! Funnily enough I'm heading to Nashville tomorrow (another story for another time)...
Re: "neither one of them can write basic SQL statements after years and years as DBA's. I'm not talking about twisty little subqueries, self joins, outer joins, or mind twisting aggregates either. One of them couldn't even use books online."
That is sad indeed....so it sucks when you're a great DBA in a room full of idiots but I really don't think that it should put you off DBAing forever...
As for your comment "always enjoyed this site and at one point used to call all of you my co-workers" - funny you should say that.....more often than not I tend to forget that I personally don't know any of the people on this site.....yet I spend so much time here that sometimes I go all delusional and actually feel that I'm part of a special SQL Server clique and the members here seem more like colleagues than my co-workers do...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Yes, thanks for having the courage to share all that with us, Jeff. It may be more valuable to focus on the opportunities you took to cement relationships with the developer teams and your colleagues in the UK - groups of people who genuinely appreciated your expertise and character.
Best wishes,
Nick W. (UK DBA 🙂
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This is a great site and for those of you that are new to here may I suggest becoming part of the 'community'. You'll get to enjoy the likes of Frank lurking through the forums.
Really everyone..thanks for the kind words. I'm off to enjoy a Chinese food with some Oracle and DB2 DBA's and listen to them complain and then am off for a bike ride. Vroom vroom..
Parcival...you look familiar 😉
"Keep Your Stick On the Ice" ..Red Green -
This IS a great site. Your post struck me in particular, both because of your experiences with managers and coworkers, and because you admitted to heavy drinking. I, too, am a highly competent DBA, and have been working for idiots in my last two jobs. I also quit drinking about five years ago, with the help of AA. Not to preach, or go on and on, but it sounds like you are ready to try something different. The funny thing is that I sure don't miss drinking like I thought I would, rather, quitting was a tremendous relief from more stress than I care to remind myself of.
One thing I found is that the variability of AA groups is as great as the variability between programmer's skill levels. If you go to one and it turns you off, try another! [end of free advice]
At least you have a life outside of work. What do you ride? I have two Harleys (one just wrecked when a cager pulled out right in front of me - broken bones have mended, and surgery next week should fix the knee). Also just bought a new Triumph Bonneville - much lighter, really too small for me, but I still dig it.
[more free advice - Headlight Modulator!]
Thanks for the post, and good luck.
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Jeff,
There will be many good, and many bad jobs in your career. What we all need to do is learn to let all the drama wash over us and leave it at the door when we get home. Unfortunately, not too many people I know have figured out that trick. But those that have lead incredibly stress-free lives compared to me...
... and next time you drink, unplug the phone and computer first!
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Adam Machanic
whoisactive -
... Or just don't restart drinking...
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