Welcome to the 21st century! 20th
century habits die hard! What am I
talking about today? I’m talking about the virtuous virtue of virtual vocations,
more commonly known as Telecommuting or Remote Work. With today’s technology,
companies should be adapting more
widely to this strategy, and actively creating a virtual workforce. The reason why I’m blogging about this today,
is every time I post a new project or job opening, I immediately get bombarded
by very skilled and talented database professionals with interest. The very
first question I get, “Can I telecommute”?
Or, “Is it Remote”?
I totally
feel for these folks, as I’d love to be able to quickly place them back in the
workforce. Got projects + got skills =
win/win situation! However, old-school 20th century thinking has
companies lagging behind the times. My
obligatory reply “Sorry, this client requires the resource to be on-site 100% -
but I’ll keep you in mind just as soon as a REMOTE project comes across my desk” (And I will reach out to you when that
happens, but they are still a smaller percentage of available projects)
Telecommuting is more tangible and easily achieved in most
aspects of IT, and other “desk” jobs as well, but especially in the world of
database administration, design and development. After all, the databases themselves are now
virtual, and cloud-based! I’m a huge supporter of Telecommuting for many reasons, and
of course, done this myself, both full-time and part-time, throughout my
career, and still deliver delightful database remote services to my
clientele to this day. In fact, I gave a
presentation (on-site 🙂 back in 2011, at the SQLInspire
event in NYC. The aptly entitled
preso, “Telecommuting and the Virtual
Office” – you can see me give this TED-talk on the topic. (I think I still have that shirt somewhere
🙂 It was a hoot, an all-day event with
Andy Leonard, Steve Jones, Tom LaRock, Michael Corey, Andrew Brust and Michael
Coles – presenting on different topics – compressed in a 15-minute lightning
talk.
So, back to my
presentation. I spoke about the virtue of telecommuting and the benefits for
both the qualified professional, and the company. The subtitle, you may note,
was “Making the Case to Convince Your Boss!” Basically, the summary agenda
abstract of my talk was:
<<Have you ever dreamed of a job where you roll out of
bed, brush your teeth, and then head to your home office to start your day?
This is a reality for some and desirable by many. Wouldn’t it be great to work
uninterrupted, become more productive, and be home in time for dinner? The kids
would get more mommy or daddy time, and everyone is happy! Even telecommuting
once or twice a week, wouldn’t it boost your morale, balance your life, and
reduce office stress? Robert Pearl shares his experience being a Remote DBA,
including experiences from jobs that had no work from home policy to those with
a 100% telecommuting role. Is it all that it’s cracked up to be? What are the
tradeoffs? What do you need to know to convince management that the company can
actually benefit?>>
Yet, even in 2015, so many companies still refuse to
entertain the possibility of a remote worker. Yes, there are still positives to
having a warm body in a seat, team collaboration, instant interaction,
in-person meetings, and of course, socialization. (I’ll get to socialization,
in the next paragraph) All of these
however, can easily be compensated by today’s technology. So, in the more draconian
sense, it’s still the corporate mindset that workers off-site cannot be
trusted, or accounted for. Trust but
verify, is my answer to that, and also, employer guarantees from a reputable
industry vendor. The fact of the matter is, telecommuters are often more
productive that on-siters (did I just coin a new word?) No extended smoking or coffee
breaks, no water-cooler talk, no distractions of constant foot-traffic to your
cubicle. Sure, there are social virtues
to this, but we’re trying to convince companies to come into the 21st
century.
Oh yeah, back to socialization. Well, it’s not for
everybody, but if you can create your own dose of socialization, outside work
hours, or virtualize that too. Skype, Lync,
Instant messaging, Google hangouts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram,
still keeps you in touch with all of your peers. You are even able to expand your circles and
geographic region too. No, don’t have to
be a recluse, get out there to press-the-flesh, attend networking and training
events, parties, etc.
Career-wise, you can have instant access to information and
answers to questions like never before (waiting for technical support is so 20th
century) Leveraging social networking, you can excel
in your DBA career. Recently,
focusing on the DBA (database administrator), I introduced the concept of the Social
DBA – you can read that by clicking on the hyperlink. So, maybe office
socialization is overrated. I mean how
close do you want to get to your co-worker when he or she is coughing and
hacking all over the place (well, some common-sense manners), and staying home
(another great case for the ability to telecommute).
Let’s think forward a minute about the future of
telecommuting. Will it become more acceptable with accelerated adaptation for
the next generation? They are in essence
the YouTube & Twitter generation. I’ll admit that my technically inclined son
makes his room home to the Xbox, playing with friends on Xbox live, and surfing
the internet. Is this not the typical
teenager? Wouldn’t it be great if he could turn it into a cash job? He already
has the skills, and can easily transition into a work-from-home job. (Just get
your own apartment when you’re over 18, ok, buddy 🙂 I would argue that between everything hosted
in the cloud, this type of virtualization of the workforce is indeed the
future! Just like the Internet explosion
- Embrace
it or die
If you are interested in a DBA strategy and hands-on book, read Healthy SQL – A
Comprehensive Guide to Healthy SQL Server Performance, published by Apress, you can go to the url:
http://bit.ly/orderHealthySQLnow
You can also
get the book on Amazon: http://bit.ly/HealthySQLonAmazon
For all
things SQL, news, events, jobs, info, and other fun tweets, follow me on
twitter @Pearlknows and join the #HealthySQL campaign to
keep your SQL Servers healthy!
