August 19, 2017 at 11:43 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Responsibility to Learn
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
August 19, 2017 at 9:40 pm
Oooo, good one, Grant. And rumor has it that it costs $250 per day to actually learn how to get the current date and time. It's actually not possible to learn how to do that on your own. No wonder people want the companies they work for to pay for their education. 😉
Being a fellow bubble-head, you'll know what I mean when I say that they should join the "Silent Service" and really learn how to learn. Either that or deploy as a ground pounder and find out what real work is. 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 20, 2017 at 11:40 am
Nice job, Grant. Short, succinct and so very, very accurate. I really like the point about working in the knowledge space. Maybe that'll drive it home and break the "not my job" mentality that's become so very common. Hey, I can have hope.
A guy I know came up with the idea of some new titles for people: Google Coder, Advanced Googler, Senior Googler and VP of Google Coding. He describes the situation where people would rather search the internet for a poorly-performing function than use a performant one that already exists in a centralized library of functions because they don't know any better. Worse yet, these people don't know that it performs poorly because "it ran worked in my test of 10 rows" and "like...this one post on the internet said it would work" so it must be good. :w00t::crazy:
Kudos on the editorial. You hit the nail square on the head.
August 20, 2017 at 1:46 pm
Ed Wagner - Sunday, August 20, 2017 11:40 AMNice job, Grant. Short, succinct and so very, very accurate. I really like the point about working in the knowledge space. Maybe that'll drive it home and break the "not my job" mentality that's become so very common. Hey, I can have hope.A guy I know came up with the idea of some new titles for people: Google Coder, Advanced Googler, Senior Googler and VP of Google Coding. He describes the situation where people would rather search the internet for a poorly-performing function than use a performant one that already exists in a centralized library of functions because they don't know any better. Worse yet, these people don't know that it performs poorly because "it ran worked in my test of 10 rows" and "like...this one post on the internet said it would work" so it must be good. :w00t::crazy:
Kudos on the editorial. You hit the nail square on the head.
Oh my... that brought up some similar bad memories. I had to seriously pork chop a "developer" that wanted a CLR pushed to all environments, including production, "Right Now"! I took one look at the code and denied it and was getting ready to explain when the "developer" said that he'd take the matter all the way to the GM of the company if he had to and stormed out of my cube. My initial thought was to chase after him to explain but then thought the better of it. The lesson I needed to teach him would be better driven home by "giving him the opportunity to fail", which he had already chosen the path to go down and isn't the same as "setting someone up for failure".
Later, I was called into a meeting with the big dogs and the "developer" sat in the background with arms folded, leaning back with his feet up, and this big ol' S$!T eating grin on his face. The meeting didn't last long. I was asked why I wouldn't allow the CLR to be deployed. I explained that the "developer" didn't give me the opportunity to explain before he stormed out of my cube. The purpose of the CLR was to accept 2 inputs and do a simple Modulo and the operator in T-SQL for that functionality is the "%" sign.
I was thanked and asked to leave the room. Before the door had fully closed, the "developer's" boss started the a$$ chewing started with "Seriously? Something that simple and you didn't take the time to research it?" I think a piece of his butt is still nailed to the wall as an example.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 21, 2017 at 6:53 am
Jeff Moden - Saturday, August 19, 2017 9:40 PMOooo, good one, Grant. And rumor has it that it costs $250 per day to actually learn how to get the current date and time. It's actually not possible to learn how to do that on your own. No wonder people want the companies they work for to pay for their education. 😉Being a fellow bubble-head, you'll know what I mean when I say that they should join the "Silent Service" and really learn how to learn. Either that or deploy as a ground pounder and find out what real work is. 😉
Only $250 to learn GETUTCDATE? That's a bargain!
Hang on....
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
August 21, 2017 at 6:57 am
Ed Wagner - Sunday, August 20, 2017 11:40 AMNice job, Grant. Short, succinct and so very, very accurate. I really like the point about working in the knowledge space. Maybe that'll drive it home and break the "not my job" mentality that's become so very common. Hey, I can have hope.A guy I know came up with the idea of some new titles for people: Google Coder, Advanced Googler, Senior Googler and VP of Google Coding. He describes the situation where people would rather search the internet for a poorly-performing function than use a performant one that already exists in a centralized library of functions because they don't know any better. Worse yet, these people don't know that it performs poorly because "it ran worked in my test of 10 rows" and "like...this one post on the internet said it would work" so it must be good. :w00t::crazy:
Kudos on the editorial. You hit the nail square on the head.
You mean that thing I wrote on the internet is useful?
Ha!
I'm always mixed on aversion to using Bingle as a base of knowledge. I use Ging pretty constantly myself. While I don't consider myself great at my job, I do think I'm adequate. It still goes back to learning. Learning enough fundamentals so you can tell the bogus internet advice from the good stuff. Learning which sources are worthy of trust and which ones are, again, bogus. Learn first, Boogle second.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
August 21, 2017 at 6:59 am
Jeff Moden - Sunday, August 20, 2017 1:46 PMOh my... that brought up some similar bad memories. I had to seriously pork chop a "developer" that wanted a CLR pushed to all environments, including production, "Right Now"! I took one look at the code and denied it and was getting ready to explain when the "developer" said that he'd take the matter all the way to the GM of the company if he had to and stormed out of my cube. My initial thought was to chase after him to explain but then thought the better of it. The lesson I needed to teach him would be better driven home by "giving him the opportunity to fail", which he had already chosen the path to go down and isn't the same as "setting someone up for failure".
Later, I was called into a meeting with the big dogs and the "developer" sat in the background with arms folded, leaning back with his feet up, and this big ol' S$!T eating grin on his face. The meeting didn't last long. I was asked why I wouldn't allow the CLR to be deployed. I explained that the "developer" didn't give me the opportunity to explain before he stormed out of my cube. The purpose of the CLR was to accept 2 inputs and do a simple Modulo and the operator in T-SQL for that functionality is the "%" sign.
I was thanked and asked to leave the room. Before the door had fully closed, the "developer's" boss started the a$$ chewing started with "Seriously? Something that simple and you didn't take the time to research it?" I think a piece of his butt is still nailed to the wall as an example.
Can I just mark this as the answer?
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
August 21, 2017 at 7:49 am
... I bring this up because I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.” ...
Regardless of industry, successful people do whatever it takes to master their profession. In a nutshell, that (even more than raw talent and opportunity) is what separates winners from losers. I'll confess upfront that I'd continue spending a significant portion of my day learning... even if my employer explicitly directed me not to. Were I to get fired for my insubordinate learning, I'd just find another job to learn with. I honestly don't know how to stop learning.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
August 21, 2017 at 8:17 am
Eric M Russell - Monday, August 21, 2017 7:49 AM... I bring this up because I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.†...
Regardless of industry, successful people do whatever it takes to master their profession. In a nutshell, that (even more than raw talent and opportunity) is what separates winners from losers. I'll confess upfront that I'd continue spending a significant portion of my day learning... even if my employer explicitly directed me not to. Were I to get fired for my insubordinate learning, I'd just find another job to learn with. I honestly don't know how to stop learning.
Agreed. If an organization tries to stop you from learning (let alone won't support you), it's not a place I'd care to stay at.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
August 24, 2017 at 4:06 pm
Wonderful editorial (except for some phrasing that might be (mis)read as suggesting that becoming a Rock and Roll legend doesn't require as much learning as does becoming expert at working with computers and/or data).
Learning is something I won't stop doing; in fact I don't think I can stop doing it. I would go bats if I stopped learning! The trouble with computer stuff is that a lot of people expect you to learn things that there's no point in learning. I never learned the syntax of everything in T-SQL - things like making a backup can be written and thoroughly tested once and then will be run regularly and probably won't need revising for years, so why should I waste both effort and brain-space on learning and remembering the syntax of the Backup commands? Similarly scripts for recovering from backups can be written and thoroughly tested once, and then thoroughly tested frequently (both tests at regular intervals and addition tests at random times, for each sort of recovery that is intended to be catered for) and that doesn't require me to learn and remember the syntax of teh restore commands because those scripts won't need revising for years. How to do things I need to do every day or even just once a month is worth learning and remembering, but not how to do things that I do very rarely. And there's always been an awful lot of fairly complicated stuff that I do very rarely. (Just to be sure I don't upset Jeff, I''ll point out that getting the current date and time is something I did often enough to make it worthwhile to learn and remember the syntax for at least two methods of doing it in T-SQL). And even leaving out the bits that ought not to be learnt the time I spent on learning about computing was enough to make me fail to keep up with things in mathematics and physics (I'm glad I missed the string theory nonsense, but sad I didn't learn about the far from nonsensical relational quantum mechanics and it's probably too late to start on it now).
Tom
August 25, 2017 at 2:44 am
"I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.”"
These people must have zero pride.
August 25, 2017 at 8:24 am
Beatrix Kiddo - Friday, August 25, 2017 2:44 AM"I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.â€"These people must have zero pride.
Yes, modern society is plagued by both ignorant people with no pride and also ignorant people with too much pride.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
August 26, 2017 at 12:52 am
Eric M Russell - Friday, August 25, 2017 8:24 AMBeatrix Kiddo - Friday, August 25, 2017 2:44 AM"I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.â€"These people must have zero pride.
Yes, modern society is plagued by both ignorant people with no pride and also ignorant people with too much pride.
Well I don't think you get to have your cake and eat it too. There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty floating about in IT management with just hoping that you can just acquire fully trained IT professionals with all skills needed and 20K worth or certs on the employee's dime, so I wouldn't go quite so far as to throw everyone out in broad cloth fashion. Call me overly proud, but you lose your right to demand or expect a lot of ongoing training on personal time when you expect folks to be supporting/troubleshooting 60 / 70 sometimes 80 hours a week. It's called employment, not indentured servitude after all.
At the end of the day I do think it's a shared accountability: the company really should be able to articulate what skills they plan to need (which entails actually planning out things); there are also a lot of growth and learning that just can't be done on your own with just a book, so there should be opportunities to train/shadow/mentor, and not just limited to half day sales pitches about technology no one in your org is going to use.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
August 26, 2017 at 1:43 pm
Matt Miller (4) - Saturday, August 26, 2017 12:52 AMEric M Russell - Friday, August 25, 2017 8:24 AMBeatrix Kiddo - Friday, August 25, 2017 2:44 AM"I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.â€"These people must have zero pride.
Yes, modern society is plagued by both ignorant people with no pride and also ignorant people with too much pride.
Well I don't think you get to have your cake and eat it too. There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty floating about in IT management with just hoping that you can just acquire fully trained IT professionals with all skills needed and 20K worth or certs on the employee's dime, so I wouldn't go quite so far as to throw everyone out in broad cloth fashion. Call me overly proud, but you lose your right to demand or expect a lot of ongoing training on personal time when you expect folks to be supporting/troubleshooting 60 / 70 sometimes 80 hours a week. It's called employment, not indentured servitude after all.
At the end of the day I do think it's a shared accountability: the company really should be able to articulate what skills they plan to need (which entails actually planning out things); there are also a lot of growth and learning that just can't be done on your own with just a book, so there should be opportunities to train/shadow/mentor, and not just limited to half day sales pitches about technology no one in your org is going to use.
Not only a shared accountability/responsibility but a really tough thing to figure out, sometimes. IMHO, Developers and DBAs are a bit like doctors... they need to get their own training from the git.
If people interview and get a job as a Developer or DBA but aren't actually qualified for or can't do the job, then the company should have the nads to let them go in the first 90 days. Of course, it would be better if the company got better at interviewing instead of believing in resumes, which are frequently "enhanced to impress" and sometimes just damned lies.
Then there's the problem with training someone and they use that training to, ummm, further "enhance" their resume so they can get a higher paying job that they still can't do.
I've also found out that people who do the least to help the company that they work for (which ultimately puts food in their babies' mouths) and their own careers and most likely to lie on their resumes are frequently the ones that squawk the loudest because lord knows that they need the training.
My humble opinion is that you're not entitled to a job and you're not entitled to have your company train you especially if the training is for something you said you know on your resume. You have to earn both. It's a nice benefit when a company does provide some training but people need to spend some time on their own careers instead of looking for handouts... especially those folks that believe a career is only for 40 hours a week. No, I'm not saying that you should be made to work 60-80 hours week for a 40 hour pay check. But do spend at least a couple hours a week training yourself. It's what you'd have to do if Mommy and Daddy were paying for your college education.
And, no... if the company is paying for the training, the training time shouldn't necessarily always be on the clock, especially in the world of IT.
There's a post on a different forum where a person applied for a database related job. He was asked what the differences are between a FULL OUTER JOIN and a UNION ALL. The person had no clue and didn't think twice about posting the question instead of doing a Yabingooglehoo to look up the two things and discover the differences on his own. The world of IT is becoming a very sad place when it comes to attitude and this bloody "entitled" attitude that people have taken in the last decade. You want the job because it pays good money? Earn it!
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 26, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Jeff Moden - Saturday, August 26, 2017 1:43 PMMatt Miller (4) - Saturday, August 26, 2017 12:52 AMEric M Russell - Friday, August 25, 2017 8:24 AMBeatrix Kiddo - Friday, August 25, 2017 2:44 AM"I’ve recently heard several people tell me something along the lines of “Well, if my company wants me to learn new technology, they’ll need to tell me what to learn, pay for it, and give me the time to learn it.â€"These people must have zero pride.
Yes, modern society is plagued by both ignorant people with no pride and also ignorant people with too much pride.
Well I don't think you get to have your cake and eat it too. There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty floating about in IT management with just hoping that you can just acquire fully trained IT professionals with all skills needed and 20K worth or certs on the employee's dime, so I wouldn't go quite so far as to throw everyone out in broad cloth fashion. Call me overly proud, but you lose your right to demand or expect a lot of ongoing training on personal time when you expect folks to be supporting/troubleshooting 60 / 70 sometimes 80 hours a week. It's called employment, not indentured servitude after all.
At the end of the day I do think it's a shared accountability: the company really should be able to articulate what skills they plan to need (which entails actually planning out things); there are also a lot of growth and learning that just can't be done on your own with just a book, so there should be opportunities to train/shadow/mentor, and not just limited to half day sales pitches about technology no one in your org is going to use.
Not only a shared accountability/responsibility but a really tough thing to figure out, sometimes. IMHO, Developers and DBAs are a bit like doctors... they need to get their own training from the git.
If people interview and get a job as a Developer or DBA but aren't actually qualified for or can't do the job, then the company should have the nads to let them go in the first 90 days. Of course, it would be better if the company got better at interviewing instead of believing in resumes, which are frequently "enhanced to impress" and sometimes just damned lies.
Then there's the problem with training someone and they use that training to, ummm, further "enhance" their resume so they can get a higher paying job that they still can't do.
I've also found out that people who do the least to help the company that they work for (which ultimately puts food in their babies' mouths) and their own careers and most likely to lie on their resumes are frequently the ones that squawk the loudest because lord knows that they need the training.
My humble opinion is that you're not entitled to a job and you're not entitled to have your company train you especially if the training is for something you said you know on your resume. You have to earn both. It's a nice benefit when a company does provide some training but people need to spend some time on their own careers instead of looking for handouts... especially those folks that believe a career is only for 40 hours a week. No, I'm not saying that you should be made to work 60-80 hours week for a 40 hour pay check. But do spend at least a couple hours a week training yourself. It's what you'd have to do if Mommy and Daddy were paying for your college education.
And, no... if the company is paying for the training, the training time shouldn't necessarily always be on the clock, especially in the world of IT.
There's a post on a different forum where a person applied for a database related job. He was asked what the differences are between a FULL OUTER JOIN and a UNION ALL. The person had no clue and didn't think twice about posting the question instead of doing a Yabingooglehoo to look up the two things and discover the differences on his own. The world of IT is becoming a very sad place when it comes to attitude and this bloody "entitled" attitude that people have taken in the last decade. You want the job because it pays good money? Earn it!
Yes and no. I fully agree that I'd better be able to do the job I applied for and that I am responsible for maintaining my core skills. But there IS an expectation of growth and development beyond those initial core skills where both sides are responsible and frankly both sides benefit when they pick up that responsibility. Noone seems to dispute or contest when middle managers go through training and retraining every year to ensure that their skills stay sharp: the company picks up the tab happily, because better managers produce better results through their teams. The same is true for any and all skilled tradespeople which is likely where most of us fall in, yet the reaction is that we should shoulder that responsibility all by ourselves.
Part of that shared responsibility starts with actual development planning, which I do feel is a very reasonable expectation of your employer. Actual conversations about what skills you might need, where future needs are likely to appear, etc... should be expected, and commonplace. What you do well, what could you do better, what do you need to master to move to the next level, etc. I'm more than willing to do my part in training myself, but when the attitude year after year is "just go do something for training, so we can check the box: doesn't matter what it is", then you have a serious issue.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
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