Product has been added to your cart.

Professional Development

Home
Professional Development

Brent Ozar presenting at SQL Saturday Israel 2019

Tips for Better Presentations

Last Updated June 3, 2019

Writing and Presenting

Today’s post is for those of you who give presentations to user groups and conferences. Upload your resources before the session starts. When you say “I’ll upload the resources later,” the attendee hears you saying, “I’m winging this, I barely finished this deck 15 minutes ago, and I didn’t even have the time to upload…

Brent Ozar reading

Why That “DBA” Job Posting Sounds So Terrible

Last Updated June 2, 2019

Professional Development

What follows are just some of the highlights from an actual job posting. I’m not including the job description, just the requirements that an applicant has to have in order to even throw their hat in the ring: Requires Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. Experience running and maintaining a 24×7 production computing environment Hands-on experience…

Learn T-SQL Querying by Lopes and Lahoud

Book Review: Learn T-SQL Querying by Pedro Lopes and Pam Lahoud

Last Updated May 8, 2019

Learn T-SQL Querying by Lopes and Lahoud You’ve been writing queries for at least a year or two, and you’re curious about what’s happening under the hood when SQL Server runs a query. You want to know what you can do to improve your queries, tune your indexes, and change SQL Server’s configuration settings so…

The 2019 Data Professional Salary Survey Results

Last Updated January 6, 2019

How much do database administrators, analysts, architects, developers, and data scientists make? We asked, and 882 of you from 46 countries answered this year. Y’all make a total of $84,114,940 USD per year! Hot diggety. (And at first glance, it looks like on average, y’all got raises this year.) I make my query bucks the…

Thoughts About the 2019 Salary Survey’s New Questions

Last Updated December 30, 2018

Our annual Data Professional Salary Survey is open now and closes this Sunday. We’re asking a few new questions this year (based on your feedback), and here’s what we’re seeing so far. At how many companies have you held this job? This one came about because folks were curious if job hopping paid off: If…

Joe Sack query bucks

Tell Us What You Make: The 2019 Data Professional Salary Survey

Last Updated January 6, 2019

It’s time for our annual salary survey to find out what data professionals make. You fill out the data, we open source the whole thing, and you can analyze the data to spot trends and do a better job of negotiating your own salary: We make Stacks of Sacks Take the Data Professional Salary Survey now.…

What Should We Change About the Data Professional Salary Survey for 2019?

Last Updated October 5, 2018

Every year, we publish an open Data Professional Salary Survey. Last year, 3,113 folks from 73 countries answered, so we’re doing it again this year. Here are the questions we asked last year. If there’s any changes you want to make, leave a comment and we’ll talk through it as a community. I want to make…

Book Review: Microsoft SQL Server Training, Volume 1

Last Updated December 9, 2018

Last week, I shared a few pictures out of Ron Soukup’s Inside SQL Server 6.5 book. You had a blast with that one, so I figured I’d share some more pictures from another, uh, let’s call it “well-preserved” book about SQL Server. Make sure you see the subtitle of this book before you add it to your…

Book Review: Inside SQL Server 6.5

Last Updated December 9, 2018

Books Offline 30 years ago, back in 1988, Microsoft, Ashton-Tate, and Sybase got together to start building SQL Server 1.0 for OS/2. I wanted to take a trip down memory lane to celebrate, but I didn’t wanna go back quite that far. I wanted to go back to what would probably be fairly recognizable – say,…

The 2018 Data Professionals Salary Survey Results

Last Updated January 15, 2018

How much do database administrators, analysts, architects, developers, and data scientists make? We asked, and 3,113 of you from 73 countries answered this year. I make my query bucks the hard way Download the 2018 & 2017 results in Excel. A few things to know about it: The data is public domain. The license tab…

Automating Complacency

Last Updated January 5, 2018

Processes and Practices, Professional Development

There’s no Latin word for Robot I’m all for automation, especially when it comes to the boring stuff. As awesome as the automation routines we have for that are, I still see people messing it up. Right now, there’s no Clippy/HAL mashup glaring at you, telling you that what you’re doing is a bad idea.…

Our 25 Most-Read and Most-Commented Blog Posts of 2017

Last Updated December 24, 2017

We published a whopping 312 blog posts in 2017! Looking back, wow, there was a lot of fun stuff in here. First, here’s the ones you read the most: 25. Max Worker Threads – Don’t Touch That 24. Announcing Our 2017 Black Friday Doorbusters 23. Ola Hallengren’s Maintenance Scripts are Now on Github 22.…

Female DBAs Make Less Money. Why?

Last Updated December 31, 2017

Professional Development, Salary

The 2018 Data Professional Salary Survey is open now, and you can look at the live responses as they come in. (To get that in Excel, click File, Download.) As of this writing (Dec 23), there’s already over 2,500 responses, so I’m going to take a look at a few things to see how it’s…

Tell Us What You Make: The 2018 Data Professional Salary Survey

Last Updated January 7, 2018

Professional Development, Salary

Not what you’re worth, dear reader: we know your worth cannot possibly be calculated in base-10 numbering systems because you’re just so awesome, but what you make. How many stacks of Paul Whites are you pulling down? A few things to know: It’s totally anonymous (we’re not getting your email, IP address, or anything like that.) It’s…

What Should We Change About the Data Professional Salary Survey?

Last Updated December 9, 2017

Professional Development, Salary

Last year, 2,899 of you filled out the 2017 Data Professional Salary Survey (results), so I figure we should probably do that again. Here are the questions we asked last year. If there’s any changes you want to make, leave a comment and we’ll talk through it. 1. What’s your total salary in US dollars,…

How to Hire a Junior DBA

Last Updated December 24, 2017

When you’re hiring a Junior DBA, ask yourself a few questions: “What job did they have before this?” Someone who’s currently employed as a Junior DBA isn’t looking for another Junior DBA job: they’re looking for a Senior DBA job. Because of that, you have to rethink how you write the job description and minimum…

Brent Ozar reading

4 DBA Resume Anti-Patterns

Last Updated June 3, 2017

Professional Development

Every now and then, clients ask me to interview candidates for their open DBA positions. I get to see a lot of resumes, and there are a few warning signs that pop up regularly. 1. The Keyword Encyclopedia. I get it: you’ve opened SSMS before, and you clicked on all the options and wizards, and…

Automated Tuning And The Future Of Performance Tuners

Last Updated June 7, 2017

Consulting, SQL Server

Before you get too excited This isn’t a dive into any of the new automated tuning features of SQL Server 2017. I’m interested in them because Microsoft thinks they can put us out of business with them, but… Fat chance. See, a lot of the automated performance tuning features assume you EVER HAD GOOD PERFORMANCE…

This Year is Your Best Chance to Speak at the PASS Summit.

Last Updated May 22, 2017

#SQLPass, Writing and Presenting

Me presenting, photo by John Martin The call for speakers at the PASS Summit is open now. As of this writing, there are less than 120 sessions submitted. To put that in perspective, in 2016, there were 758 sessions submitted overall, and about ~175 general session spots. Your chances have never been better. Get in…

Group Post: If I Took Another DBA Job, My First Question Would Be…

Last Updated May 10, 2017

Production Database Administration, Professional Development

“Question 1: how do you predict how long a rollback will take?” Brent says: “How many people are in the on-call rotation with me, and can I give them each a technical test?” Once you get out of the on-call rotation, it’s really hard to go back to the electronic tether. I’d be willing to…

Menu