September 8, 2016 at 8:49 am
I think part of the issue with text is that intent and body language is absent, making interpretation vary wildly.
I've not worked with many pure DBAs so I can't speak to prevailing attitudes among them and whether they are as a general rule are more arrogant or rude, but I can speak to the pressures and frustrations of being in a data centric role. In my experience, it's been very rare that I was treated as a partner in a process or that my input on possible issues was considered.
As others have mentioned, quite frequently I find myself caught in the middle and fully holding the bag for possible failure despite multiple issues upstream of my involvement or even awareness. You can only be asked to sacrifice so much of your personal life, well-being, and sanity while others cavalierly make decisions and bear no cost before you feel some animosity.
September 8, 2016 at 10:03 am
djblyth (9/8/2016)
Yeah, I wanted to say the same but i thought it might sound too 'high brow'.Actually though, I think techies often begin with the expectation that a non-techie hasn't thought something through fully and then they jump to conclusions. I am guilty of this, so when I remember, I just try to remember to listen and let the person finish what they are saying and then try to understand their point rather picking on small mistakes. It's more respectful and more productive 🙂
When I ask a tradesman to do work on my house the good ones will ask a lot of questions and challenge if I've asked for something daft.
I am very much in a position of ignorance. I know what I want to achieve but expect the tradesman to know the nitty gritty.
Isn't thinking things through what non-techies employ us for?
September 8, 2016 at 11:30 am
David.Poole (9/8/2016)
djblyth (9/8/2016)
Yeah, I wanted to say the same but i thought it might sound too 'high brow'.Actually though, I think techies often begin with the expectation that a non-techie hasn't thought something through fully and then they jump to conclusions. I am guilty of this, so when I remember, I just try to remember to listen and let the person finish what they are saying and then try to understand their point rather picking on small mistakes. It's more respectful and more productive 🙂
When I ask a tradesman to do work on my house the good ones will ask a lot of questions and challenge if I've asked for something daft.
I am very much in a position of ignorance. I know what I want to achieve but expect the tradesman to know the nitty gritty.
Isn't thinking things through what non-techies employ us for?
Yes, David. We should be steering our clients/customers/colleagues to the best/most suitable solution for the given circumstances to meet their needs. Not just what they ask for.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
September 8, 2016 at 2:47 pm
Gary Varga (9/8/2016)
David.Poole (9/8/2016)
djblyth (9/8/2016)
Yeah, I wanted to say the same but i thought it might sound too 'high brow'.Actually though, I think techies often begin with the expectation that a non-techie hasn't thought something through fully and then they jump to conclusions. I am guilty of this, so when I remember, I just try to remember to listen and let the person finish what they are saying and then try to understand their point rather picking on small mistakes. It's more respectful and more productive 🙂
When I ask a tradesman to do work on my house the good ones will ask a lot of questions and challenge if I've asked for something daft.
I am very much in a position of ignorance. I know what I want to achieve but expect the tradesman to know the nitty gritty.
Isn't thinking things through what non-techies employ us for?
Yes, David. We should be steering our clients/customers/colleagues to the best/most suitable solution for the given circumstances to meet their needs. Not just what they ask for.
What is the preferred method of steering? Cattle prod or baseball bat?
September 8, 2016 at 3:25 pm
Beatrix Kiddo (9/8/2016)
Sometimes though, I think the tone is not justified at all. I've seen breathtakingly rude responses to perfectly politely-worded questions, and I think that's a massive shame.
Been reading some of Joe C's responses, have you? :w00t:
Tom
September 8, 2016 at 3:46 pm
What **** are you talking about? Your emotions aren't a considered factor in my pursuit of the technical truth. I've a passion for critical thinking and it is just that ...critical! :hehe:
Seriously though, I've struggled with this for years. When confronted with questionable statements, I try to take a more indirect approach and ask questions instead of immediately taking an oppositional stance. It's not easy and I fail often, but it's still satisfying when you can achieve a productive and lively technical discussion ... and nobody cries or challenges you to a duel.
September 8, 2016 at 3:51 pm
What is the preferred method of steering? Cattle prod or baseball bat?
In Yorkshire I believe both are called a Learning Bat.
Joking aside it takes considerable time and energy to be able to steer people the way you hope they will go. There's a lot of similarity in the challenges facing parents of teenagers, possibly because everyone these days seems to be a teenager!
To bastardise a saying by the time a developer thinks an architect may have been right he has usually been promoted to the position where junior developers think he is wrong!
September 8, 2016 at 4:37 pm
"Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations." Earl Nightingale
September 8, 2016 at 5:59 pm
Improved communication skills for technical people are highly to be desired. But so are improved communiction skills for marketing people, sales people, office administration people, purchasing people, legal people, personnel people, accountants, in fact for everyone. The only thing about the editorial that I don't like is that it says that non-technical are less ineffective at communication than technical people, and my experience tells me that there isn't the least bit of difference between the communications skills of technical people and the communication skills of non-technical people.
I've made some horrible mistakes in my time, upset people unneccessarily, and although I've improved my communication skills throughout my career I still haven't achieved anything like perfection. I've even been quite offensive on this website once or twice (but not to people who came here to ask for help, I think). Everyone I've worked with has made similar mistakes (and I haven't worked only with technical people). Sometimes mistakes pile up in a row.
Ben said
Ben Kubicek, 2016/09/08
Share a time you really stuck your foot in your mouth and communicated yourself poorly.
So here goes:-
An example: CEO, during an international meeting by phone/skype/etcetera, lost temper with leader of the development team in India, who in theory reported to me (that team leader was being pretty offensive, in effect he started the row, and he was normally very polite and deferential up-chain so clearly he too had lost it)- the CEO should have dealt with the top management of the subcontractor who provided that development team while I ran the team; I told him to lay off, and get pretty impolite about it when he carried on; he got even more impolite and chucked me out of the meeting, but a member of the board (I think he was chairman at the time) overheard the meeting and lost his temper with the CEO; CEO lost his temper even more and, after the meeting, complaieds to the chairman of the group of companies of which our company was a part; that big chief didn't like this and lost his temper, so CEO offers his immediate resignation;both chairmen try to pacify things by insisting CEO serves his 6 months notice; all goes quiet and peaceful; everyone thinks that the CEO's resignation will be cancelled, and we'll carry on as before. Six months later I'm in Chennai along with our sales & marketing director (like me, London based) to meet with the Indian subcontractors when they get a call to say our CEO has left the company (the board refused to let him withdraw his resignation, but no-one in India knew that yet - and the two of us had difficulty in concealing that this had come as a total surprise to us). That was a disaster, because there was no-one who could do the CEO job or act as finance director (the CEO had double-hatted as CEO and CFO). The end result, in the short term was that the relationship with our subcontractor was wrecked (because we had a new CFO imposed on us who wasn't prepared to allow the Indians to have a single penny, no matter what the cost might be in lawyers) and we lost our main Indian customer (who happened to own the subcontractor) and four years later, that the group director and I relocated the technical side of the company (actually everything except media licensing - films and music) and shut most of the London end of the company down - loss of jobs in Britain, loss of tax revenue for Britain. And a disaster for me becuse I felt obliged to stay on and keep things reasonably afloat for a couple of years longer than I had intended, as the company's mess was at least part my fault, and declined a decent job offer in Spain that I would have taken otherwise.
That disaster could have been avoided if any one of the five people in the chain had managed to communicate courteously and without losing their temper. The five people involved were the BigWhiteChief (owner of a very large international chain of companies, ranging from catering to computing services, basically a top level general manager with no particular specialty), chairman of the subsidiary's board (a stockbroker I think, long drifted into general management), the subsidiary's CEO (an accountant with a Harvard MBA), the Technical Director of the subsidiary (me - so technical) and the team leader at the subcontractor (also technical). Three non-technical people demonstrating bad communication skill, and two technical people doesn't seem to support the idea that technicl people are worse at this than non-technical.
Tom
September 9, 2016 at 2:21 am
David.Poole (9/8/2016)
There's a scene in the beginning of Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals where Knut is asked if he thinks his superior is wrong. "Oh no sir, I am suggesting a way in which you can be even more right"
^^ I think I need to post that on my wall so I can see it regularly! 😀
Ben, your words are right on target for me. I struggle with responding too quickly, and even though I'm usually right, I don't win any friends. If I slowed down and considered the other person, I would be able to get my point across in such a way that the other party feels validated. I'm a work in progress.
September 9, 2016 at 2:55 am
ConnieOI (9/9/2016) If I slowed down and considered the other person, I would be able to get my point across in such a way that the other party feels validated. I'm a work in progress.
Connie, as I posted earlier:
I do not think there are experts in this field
We are all in the same boat, some not so bad as others but we all seem to try to fit a foot in our mouths. I just thought, this must be a different type of foot and mouth disease (or maybe foot in mouth disease). :w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t:
Manie Verster
Developer
Johannesburg
South Africa
I am happy because I choose to be happy.
I just love my job!!!
September 9, 2016 at 3:12 am
Yea, I've found us DBAs to be a bit worse than other techies. I have a theory that may contribute as to why... Yes the knowledge that you're going to end up supporting someone else's crap code if a main factor but consider this;
Working as a DBA, you need in depth knowledge of the complexities of the database engine, in depth knowledge of the structure of the database, in depth knowledge of the data itself, in depth knowledge of how the nature of that data changes over time and in depth knowledge of how the business operates so as to advise on what MI/BI is actually going to be useful.
All of this knowledge comes from deep study of the system, investigating, analysing and living in the system.
An we LOVE it. Having so much knowledge and understanding makes us feel accomplished and powerful. We love that other people ask us first for help because we love disseminating that knowledge and get great satisfaction out of the fact that our knowledge helps so many people and drives success for our businesses.
At least, that's how we often see ourselves and all of that goes to our heads a bit. We start to think that no-one else knows this stuff because they're incapable of holding all that knowledge in their heads or investigating things that thoroughly. So therefore we have to be the ones to understand and to simplify things for the lesser mortals in the business.
The fact of the matter is, 90+% of our colleagues in IT are completely capable storing that knowledge in the heads and are perfectly capable of understanding the intricacies of a database engine and the data stored therein. They just don't want to! Lets face it, studying data and databases to that level to the majority of people is mind numbingly boring. Having the will and the capability are 2 different things. With the proper training and experience, a top notch DBA could learn photoshop, study graphic design and become a fantastic graphic designer. The capability is certainly there but us techies normally have no desire or will at all to invest time in something that we might consider superficial.
I want people to think that communicating with me is a pleasant experience. One thing that helps me there is to always assume that the person I'm talking to is more intelligent than I am, even if they have focussed their skills in something totally different. So when dealing with non-techies I assume limited knowledge, but unlimited capacity to learn. I think this helps to sound less arrogant and more informative <- if I've missed the mark here and sound really arrogant right now please say so :hehe:
Ben
Ben
^ Thats me!
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September 9, 2016 at 4:09 am
BenWard (9/9/2016)
Yea, I've found us DBAs to be a bit worse than other techies. I have a theory that may contribute as to why... Yes the knowledge that you're going to end up supporting someone else's crap code if a main factor but consider this;Working as a DBA, you need in depth knowledge of the complexities of the database engine, in depth knowledge of the structure of the database, in depth knowledge of the data itself, in depth knowledge of how the nature of that data changes over time and in depth knowledge of how the business operates so as to advise on what MI/BI is actually going to be useful.
All of this knowledge comes from deep study of the system, investigating, analysing and living in the system.
An we LOVE it. Having so much knowledge and understanding makes us feel accomplished and powerful. We love that other people ask us first for help because we love disseminating that knowledge and get great satisfaction out of the fact that our knowledge helps so many people and drives success for our businesses.
At least, that's how we often see ourselves and all of that goes to our heads a bit. We start to think that no-one else knows this stuff because they're incapable of holding all that knowledge in their heads or investigating things that thoroughly. So therefore we have to be the ones to understand and to simplify things for the lesser mortals in the business.
The fact of the matter is, 90+% of our colleagues in IT are completely capable storing that knowledge in the heads and are perfectly capable of understanding the intricacies of a database engine and the data stored therein. They just don't want to! Lets face it, studying data and databases to that level to the majority of people is mind numbingly boring. Having the will and the capability are 2 different things. With the proper training and experience, a top notch DBA could learn photoshop, study graphic design and become a fantastic graphic designer. The capability is certainly there but us techies normally have no desire or will at all to invest time in something that we might consider superficial.
I want people to think that communicating with me is a pleasant experience. One thing that helps me there is to always assume that the person I'm talking to is more intelligent than I am, even if they have focussed their skills in something totally different. So when dealing with non-techies I assume limited knowledge, but unlimited capacity to learn. I think this helps to sound less arrogant and more informative <- if I've missed the mark here and sound really arrogant right now please say so :hehe:
Ben
Ben, you are spot-on with that assessment (at least as relates to me). You've explained why I get so passionate about my work: I understand the back-end, the front-end, AND the business process -- like nobody else in my business.
September 9, 2016 at 4:11 am
manie (9/9/2016)
ConnieOI (9/9/2016) If I slowed down and considered the other person, I would be able to get my point across in such a way that the other party feels validated. I'm a work in progress.
Connie, as I posted earlier:
I do not think there are experts in this field
We are all in the same boat, some not so bad as others but we all seem to try to fit a foot in our mouths. I just thought, this must be a different type of foot and mouth disease (or maybe foot in mouth disease). :w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t:
Ha ha! I think it's because my boss has an amazing ability to hold his tongue. He's much further along this road than I am. But you know, I'm better than I was 5 years ago. I expect, since this is something I care about, that I'll be even better in 5 years. 😀
September 9, 2016 at 8:04 am
BenWard (9/9/2016)
Having the will and the capability are 2 different things. With the proper training and experience, a top notch DBA could learn photoshop, study graphic design and become a fantastic graphic designer. The capability is certainly there but us techies normally have no desire or will at all to invest time in something that we might consider superficial.Ben
This I disagree with different people have different skills and it's usually readily apparent early on where certain people's strength's lie. If any of these things were simply a matter of studying a set of actions like an assembly line worker then yes anyone could master them, but then we could also all just be replaced by robots.
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