July 18, 2010 at 11:05 pm
When my client upgraded from SQL 2000 to 2005 they said now the server and database is my baby. I had a lot of learning to do and very quickly. I am not a DBA but a developer but now I needed to administer the database and make sure that it is running smoothly. Well, at that time I learned a lot and felt very secure that I am cutting it. Now I have fallen into some sort of a rut and feeling very insecure because I haven't been learning as much as I should and see a lot of other people knowing much more than I do.
I agree though that you should not compare yourself to the group or maybe even an individual because people tend to specialize in certain parts of SQL. Brad McGehee said in one of his books that you should find yourself something to specialize in.
Is insecurities good? Yes, it can be good if it motivates you to do better but it can also be bad because it can completely demotivate you.
:-PManie Verster
Developer
Johannesburg
South Africa
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. - Holy Bible
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. - Everett Mckinley Dirkson (Well, I am trying. - Manie Verster)
July 19, 2010 at 8:36 am
TravisDBA (7/17/2010)
Although you cannot prepare for every "nitpicky" question that might come up in an interview, you can hedge your bets by preparing for the ones that are most likely to come up. I have interviewed people and been interviewed for over 10 years as a DBA and have compiled a document of interview questions that I have seen and used over the years. Email me at talltop@bellsouth.net if you would like me to send you the Word document. 😀
I appreciate the offer, but I'm not interviewing right now, plus I am pretty solid on the DBA stuff. I'm just saying that the breadth of technologies that you could trivia about during an interview is staggering.
July 19, 2010 at 9:27 am
I'm just saying that the breadth of technologies that you could trivia about during an interview is staggering.
Very true, but you could say that about alot of professions today during an interview. That is just not particular to SQL Server, or IT for that matter, and it is not new either. Technology has been complicated and comprehensive for some time now.:-D
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 19, 2010 at 10:11 am
Bumper sticker comments
"If you are irreplaceable, you will never get promoted"
Capitalism is based on workers being insecure. It requires a pool of unemployed workers that no one wants to be in.
July 19, 2010 at 10:29 am
WolforthJ (7/19/2010)
"If you are irreplaceable, you will never get promoted"
The thing, then, is to become indispensable, instead of irreplaceable.
As far as whatever you said about capitalism, I can't disagree more. The past successes in capitalism have had, at their core, workers who believed the company would take care of them as long as they did their jobs. That would be the definition of security.
July 19, 2010 at 11:44 am
Wow, try and learn everything there is to know about SQL Server. Impossible, even for just one version of it. I doubt there is any one person in Microsoft that knows everything about SQL Server. It's like memorizing every word in the dictionary along with its meaning. When would you ever have a need to know all that? You learn what you need to know and as your need grows, you learn more. And while you are learning, you can ask others for their knowledge/input on what learning you have a need for.
-SQLBill
July 19, 2010 at 11:45 am
I'd say the thing to become is valuable. Show that you are contributing to the business and worth keeping around for the things you do.
July 19, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Wesley Norton (7/19/2010)
[...] past successes in capitalism have had, at their core, workers who believed the company would take care of them as long as they did their jobs. That would be the definition of security.
In turn, I'll completely disagree with you. Capitalism, just like communism separates people into our two fundamental psyches, predators and prey. I'll allow a third category if you'd like to define it. The predators, owners and upper level management are too single-mindedly approaching the herding of their prey to get involved in introspective assesment of their role. The prey, middle and line supervisory management and the plebis are too single-mindedly fearful of being ousted from their location in the herd to get involved in more than Maslow's baser layers, let alone a bit of self-actualisation.
The only good thing I've ever seen about fear is moving past it.
Peter Edmunds ex-Geek
July 20, 2010 at 2:30 am
Steve Jones - Editor (7/19/2010)
I'd say the thing to become is valuable. Show that you are contributing to the business and worth keeping around for the things you do.
I agree in theory. However, in the "real world" this trait alone cannot save a person from personal and political agendas. I have seen so many good people that were run out of the company simply because someone who was connected to the owners or the CEO had a personal agenda against them. Sometimes, it was something as trivial as the person finding out how much money the person was making. The fact is most IT shops are not about having "valuable" people at their company. They are more about having people that fit into their cliques and clans. Trust me, I have seen more of this that I care to recount over the years. I have seen so many unvaluable people that sit on their tails in companies surfing the internet all day long or spending hours in someone's office daily talking about last night's ballgeme or the nice looking skirt down the hallway while "good valuable" people with a family to feed get laid off! That's the real world folks. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 20, 2010 at 3:48 am
I disagree with Roger's comment about the complexity of SQL, and I'm not sure how the argument that dealing with disparate needs is supposed to be a cop out. At the end of the day, if you're not trying to do anything particularly fancy then SQL Server is very easy to use and administer, and you don't need to know anything about most of its functions for it to work. Simple tasks can be completed through the graphical UI, requiring little knowledge, hell that's how I started out. I know my boss knows little about SQL, but can cope with creating simple queries via the graphical method... personally it makes no sense to me, and I find t-sql easier, but maybe that's just me. As you need to do more complex things and your knowledge increases you have the freedom to expand as you require. You won't get the most of it without proper tuning, good use of indexes etc, but it will work and do the job.
Outside of full time DBA's in large organisations I suspect that the majority of us only use a subset of the features available in SQL Server, as such while it's good to understand the capabilities available should they be needed, in depth knowledge of everything generally isn't required. I understand HOW clustering works for instance, but I couldn't currently set it up without learning more since I've never needed it. Conversely I have needed to setup replication so know more about that.
I think Ben's description of knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns sums it up perfectly. I'm quite content to leave Clustering, XML etc in the known unknown category since I understand what they do, and know where to go if I ever need them. Of course the problem with unknown unknowns is that you don't know that you don't know them! 🙂
Keith Langmead - Sysadmin through choice & MCDBA through necessity
July 20, 2010 at 9:06 am
I think this is an interesting editorial. I see both sides of the coin. I know there is a lot about SQL that I don't know and there are plenty who know more than I. There is also the problem that employers and perspective employers expect you to know everything about it and they don't understand the vastness of the product themselves.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
_______________________________________________
I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
SQL RNNR
Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
Learn Extended Events
Viewing 11 posts - 46 through 55 (of 55 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply