How-Do-I-Measure-My-DBA-Skills-Part-2

You may be wondering, “How can I know what phase of my career I am in? How can I see what the next steps might look like in terms of skills I may need to move forward?”

As people change jobs, the gears of career progression are turning.  Some new roles may be the same as the recent previous one. Some new roles will have larger spheres of influence and some may have better titles that require new skills. Like the gears in this picture, your job roles fit together and show a progression of sorts.

So if you’re a production  SQL Server Database Administrator, what does phase 2 look like in your career? You’ve survived those first couple of years and you would like to know what is ahead. You want to know the answer to the question, “What skills do I need to get to the next level?” Glad you asked.

Production DBA II – 2-4 years of experience

1. All competencies from the previous level.
2. Assist with triage of user issues, job failures and reactive tickets.
3. May participate in the design of a backup/restore strategy.
4. Improves existing processes for ongoing SQL Server management, such as configuration changes, in response to ongoing issues.
5. Installation of new SQL Server instances without supervision.
6. Looks critically at patch release notes to advise when a security update, cumulative update, or Service Pack is critical to apply and applies those patches to production.
7. Demonstrates understanding of high availability and disaster recovery technologies and participates in troubleshooting related issues. (DB mirroring, replication, log shipping, potentially AlwaysOn AGs)
8. Contribute to automation, particularly using T-SQL and PowerShell.
9. Familiarity with Windows Performance Counters and how to leverage monitoring software to assess performance.
10. May participate in T-SQL development of stored procedures, triggers, views, etc as well as database design.
11. May write and troubleshoot basic SSIS packages and handle deployments for SSIS.
12. Some familiarity with SSRS development and administration.
13. Participates in SQL Server migrations with some guidance.
14. May begin leading in knowledge sharing in some capacity in one or more areas from level I or II.
15. May take an active interest in leadership and in development of leadership skills, including emotional intelligence.

In phase 2, skill and job functions that you were doing all the time, like handling initial triage of break/fix issues, may be things that you assist other people with rather than have the sole responsibility for yourself. Activities you were doing under guidance during phase 1, the first few years of your career, you will do now with less guidance because you’re better at it and people can see that you’re better at that particular thing. This might include something like installing and configuring SQL Server on a new instance. In phase 2 of your career you may still reference someone else’s guide for this process, but no one is going to be watching you while you do the work.

At this stage you also begin to be more of an independent contributor. You will start to independently recognize opportunities for and make changes in the SQL Server environment that will benefit performance or some other aspect of database management. Automation of work will be something you begin to make your own contributions in, whether that’s automating something with T-SQL, or a new skill showing up in this part of your career, like PowerShell, SSIS, or SSRS.

If you’re fortunate, in this part of your career the more Senior people will be leading a SQL Server migration project.  When you were in phase 1, you only vaguely knew this sort of thing was being worked on and you certainly weren’t working on the project with anyone.  Here in phase 2 of your career, you will likely be given at least some smaller tasks to do related to a larger task, like a SQL Server migration.

Participating in a migration project is great for your skill and career development  because it is usually at least a moderately complex operation to migrate a SQL Server.  This means more people are needed and more parts of the SQL Server management skill set are touched on during the work. A project like this also means more exposure to working directly with the more Senior people, which will get you noticed.

As you stay in phase 2, you will gain increased proficiency at tasks from phase 1 of your career.  This may lead to you occasionally teaching others what you know about those skills and those work activities. Some leadership skills and opportunities may begin to develop from teaching others what you know.  You have to demonstrate good people skills as you teach technical subjects and people may begin to think of you as something of a leader.

Next Steps to Take

1. Copy/paste the above numbered list to a Word doc.  Think carefully about each one and whether or not you currently meet this criteria.  Put an “X” next to any item you need to work on.
2. For each item you placed an “X” next to, create a plan for improving skills related to that item. If you’re not sure what Log Shipping is or you don’t know anything about how to use PowerShell with SQL Server, then open your favorite search engine and look around.  There will be people and tutorials that explain it. Maybe you know SSIS or SSRS are used at your company and you’ve always wanted learn the technology.  Perhaps your company has monitoring software for your SQL Server environment and you have been interested in learning how it works. Put these things on your training plan that you’re making in this step.
3. If you would like help with anything in this post, or with something else related to SQL Server, reach out to me here or on Twitter, and I’ll be glad to offer assistance.