About two years ago, I realized I didn’t have the skills to grow the consulting part of the company to become a 10-employee firm, so I laid off Angie, Doug, and Jessica. This year, I made the tough decision to close the consulting side of the business entirely. I’ll be focusing on training and SQL ConstantCare®.
That means Erik Darling and Tara Kizer will be seeking other adventures. I’m going to miss them terribly – they’re just phenomenal people. Yeah, sure, they’re complete SQL Server professionals, but they’re also awesome coworkers, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. They’re amazing.
If you’d like to get in touch with two of the smartest data professionals around, email Erik at edarling80@gmail.com and Tara at tara.kizer@gmail.com.
(Erik is also a blogging MACHINE, and he’s written a lot of good stuff that still needs to see the light of day. That means for the rest of the day, we’ll publish a new post from him every hour until his queue is emptied out. Let the publishing commence!)
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I’ll miss Erik’s Blog Posts, they were amazing with an amazing personality.
See ya, space cowboy
Agreed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the blog posts are a big part of what drives traffic to the site.
Hopefully they will continue on their personal blogs.
Do Erik and Tara have their own websites that they will continue to blog on? Best of luck to the both of them on their future adventures!
Great question – I’ll leave that to them to answer, but neither of them have active blogs set up currently. I can’t imagine Erik giving it up, though – he’s a natural at it.
Wish you guys all the best…Had a great time with all of you…
Best Wishes all!
Good luck!
I’m sorry to hear this news. Erik was a great help in the Critical Care engagement at SJV. I would have loved to see more organizations make use of that service; it was worth every penny we paid. Sadly, I don’t know Tara’s work, but if she was with your organization, no doubt she is top notch.
Best of luck in your future endeavors, Tara and Erik. Leaving an organization of this stature in this manner is never fun. I know Brent will help you any way he can — he helped me when I was last laid off.
Andrew – that’s great to hear! Yeah, both of them were absolutely phenomenal, and I wish I could have kept them around forever. They’re just great people, and they’re going to succeed wherever they go.
Who is left there now other than you?
Richie Rump, our “dataveloper” – he’s the mastermind behind SQL ConstantCare.
Well that sucks. What about the Wednesday Office Hours Podcast? Erik and Tara balanced out the show.
James – yeah, great question: I’m putting Office Hours on hold for now. You can read more about that over on my personal blog: https://ozar.me/2019/01/refocusing-my-2019-plans-letting-go-of-consulting/
Dayyum :'( all the best, guys!
This sucks. 2019 sucks. Everything sucks.
Good luck Erik and Tara! I was able to go to the PASS pre-conference with Erik and Brent and really enjoyed Erik’s presentation style. Tara’s blog posts, while more infrequent than Erik’s, were always pleasant to come across and had great information. Cheers!
I’ll miss Erik’s fantastic Blog Posts. Best of luck and see you around.
Props on not doing this BEFORE Christmas. That’s probably a given w/your company’s culture and values, but I appreciate it regardless when leaders make those types of choices. It isn’t as common as it should be.
Agreed.
NOOOOOOOO!
I wish for the absolute best for Erik and Tara, as they are outstanding talent. And the best for the continuation of BOU. But I’ll miss the homestead of quality consultant-type information that has been so valuable to the community! So much character and fun it has brought to my career, and encourages me on to be better at what I do. I can only hope to find as good of information, presented as well as you all have, somewhere in SQL world. Thanks Brent for all you and the team have done to date. Cheers.
Joshua – you know, it’s funny, working with Tara & Erik totally encouraged ME to be better at what I do, too. They’re just fantastic people.
All the best to Erik and Tara.
One of the things that’s kept me coming back here is all the great content for new and developing DBAs like myself, and I’ve really appreciated your contributions in both the Blog and Office Hours.
[…] The Junior DBA Workout Plan, I was also thinking about the eventual inevitability of someday not working for Brent, and exactly what I’d wanna do […]
What are the plans for the first responder kit? Are you still supporting it?
Oh absolutely – I couldn’t do my job & training classes without it.
So if we purchased ConstantCare in November 2018, that still remains the same through Nov 2019?
Yep, exactly!
Best of luck to Tara & Erik – they’ve both helped me out a great deal! Hope to meet up with Erik at SQLBits!
[…] you probably saw the announcement from our friend Brent Ozar last week. He’s going to be focusing on his really cool training […]
All the best to Erik and Tara!! Definitely enjoyed your contributions over the years.