6 Ways to Advance Your IT Career

The “Great Resignation” is upon us, or so the internet tells us. People want better working conditions, better wages, just… better. Large swaths of people are trying to advance their careers. Here are 6 ways to advance your IT career.

1. Accept that long term loyalty to a small to mid-sized company is likely keeping your salary low and limiting opportunities.
2. Use the wizards at salary.com to plug in the job titles you want and discover what you should be making.
3. Focus on building technical skills, especially early in your career
4. Work on your interviewing skills
5. Start blogging
6. Start presenting

How to Advance Your IT Career: Here is How I did It

1. I realized that long term loyalty to my small to mid-sized company was keeping my salary low.

Career growth opportunities were limited. The company I was in when I launched my IT career probably had 200-300 people in their corporate office and there were 8-12 local offices that had maybe 5-10 people working out of each of them. So, less than 500 employees. We weren’t big.

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6 Steps to Build a Training Plan

As an athlete there is a certain amount of preparation that goes into being selected to be on a team, competing for a starting role and then being competitive with the opponent. For tennis players to be competitive and go to the finals in Wimbledon, it takes hours and hours of training, practice, and discipline to eat well before ever stepping on the court in a tournament. To make a basketball team, takes hours of practice by yourself on a basketball court and competing with others and your team mates. To make the starting line up takes hard work, outside of game day. A certain hunger and desire to grow and be more than you currently are is important as an athlete.

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6 things to consider when presenting

Things to consider when presenting

I’ve presented a few times recently and discovered I like doing it. Presenting is a great way to give back to the I.T. community - in this case the SQL Server community. I’ve previously blogged about things I learned from giving my first presentation, and what it was like presenting at New Stars of Data. Here are six additional thoughts on presenting.

• Be sure you show up early for your presentation

The day of New Stars of Data, I was up 90 minutes earlier than usual to use the link to the track I was in to join a panel discussion in progress. I just wanted to be sure that the link was going to work and catch a bit of that presentation. I also wanted to be sure I was wide awake when it was time for me to  present. Slumber does not mix well with presenting!

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What is it like to be a presenter at the News Stars of Data virtual conference

Back in early July 2021, I presented at the SQL Server Meetup I co-host with Anthony Fortner. We had a speaker no show a couple of months prior and then for the July meeting a speaker had to cancel about a week before the meeting. I couldn’t let another month go by with no Meetup. So, I created a presentation from nothing, practiced it and gave it live for the first time in about a 7 day time span. It took about 15 hours of work and was my first SQL Server presentation to a public group. I learned a number of things from that experience. Then I gave a revamped version of the presentation to New Stars of Data in late October.

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What I Learned From Giving My First Presentation

I recently was thrust into a conundrum. I suddenly found myself in need of a speaker for a recent SQL Server Meetup this month. My co-organizer and I had one week to find a presenter, set up a new Meetup, and then publicize so people outside of Meetup would know about it. I decided that was too short notice to go out to  Twitter and ask for volunteers to speak.

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Measuring Your DBA Skills

Over the last 9 weeks I took you on a journey of skills and career topics related to being a SQL Server DBA. We looked at the Production DBA. We saw skills and career topics from the beginning to mid-career to Senior DBA. Then we looked at the Development DBA and their skills and career development needs. Finally there was a wrap up post.

To make it easier for everyone to get to these posts, I decided to bring them all together on a single page.

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How Do I Measure My DBA Skills Part 9

Production and Development DBA Skills and Things We Didn’t Touch On

We’ve covered a lot of ground for Production and Development DBAs in terms of the skills and applicable career topics. We’ve mentioned necessary skills with T-SQL, backup/restore, automation, PowerShell, troubleshooting, SSIS, SSRS, patching, Query Store, HA/DR, leadership and emotional intelligence. That’s quite a list! However, looking back at the series, there are still a number of things that weren’t mentioned.

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How Do I Measure My DBA Skills Part 8

Senior Development DBA

You’ve now likely reached the last stop in your career as a Development DBA. You have arrived at the Senior level. What skills do you have or should you be working on as a Senior Development DBA? I’m glad you asked. Let’s find out.

Senior Development  DBA – 7+ years of experience

1. 1. Most competencies from the previous levels.
   2. Advanced analysis of SQL Server Performance issues using advanced techniques to increase performance and/or stability. This could involve server level monitoring and analysis to identify issues or concerns.
   3. Makes decisions regarding SQL Server architecture, development strategies and overarching performance considerations, often in tandem with Development team or even the Infrastructure team.
   4. Regularly participates in code reviews of mid-level to Senior Devs and other DBAs, offering best practices and guidance and may assist in implementation.
   5. Fosters and protects healthy development environment, including Source control, controlled or automated migrations, and advanced development/QA Data curation via data masking technologies and potentially other methods.
   6. Makes significant contributions to the design of migrations and upgrades for SQL Server and may provide assistance to other, more junior members of the team, when it comes to implementation.
   7. Leads knowledge sharing in four or more areas.
   8. May contain competencies from Production DBA levels up to level 2 or 3.
   9. Regularly demonstrates good self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management skills (emotional intelligence

Automating SQL Server Processes

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How Do I Measure My DBA Skills Part 7

Lead Development DBA

Over the past few weeks I have been writing about DBA skills for various career levels, and for a couple of different DBA types - the Production DBA and the Development DBA. Today, we’re examining the Lead Development DBA. You’ll discover what this person needs to know.

DEV DBA III/Lead Development DBA – 5 to 7 Years

1. All competencies from previous level.
2. Manages most administrative aspects of non-prod environments without assistance from other DBAs.
3. Participate in T-SQL development and database design of advanced complexity.
4. Investigates potentially complex data issues within SQL Server.
5. May have several years of progressive experience with SSIS, SSRS or SSAS.
6. Administers source control systems for the environment.
7. Regularly automates tasks. This should include the use of T-SQL, SQL Server Agent, and PowerShell.  May include the use of other languages like Python or C#.
8. Creates and manage design documentation related to development work.
9. Regularly explores, learns and implements new SQL Server development features. Examples would include new T-SQL enhancements and new feature sets like Temporal Tables for SQL Server 2016 and Data Virtualization for SQL Serer 2019..
10. Advanced understanding of execution plans, indexes, and query tuning.
11. Investigate complex data integrity/repair issues within SQL Server.
12. Leads in knowledge sharing in two or more areas from levels I, II, or III.
13. Assists with SQL Server migrations and upgrades in DEV/QA or production.
14. Mentors Junior DBA’s and Developers.
15. Participates in code reviews.
16. May contain competencies from Production DBA levels up to level 1 or 2.
17. Demonstrates emotional intelligence and may take an interest in leadership roles.

So let’s dive into a few of these points in the skill list.

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How Do I Measure My DBA Skills Part 6

Development DBA II

With the last post, we began talking about the Development DBA and the skills needed at the beginning of this career path. Now it’s time for you to ponder what the next level looks like.

Development DBA II – 2 to 4 Years of Experience

1. All competencies from level 1
2. Develop basic to intermediately complex stored procedures, triggers, views and other database objects.
3. Will have some experience with SSRS, SSIS, and/or SSAS development, deployment and possibly administration.
4. May administer source control systems for the environment.
5. Promotes SQL changes from Dev up through all environments, including production.
6. Contributes to automation, particularly using native SQL Server methods, but could also leverage PowerShell or other languages for automating tasks (Python, C#, etc.)
7. Designs pre-prod testing of SQL code prior to production upgrades or migrations. This includes performance and regression testing.
8. Basic to mid-level understanding of execution plans, indexes, SQL Server statistics, and query tuning.
9. Investigate basic to moderately complex data integrity/repair issues within SQL Server
10. May begin leading in knowledge sharing in some capacity in one or more areas from level I or II.
11. May take an active interest in leadership and in development of leadership skills, including emotional intelligence.

In years 2 through 4 the Dev DBA will work with more complex T-SQL such as recursive CTE’s, and error handling with TRY CATCH or the THROW syntax will likely be introduced at this stage. You may begin writing database views during this part of your career and leveraging them to make query writing a bit simpler for yourself and others. You are likely to be exposed to T-SQL Triggers and you’ll need to understand them and even maybe write a few triggers of your own.

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