In my consulting work, I often find myself saying the same things to clients - but they're not the kinds of things I said when I was a database administrator. I call these "Consulting Lines", and I talked through 'em:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCA0Oz-uk-s
For T-SQL Tuesday this month, Louis Davidson suggested we give our past self some advice.
I'd tell myself, "Use 'we', not 'you'."
Eitan Blumin recently wrote a post about the future of the DBA career in which he talked about the rise of jack-of-all-trades IT professionals. It's a good post. You should read it. I did, and over the last 20 years, I'm pretty sure I've read a dozen variations of that post.
There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blogothon where we get together and write about a different topic. I'm hosting this month's episode.
Your readers wonder what kinds of jobs are out there in the database world, what exactly it is that you do, and what your daily grind is like. While it'd be cool to cover all of that, let's start with something simple.
This is the 8th year now that we've been running our annual Data Professional Salary Survey, and I was really curious to see what the results would hold this year. How would inflation and layoffs impact the database world? Download the raw data here and slice & dice it to see what’s important to you. Here's what I found.
Today's live stream was a little different: I demonstrated using the Aiomatic WordPress plugin, ChatGPT, and Azure Open AI to write blog posts. I showed the kinds of content it writes, the kinds of blog post content it doesn't include, and taught you how to identify meaningless word salad blog posts written by people who don't actually know what they're doing.
I have been absurdly lucky to be around so many amazing and inspirational managers. Almost everything I know was taught to me by someone else. Over my life, I've learned so much about careers, marketing, business, communications, teaching, databases, you name it.
For this month's T-SQL Tuesday, Gethyn Ellis asked us to share the best career advice we've ever received. That was a seriously tough call: I've gotten so many gems over the years.
Are your peers being paid more this year? Are they switching job roles? Are they planning on leaving their companies? To find out, I run a salary survey every year for folks in the database industry. Download the raw data here and slice & dice ’em to see what’s important to you.
Salaries are on the rise again this year:
I've been teaching online from home for years, and you'd probably think my office would keep growing and growing - but actually, my setup has gotten a lot smaller since the last time I blogged about it. I don't really need space in order to work, and I kinda wanna incentivize myself to get out of the office when my work is done.
This month on the blog is Community Tools Month, and I'm going to be talking about some of the most useful and influential tools out there.
You can't learn them all - *I* can't learn them all - because there just aren't enough hours in the day to do your work, keep your skills sharp, take care of yourself, and take care of the ones you love.
You're overwhelmed with choices: so many things you could learn, so many ways you could specialize in your career. Which one should you choose? What are the safe bets, and what are the risky bets? Should you be a contractor? A consultant? A freelancer? Specialize in the cloud, and if so, what products? There's no guide for data professionals here, and it's kinda scary.
An intriguing Office Hours question came in through my PollGab room.
Anatoli asked, "Is remote work the new normal for DBAs? What are the pros / cons?"
Every year, I run a salary survey for folks in the database industry. This year, I was especially curious to see the results to find out whether salaries went up. Anecdotally, I've seen a lot of people jumping ship to new companies due to the Great Resignation - but what does the data actually show? Let's find out.
Succeeding as a data professional is all about placing the right bets at the right times. The more you know about what’s happening around you, the better bets you can place. I’ve been working with databases for over two decades. In this session, I’ll invite you into my home to have a frank, honest discussion…
I'm only half-joking. Hear me out.
If you're frustrated at how much you work, and how little time you spend with your family & friends, think about how much planning and task management you're required to do at work. You've probably got a ticketing system that tracks a backlog of work you need to do. Someone monitors it, and you have to report your status regularly to them. You get fancy burn down charts that track your progress.
Last week, I shared my 300-Level Guide to Career Internals post & video. We talked about how the world is changing so quickly, and how it's a great time to adapt your career to accomplish the things in life that are important to you. One of the possible outcomes that we discussed was working for yourself.
Hi. I'm writing this from a cottage in Iceland, in the midst of a 9-month digital nomad stint.
I'm teaching classes and doing client work for 1-2 weeks, then Erika and I take off and hit the road for 2-3 weeks at a time, driving around the country, seeing the sights, and sharing 'em on my Instagram feed.
This month, to mark the 20th anniversary of BrentOzar.com, I’m stepping back and looking at the big picture rather than blogging about database problems & solutions like I usually do.
It wouldn't be a good navel-gazing series without a couple thousands words looking inward at myself.
Erika and I moved to Iceland for a while. For those of you who don't follow my personal blog, here's why we moved, and how we got here with a teleworker visa. You can spy on our adventures via my Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. We're working half the time while we live here, and sightseeing the…
Thirteen years ago, I met Gareth Swanepoel (@GarethSwan) for the first time, interviewed him for his first real sysadmin job, and ... turned him down.
Thankfully, my manager overruled me and hired him anyway.
