It Depends

Fourth of July

Andy Warren — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:54:00 GMT

Read the Declaration of Independence and then it’s time for fireworks and grilling, maybe some apple pie too!

Book Review: Rolling Thunder

Andy Warren — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:23:00 GMT

Rolling Thunder ($7.99 @ Amazon) by John Varley is the third book in the series. I previously reviewed Red Thunder and Red Lightening, having really enjoyed them both. In this third book the prime character is now the 3rd generation (or 4th depending on how you count I guess!) and is told from the perspective of Podkayne (Elizabeth), a singer and musician in the Martian Navy. She ends up on Europa (Jupiter moon) when an interesting and major event occurs with severe repercussions on Earth, and which makes her the most famous person in the universe.

I didn’t enjoy the book as much as the first two. Maybe part of that was that at times the story/character is pretty shallow – she’s 19/20 at the time the story starts and that’s not meant as sexist (though maybe it is), just that few 20 year olds think really deep thoughts. Parts of it just come together in a way that feels forced in an effort to arrive at the ending.

Though I didn’t enjoy it as much, I still like the series being told from different generational perspectives. Think that is a nice device and a nice change of pace.

Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and SSC

Andy Warren — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:26:00 GMT

Steve Jones sent me a link to a presentation Joel Spolsky did at Google about Stack Overflow (SO) and it’s worth watching. It’s not a community – well, not a traditional one anyway – the goal is to provide answers to questions and beyond that, to make sure answers get updated as the world changes. If you’ve looked at things like Yahoo Answers they aren’t very good, what I’ve seen on SO so far looks very good. Like any eco system they’ve spent some time figuring out what drives good behavior and how to thwart bad behavior, and doing pretty good at it as far as I can tell. It’s a lot like a wiki to me, less formal and more active.

I mention SSC at the same time for a couple reasons. One is he references the site in his presentation – one as an example of ‘community’, then again as a site that requires a login to see the answers. So while SSC isn’t ‘mine’ exactly any more, I know enough about it to find it interesting to think about the options that might lead to a good result. Way back in the beginning we required registration for a few reasons:

We wanted to do some minor tracking of behavior – which users came back to the site ever
We wanted to build a sense of commitment and continuity, and in turn use that to foster good behavior – most open forums are noisy as hell
We wanted to drive behavior by sending out the first weekly and then daily newsletter, remind people to spend a little time on career
We wanted to make money to at least cover costs and preferably a bit more, newsletter ads (requiring an email address) work better than banner ads

I give you all that as background to come back to the point – is SO a better model than SSC? Or perhaps stated better, is a better forum model? People visit the SSC forums in droves to ask and answer questions, would they be better served by the SO model? I can see the beauty in searching for something and bam, there’s a single highly rated answer (followed by lesser rated ones), where on SSC you have to follow the thread to see it evolve. I think there’s value in following the thread. Some of it incidental learning, maybe a little bit is earning the answer! But I’m not sure it’s the best way.

I look at it from a couple perspectives. One, does it threaten SSC, SQLTeam, and other technical web sites? What happens if all the pros move there to answer questions? Does a new set of pros take over, or does everyone move to the new platform for questions/answers? If they do, is SSC still a community? If they don’t move…why not?

Take a look. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on community, forums, and all the rest.

Connector Editorial for July 1, 2009

Andy Warren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:04:00 GMT

I currently write the editorial for the PASS Connector which is published every two weeks as part of my role on the Board of Directors. I'm cross posting those editorials here as well as to the main PASS blog.

Just as the list issue of the Connector was ready to send we announced the full schedule for the 2009 PASS Summit. In this issue I want to focus on a topic that I think is of critical importance to PASS (and a personal cause) – bringing in new talent each year. If you look at the schedule you’ll see a Who’s Who of people in the SQL Server world, and that is good. Good because they have a lot to share, and good because they find the Summit to be an event worth their time. It’s definitely good for attendees.

So why do we need new talent? I can think of a few interesting reasons:
We need a ‘next generation’ of speakers for when the current ones retire
We need new ideas and new approaches – and new passion
It makes speaking slots competitive – only so many seats on the island
It’s the right thing to do. Good organizations constantly look for those with potential and offer them the opportunity to grow – but they have to do the work

I asked PASS HQ to send me a list of first time Summit speakers and it turns out 12 of the 85 distinct speakers are on the list. I’ve linked to their blog where I could find one:

· Glenn Berry

· Jamon Bowen

· Kevin Guinn

· Ravindra Gurram

· Rod Colledge

· Trevor Barkhouse

Remember, these aren’t first time speakers or newbie DBA’s – they’ve all been using and talking about SQL Server for a while. Read some of their blogs, or search for them and see what you find. I think you’ll see that those listed above are another 12 good reasons to attend the Summit this year.

In the next issue we’ll look at the upcoming PASS elections. Until then, if you have questions about PASS, please email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

Featured Blog: Jeremiah Peschka

Andy Warren — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:42:00 GMT

I met Jeremiah at the PASS Summit last year and since then I’ve looked in on his blog from time to time. He has an interesting mix of content covering his local PASS chapter, SQL, and one of my favorites, his Links of the Week where he aggregates good stuff he has read. Usually I’ll have seen some of it but not all, and one of the best things about following a few different blogs is the discoveries that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Check out his blog, and maybe we can get him to tell us how he wound up with goat as a blog tag?

LinkedIn Groups

Andy Warren — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:34:00 GMT

I’ve written a few posts now about LinkedIn, and for now still find it be the best fit for me as far as a networking tool. If you prefer something else, that works too! But if you’ve decided to use LinkedIn, groups should be a part of your strategy, and I want to cover why and how.

Right now I’m a member of only a few groups; the Orlando SQL group, PASS, SSC, and a couple others. Orlando has about 50 members, SSC over a thousand. I don’t participate much in the few discussions that happen within the groups (so far anyway), but I like it as an easy way to keep up with news about and within the group because I get a weekly digest (which you can disable). Once you’re a group member:

It gives you a way to post a message to a targeted audience. In general I see this used badly, but maybe I’m over critical. If you were going to say something to 1000+ people, make sure it’s relevant and succinct, and don’t repeat it every two days!
It is another way to introduce yourself when making a connection. You can pick any group as a reason for the connection, and while I still take a quick look, I get little spam from the group as far as connection requests
It has a built in job board, almost perfect for user groups as a way to support their sponsors and members. Almost perfect because no direct way to charge those placing the position openings, but I guess that isn’t all bad.

Some groups are open, some require ‘approval’ to join. Decent management tools if you want to start a group, and they just announced sub groups which might be interesting for a larger group like PASS or SSC.

Bottom line is that joining groups is a way to reach a much larger network without diluting your personal network. I suppose you could join 100 groups or more along that line of thought, but I think it’s reasonable to join groups that interest you. For example, I’m also a member of the Space Coast Users Group group (group squared?) so I can keep up with their news, and the same for Tampa.

If you explore this, look beyond just the pure SQL groups. I see lots of groups here in Orlando that just facilitate networking, and I’m waiting to hear back from a couple people about how well that works out, but I think it’s worth trying – especially if you need to practice your networking skills.

My Favorite Bad Movie

Andy Warren — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:39:00 GMT

My favorite bad movie is The Master Gunfighter starring Tom Laughlin of Billy Jack fame. It’s a Western, and he’s a gunfighter armed with two 12 shot revolvers (each with two cylinders if you’re interested, quite the idea) and a katana – a samurai sword. What more do you need for an action/western movie?

The plot is strange. A village of people is killed by his extended family as part of stealing some gold, and he leaves rather than fight with his family. Time goes by and they decide to do it again, this time he returns to intervene and winds up fighting what you could call his blood brother. Nothing wrong with that as a plot, but it rambles some. In between he supports himself by showing off his skills and of his tricks….maybe I should make you watch the movie…is slicing a fish in half. That’s half of it anyway!

It’s cheap at Amazon, watch it and let me know – would you watch it again? Or am I the only one?

Enjoy the weekend!

Plug for a Cool Catalog

Andy Warren — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:02:00 GMT

Ran across the Levenger site while researching laptop bags and it’s branded as ‘tools for serious readers’. Some of it perhaps over done, but some of it looks interesting. They’ve got some beautiful pens and while reading about them realized I had never tried a fountain pen, so I wanted to try one and the cheapest I could find locally was $20. Turns out for about $20 I could build my own – so I did – and they are … interesting. Somehow it does feel elegant/old school, and one thing I didn’t expect was that when you write on a napkin, it just sucks the ink right out into a blob. Anyway, they’ve got some interesting stuff that you might want, or might find a good idea for a gift.

I’m not affiliated with them, no financial interest at all.

Dell Mini – The Follow Up

Andy Warren — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Back in January I posted about purchasing a Dell Mini 9, wanting to see what how it worked and a certain amount of cool factor to it. In the months since the popularity of netbooks has definitely increased (you think my blog caused that?) and I could be wrong, but I think that price rather than form factor is the driving force. Having had the Mini 9 for a few months, I don’t use it as much as I had hoped, for a couple reasons; one is that the keyboard is just too small for me, maybe even a inch or two wider would make a lot of difference, and the other is that I’m still anchored to my main laptop – all my tools are there, I’m used to it.

But…

All is not lost. It’s a great machine for kids. Though it’s now missing 3 key caps, it still works fine and it’s child sized. At $300, it’s almost child priced too. I won’t be happy if it gets broken in half, but it’s not going to be a huge event either. It’s been so popular that we may buy a second one so that they each have one.

If you’re considering a netbook, I think you have to think hard about how you work. If you’re using web based mail, document creation, etc, then I think it would work very well. Or if you commit to loading it up and treating it a like a “real” laptop. The hard part is if you want both – when you travel can you live without all the stuff on your main machine? Think through how you’ll keep docs & data in sync.

Ultimately I wonder if it won’t be the straw the drove down the MS licensing costs for the OS. Just not much room in a $300 machine for an expensive license, and the same for MS Office.

Spring Cleaning

Andy Warren — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:44:00 GMT

As happens occasionally I had a stack of books on my desk that needed to be put away, and as I went to do that ran into a small challenge – no more space on the shelves. I need to get another bookcase, but as I looked at what I had realized it was probably time for a pruning session. I went through and pulled out some books that I had but didn’t really like, plus some on SQL 2000 that I don’t much use for anymore, and then went through a bunch of back issues of magazines, setting aside some of the SQL Server Standards and putting most of the rest in the ‘gotta go’ stack.

I could perhaps sell some of this stuff online, but I doubt I’d make enough to justify the time. Or I could recycle them, at least give the paper another go around. But before I do that I’m going to offer them to the attendees at the next oPASS meeting. Plenty of people still on SQL 2000, magazines still have good content, hoping that someone – maybe everyone – will find some value in things that I don’t use on a day to day basis anymore.

It would be great if user groups could support a true ‘library’, but I don’t know if the logistics would work out very well – anyone tried this in formal fashion?

Clear Ceases Operations

Andy Warren — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:06:07 GMT

Saw this in email this morning, Clear has ceased operations after failing to negotiate with its senior creditor. I’ve written previously about trying it for a year and deciding that the benefit didn’t align very well with the cost, and maybe I wasn’t the only one that made that decision. Too bad, was nice to see a private company competing with the government (TSA) and driving some improvements in the process.

Tips on Getting Hired – Part 5

Andy Warren — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:18:00 GMT

I think the hardest part about the job search is interviewing and not being selected. You keep saying “why” with rarely a good answer. It’s not fun to be rejected. I don’t think I can change that with any spin, but it helps if you understand that there are a lot of factors at work and your technical skills are just one small part of them. To show this, let’s imagine that you have decided to hire a lawn service. We start with a job description:

“cut the grass!”

You’d think that anyone could do that, but in truth what you want is probably a little more complex than that. For me, I want:

Sidewalks and beds edged
Driveway and sidewalks blown clear
Don’t blow debris under the front door
Bag or stack debris that needs to go for garbage/recycling
Make sure any gates that were opened get closed
Tell me if there are things I need to look at – sprinkler not working, weeds in one area, tree that needs to be trimmed
Reliable – I don’t want to look out and see the grass a foot tall and have to track someone down

I’d like to think all of that is fairly reasonable! I also expect to pay somewhere in a range of x to y dollars. Above Y and I might give up something to keep the price where I wanted it.

Then I post the job to Craiglist or the local paper or bulletin board, and I get five applicants. I schedule interviews, and here are the results:

1st candidate – large commercial company, lots of references, interviewed the sales guy, price is right at Y
2nd candidate – teenager from down the block, neighbor as a reference, price is X
3rd candidate – owner operated company, does the interview and is the guy that cuts the grass, can see all his equipment on the trailer behind his truck, price is Y
4th candidate – another large commercial company, has references, price is Y + 10 but includes fertilizer/weed control
5th candidate – independent guy trying to start a business, hasn’t purchased equipment yet, price is X -5

Now to be fair you might list different attributes about them, but the goal is to show you that the decision is pretty arbitrary. Who would you pick and why?

Was it just price?
Did you like the large companies knowing they have insurance and redundancy, can provide one stop shopping if needed
Or do you support the neighborhood kid, recalling fond days of pushing a lawn mower yourself?
Or do you go with the entrepreneur (along with low cost)?

If you think about how you arrived at the decision, you could go back and amend the job description. Here’s mine:

Sidewalks and beds edged
Driveway and sidewalks blown clear
Don’t blow debris under the front door
Bag or stack debris that needs to go for garbage/recycling
Make sure any gates that were opened get closed
Tell me if there are things I need to look at – sprinkler not working, weeds in one area, tree that needs to be trimmed
Reliable – I don’t want to look out and see the grass a foot tall and have to track someone down
Must have liability insurance
Price for services cannot exceed $Y
Prefer smaller company or individual owned

Now imagine that I had posted that to start with. If you were the commercial companies, would you still apply? What about the teenager who can’t get/afford insurance? I might get one interview, or I might get all five, but odds are that I get less than five. As a consumer I want some choice, do I really want to just have one interview?

That’s how it works. Job descriptions rarely include everything, and sometimes they discover more as they go from the very people they interview. All you can do is show them that you have the ability and willingness to solve their problem, and how your skills would help them. Looking back at the above, what if:

3rd candidate said that he tries to offset his carbon footprint by setting up a compost bin (which he manages) for each client
2nd candidate states in his opening email that he does not have insurance (being a teenager) but has a contract that releases you from any liability and that it was written by a local attorney

Would those change your mind? For some of us they would, for others it wouldn’t. See how damned arbitrary it is? None of the 5 candidates lacked the core skill, and maybe they even interviewed equally well. One or two things tipped the balance, and it might have been something you would never see or guess. Now stack on how my might feel if you got follow up emails from some – but not all. Maybe one person offered a slightly different price, or a free pressure wash – would that alter your decision? Maybe?

None of them is going to win by telling you how great they cut the grass, or how long they’ve been cutting it – for our purposes they are all equal. We need to validate skills, but we assume that whoever we hire has the skills – it’s the other stuff that matters!

I’ll be curious what you think about my scenario. I can see places where I might improve it, and it might make a heck of a good training video! But hopefully what you see is that it’s skills + presentation + follow through + luck that lead to a job. You do the things you can do.

Big Thinker

Andy Warren — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:30:57 GMT

My friend Robert Cain was kind enough to include me on his list of big thinkers along with my business partner Steve Jones, Paul Randal and Kim Tripp, Pinal Dave, and Brent Ozar. Distinguished company to be sure! Thanks Robert:-)

Tips on Getting Hired – Part 4

Andy Warren — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:50:09 GMT

Getting a job is hard. If you’ve been lucky enough not to struggle for a job, don’t make the mistake of thinking it will always be easy. Equally, finding a good job is harder still. Some more tips for you to consider:

Leverage your recruiter. They know the companies you’ll be interviewing at, ask what to expect – is it a hard technical interview? Panel interview? Do they want super stars or dependable workers (or both?). Are they free thinking and forward looking, or stuck in a rut. Note that none of those is necessarily bad, but understanding the game going in reduces tension and gives you a chance to prepare.
Potential employers are not going to tell you why you weren’t hired. Maybe your interviewing skills suck, maybe you were up against someone better – regardless, they aren’t going to tell you. But…they will probably tell your recruiter! Your recruiter wants that feedback because they want to either place you or put you on the back burner. If you don’t interview well they can help. If your skills aren’t there, they should recommend a correction – but could be back burner time. Ask your recruiter every time for the feedback.
It’s old school, but send a follow up email after the interview. If you’re still interested, let them know. If you flubbed a question, go find the answer and reference it in your email – candidly. Remember to spell check! If you see wiggle room on benefits that might make it work for you, mention that too (though be careful about negotiating too soon if you think you’ve got a good chance).
Pay attention to how they treat you. Interviewing is stressful on both sides, so it’s a chance to see their corporate ethos under pressure. Are the interview questions fair and challenging? Do they appear to be targeting what the job description defined and at the right level? Do they treat you as a potentially valuable employee, or just a number? Don’t let one misstep cause you to write them off, but it may well be something you want to talk about at the second interview if that happens.
Have source code and/or projects ready to show off, and to talk through how/why it works. Obviously you can take a lot of time and care in putting those examples together, is it a real world example of your abilities? Yes! Managers get that not all work is done to superlative standards due to time and resources, but they would like to see that given time you know how to do top quality work. It doesn’t need to be a a ton of code, say 2-3 pages.
If you’re transitioning to a new product/skill, show that you’re already working on it. Download SQL, Oracle, My SQL, Crystal, Perl – whatever – and do something with it that you can show/talk about. I’ve been using SQL for more over 10 years, if I was going on an interview for an Oracle job I would want to install it, create a database, create a table, create a job, back it up – and be able to talk the things I had noticed that were the same or different. Yes, both require a DBA and both require similar skills, but the products are different. As an employer I want to see that you get that, that you’re willing to put in sweat equity on your own time, and that you care enough to try.

One more post on this tomorrow!

PASS Connector Editorial for June 17, 2009

Andy Warren — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:39:15 GMT

Before we launch into the big news of the week I’d like to remind everyone that our schedule for the 2009 Summit has changed from previous years – Monday will be pre-conference sessions, the main conference will be Tuesday through Thursday, and then we will have a day of post conference sessions on Friday.

This week we announced 23 spotlight sessions, awarded to speakers that have previously presented one more sessions at the Summit and received excellent evaluations. You can click here for the full list, but I thought I’d demonstrate the kind of speakers the Summit attracts by listing their names here – I suspect you’ll recognize many of them!

Itzik Ben-Gan, Grant Fritchey, Klaus Aschenbrenner, Peter DeBetta, Paul Nielsen, Greg Low, Erin Welker, Brian Knight, Erik Veerman, Andy Leonard, Warren Thornthwaite, Joe Yong, Kimberly Tripp, Maciej Pilecki, Paul Randal, Peter Ward, Adam Machanic, Thomas Grohser, Gail Shaw, Kalen Delaney, Andrew Kelly, Joe Webb, and our own President, Wayne Snyder

We’ve also announced the pre-conference and post-conference sessions as well as a special 2 hour networking (as in people) class on Monday by author Don Gabor.

So click on the links and start thinking about attending! As always, if you have any questions about PASS, please email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

Note: The full schedule of speakers ended up also being announced between the time I wrote the editorial and it being published – visit the Summit site to see all of the sessions for this year.