January 8, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Stubborn DBA
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
January 8, 2012 at 11:07 pm
I agree completely. It is the challenging ones that make a job interesting and therefore worthwhile. I don't think anyone enjoys the day-to-day get-this-done type of stuff.
-- Stephen Cook
January 9, 2012 at 12:04 am
I also agree, spot on!
/@devandreas
January 9, 2012 at 2:55 am
I completley agree, especially on "Ones usefulness to an organisation is not just based on knowledge, but on ability, through long practice, in working out how to solve problems, no matter what they are."
In some organisations, ones knowledges of the company, work processses and its structure obtained during years of IT work is often disregarded.
Especially senior IT managers/ CIO with several years under their belt in the same company might know more about the internals of the company as the GM; we are the ones in the field that have to find solutions to operational insufficiencies, its not not only the companies 'problems' we have to identify, but also translate them into a IT based solutions.
January 9, 2012 at 3:02 am
You've hit the nail on the head, Phil....which is, of course, preferable to hitting the keyboard with the head.
Unfortunately, I usually have to reach the point where the metaphorical keyboard bashing becomes literal keyboard bashing before I may ask myself the slightly philosophical question of why I'm doing this.
January 9, 2012 at 3:16 am
Ahh, you do have a grand way with words Mr Factor. I always find myself resembling the 'agree with everyone' guy from The Fast Show (I think - sorry for the parochial reference) when I read your stuff.
Anyhow - I think that is why I can very often look at a problem presented by a colleague and immediately see a solution. Bloomin' years of stubborn review of seemingly intractable issues. It has come hard...
January 9, 2012 at 5:24 am
January 9, 2012 at 7:18 am
The way I look at it when I am trying to solve one of these problems:
You cannot let the computer win! If you do, it will start thinking it can win all the time!
:w00t:
January 9, 2012 at 8:02 am
Ok, I have to be the first one to throw a monkey wrench into the conversation. For full disclosure, I'm not a fulltime DBA. I work in TSQL quite a bit, but also do a lot of work in other application tiers (business logic, ui).
Don't you think sometimes when getting into one of these situations it's time to step back and decide whether you are using a the wrong tool? (like a hammer when you need a screwdriver). Sometimes when things are this hard it is an indication that maybe the task should be moved to a different application tier. Solving the problem in the wrong place (not saying that's always the case or necessarily the programming case that started this discuss) just for the sake of not letting the computer win may just make the app harder to maintain over time.
January 9, 2012 at 8:55 am
Phil, I totally agree with the learning through hours of struggle belief. There is a dark side to this drive however; when I work with others, or they have worked with me 🙂 it is not helpful to the "team" if instead of going on to your next assignment you spend those "hours" trying to figure out what went wrong. Yes, the answer might be important long term, but do not try to figure out why the house started on fire while the house is still burning.
<><
Livin' down on the cube farm. Left, left, then a right.
January 9, 2012 at 9:46 am
This editorial sure hits the nail on the head!
January 9, 2012 at 10:21 am
I have another, unmentioned form of satisfaction: when I am the first to report an SQLS bug. That does not solve the porobelm at hand - I still have to find a circumvention -, but it gives me (seldom exercised) bragging rights.
January 9, 2012 at 10:35 am
While I share similar instincts; these urges have to be mastered so that there is a balance between solving the unimportant and getting productive work done.
It's all too easy to get sucked into a multiple-day effort on something that yields no immediate benefit to the company while trying to solve these things. While the type of effort always contributes to ones long-term problem solving skills and the specific task *might* someday payoff they do not happen in a void.
There are other tasks competing with these intellectual exercises that have tangible, immediate benefits to the company and should get priority.
January 9, 2012 at 10:40 am
Sounds like the best of my days.
Recently spent a significant amount of time solving a trivial database problem "the hard way". Beat on it till it worked. Could have solved the same problem more easily by bypassing certain tools I'm less familiar with.
Ended up with a solution that worked better than a "do it the simple way" solution would have. Much more imporantly, ended up with an insight into a seemingly disrelated problem, and was able to save the company $10,000 that would have been spent on third-party software, 2 months of dev time that would have been spent integrating that software, and came up with a solution that actually works faster, on a wider set of cases, than that software would have worked on.
Had no idea going into the thing that the bigger problem had any relationship to it. Wasn't expecting to get anything that useful out of it. But ended up with much more value than I expected.
Knowledge works that way.
And, even without that possibility, there was NO WAY this smaller problem was going to kick my butt! Not gonna happen! No way! 😛
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
January 9, 2012 at 10:45 am
I'm glad to see there are so many others with the "stubbornness" bug! 🙂
For me the worst feeling is when I get stuck in one of these weird, frustrating problems when it's close to time to go home and I cannot stay any longer at the office because, say, I need to pick up the kids from school at a certain hour and cannot delay. I end up thinking about the unresolved problem throughout the drive home and through the evening. My wife gives me annoyed glances while we are watching tv and I'm working on my laptop and it's always the same question: "Are you on call again?". :w00t:
On the flip side, I get a tremendous feeling of satisfaction when I have been able to figure out a difficult problem on the same day. Then the drive home is glorious!
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