Last week I talked about getting ahead by finding yourself a junior DBA, and this week I want to cover another tactic: saying no.

If you’re a good worker, you’re going to get a reputation.  People are going to bring you work.  If you’re a nice person, you’re going to want to say yes.  It feels great to say yes, and it feels great to make people happy.  Problem is, the better you get at working (no matter what the job is), the more people are going to want to give you things to do.  It really does never end - and that’s great.  It’s job security.

Being a great employee means saying no.

A lot.

Great employees have to say no several times a day.  As I write this, it’s eight AM, and I’ve already said no twice.  It’s not that I like saying no - it sucks - but there’s a lot of work that needs to get done, and I can’t do all of it.

Saying no means that when something really cool comes along at a moment’s notice, you can say yes.  If you’ve booked yourself chock full of deadlines and you have to work 50 hours a week just to do your regular stuff, then you don’t get to work on the fun spontaneous stuff that comes up out of nowhere.

Here’s how to determine when to say yes and when to say no:

• Is it a project you’d be proud to put on your resume?
• Is it a project your manager is going to be proud of?
• If it doesn’t get done, is it going to reflect poorly on you - or on somebody else?  (Hint: the “stakeholder” is the person who stands to gain or lose by the task’s success.)
• Can it be handed off to someone more junior than you?
• Is there someone else who would kill to get their hands on this work?  (Hint: the person who WANTS to do the work is the person who will do the best job on it, sometimes even if they’re not the most qualified, because they’ll devote the most love and attention to it instead of racing to get it done.)
• Exactly what have you got on your plate right now?  (If you can’t immediately point to a list of all your outstanding tasks, you need to say no until you CAN point to that list.  I suggest RememberTheMilk.com.)
• Does it play into your GTD 50k foot view?  (Does it map to something in your career plan?  More on that later…)

If you want to get ahead in your career, and if you want to move up in the same company you’re at, somebody is going to have to do your job.  You can’t get promoted if you’re irreplaceable.  (And frankly, if you think you’re irreplaceable, your boss is probably already planning to replace you.)

Look around your office and find somebody who would love to have your job. If you’re a DBA, maybe it’s a developer who’s tired of learning new languages every 3-4 years and would like to stick with one (T-SQL) for a while.  Maybe it’s a network admin who’s tired of fixing desktops and servers and wants to make more money.  But either way, make sure it’s someone that you enjoy working with, because you’ll be training them for a while.

Approach them and start by saying, “Have you thought about becoming a DBA?  I’ve seen you in action, and I think you’d make a good DBA.  One of the toughest things about becoming a database administrator is getting your first job as a DBA, though, and I’d like to help you by getting you started with training.  One or two days a week, I’ll show you what I’m doing, and you can take over some of the basic tasks over time if you want.”

If they clap their hands and offer to wash your car, they’re your new junior DBA.  Even if YOU are a junior DBA, there’s somebody who wants this training, and they’ll be thankful for the opportunity.

If you’re paranoid and you’re worried that they’re going to steal your job, relax: we’re not going to give them the fun parts.  Give them the basic, day-to-day keep-the-lights-on tasks that you don’t particularly enjoy - things that won’t get you promoted.  Knowing how to check all of the backups isn’t going to make you famous, and every hour that you free up out of your schedule means an hour you can spend learning the latest & greatest tools and tricks.

Training this person will mean extra time initially on your part, so focus on training them on things that will pay off for you.  You don’t want to train them on something that you only do once a month, because it won’t free up your schedule and it won’t be useful to them either.  Train them on things you do all the time, like:

• Interpreting sp_who and sp_who2 to find out who’s blocking queries
• Reading query plans to improve a query
• Indexing tables or removing unnecessary indexes
• Backing up and restoring databases
• Installing the client tools

Or whatever else you find yourself doing more than once a week.

If this concept sounds crazy to you, ask yourself: how many times has your boss come up to you lately and said, “You’re doing a great job.  How would you like to take on this cool new tool we got in?”  Or is he handing you the crappy stuff that nobody wants?  If you’re getting the short end of the stick, or if you’re never getting to play with cool toys, it’s probably because your manager sees you as too overwhelmed with your current responsibilities - and only you can fix that.

In today’s podcast, Kevin Kline talks about the difference between influence and authority, and why IT professionals need to work on their influence to succeed.

You can subscribe to our podcast feeds here:

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This year at the PASS Summit in Seattle, Quest Software is sponsoring an expert panel event on automating SQL Server processes. Sounds boring, right? Think again - here’s when you need to check out process automation:

• You can’t hire help (either no budget or no available people) and you can’t keep up
• Your number of servers keeps growing
• You don’t know if every server got backed up in the last hour
• You don’t have an index maintenance plan for rebuilds & defrags

I’m always amazed that Microsoft SQL Server has been around for so long, but there’s very few standardized automation scripts. So many of us have our own duct-taped SQL Server backup T-SQL scripts, have disdain for the built-in maintenance plan approach, and would never think to Google for an automation script instead of rolling our own.

The experts with their fancy opinions:

• Allen White, SQL Server MVP and Trainer for Scalability Experts (moderator)
• Kevin Kline, SQL Server MVP and Technical Strategy Manager, Quest Software
• Buck Woody, Program Manager, SQL Server, Microsoft
• Dan Jones, Product Manager, SQL Server, Microsoft
• Thomas LaRock, Database Engineering Lead, ING Investment Management
• Charley Hanania, Production Product Owner, SQL Server, UBS
• Brent Ozar, SQL Server Domain Expert, Quest Software

Why am I on the list? Because I, for one, welcome our new robot DBA overlords.

When: Thursday, November 20, 2008
7:00 - 8:30 a.m. (breakfast served until 7:30)

Where: Seattle Convention Center
Room 613 (6th floor)

If you want the free eats, you gotta RSVP online for the event.

Technorati Tags: pass, pass summit

After being on both sides of the recruiting & recruited fence, it seems like we need a simple, standardized checklist that DBAs and recruiters can use to quickly convey their skills and a job’s needs. I see this as a yes/no checklist that the DBA and the recruiter would fill out and score to see how close of a match the candidate is. Maybe we could even add a “years of experience” column.

Environment Size:

• 1-10 servers
• 10-100 servers
• >100 servers
• Databases under 100gb
• Databases 100-500gb
• Databases over 500gb
• Tables under 10 million rows
• Tables 10-100 million rows
• Tables over 100 million rows
• Single DBA working alone
• Worked in a team of 2-3 DBAs
• Worked in a team of more than 3 DBAs

High availability:

• Clustering
• Database Mirroring
• Replication
• Backups & restores
• Server monitoring (MOM, Tivoli, etc)

Performance tuning:

• Performance monitoring (Perfmon, Spotlight, etc)
• Performance tuning existing code (rewriting stored procs/views/etc)
• Index tuning
• Partitioning
• Triggers
• Storage tuning (RAID, SAN, filegroups)

Other skills:

• Data modeling
• SOX & HIPAA compliance
• Security specialists
• Application architecture

Other related products:

• SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
• SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
• DTS
• CLR programming with VB.NET, C#

That last group (Other related products) is tricky. My personal belief is that DBAs who work with the below tools are really specialized database administrators. They tend to create content rather than manage databases, and they’re a different breed. When someone says they’re a DBA, but they only do SSIS or SSRS work, then they’re more of a developer than a DBA.

I started this checklist earlier this year because I had some bad experiences with recruiters, and it wasn’t really their fault. In one case, a position was a perfect fit for me - except they wanted replication. I don’t have replication skills, and I shouldn’t go into a shop as their only DBA if replication is mission-critical to them. I can learn a lot quickly, but I don’t want to learn that particular skill the hard way. In another case, I was sold a “DBA” position interview only to find out I’d really be writing SSIS/DTS packages. Ugh.

What would you add to the checklist that would determine whether or not a DBA was right for a job?

Technorati Tags: hiring, hr

In this vblog entry I describe and discuss the Microsfot MCP (Master Certification Program). I hope this helps anyone that is interested in this program. Enjoy and I look forward to your feedback!

Check out this latest vblog entry on the topic of efficiency and effectiveness on the job.  I hope that this information helps you in both your career and day to day on the job.

As always, I appreciate your feedback on these vblogs.

Kevin

Technorati Tags: kevin kline sql server quest software self improvement

Hello everybody, I’m posting my first attempt at a video blog entry.  Take a look and see what kind of things I’ll be posting in video form here and please leave your comments, they’re always appreciated.