Learning to Write Better

Recently I ran across a blog post from Brian Kelley, a colleague in the SQL Server world. He noted that one of the things that makes him a better professional in his business is being able to communicate well.

I agree, and it’s one of those things I mention in my branding presentation, but don’t emphasize. Whether you blog, speak, or communicate in any way, poor communication skills stand out. Great communication skills just flow, and let people understand your message easily.

I have a few ideas for you to improve your skills.

• 15 Grammar Goofs (from Brian’s post)
• Improve your writing skills
• Improving your spelling
• Proofreading

Bookmark these links and then periodically take a few minutes and learn to improve your skills.

One other resource I’ll recommend as a place I ask questions or learn from the pros is English.stackexchange.com. I suspect there are exchanges for other languages as well (like Spanish).

Learn Something Today

I saw this quote, and thought it was great.

“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.” — Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger is the partner of Warren Buffet, and has worked in the financial industry for decades. Both men are billionaires, living late in life, and still working.

I think this advice is something all of us in technology can take to heart. We work with a variety of ever changing technologies, and we can’t know everything about the platforms on which we work.

However we can continue to get better.

I don’t know that I learn something every day, but I’m starting to think I should be making more of an effort to learn something small, something that makes me think or question the world around me. Something that makes me think differently about my career.

Read and learn something new today.

And write about it.

What Have You Learned?

I ran across an interesting link that relates to colleges and their goals, as well as measuring this goal: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130509131339-17000124-congratulations-college-graduate-now-tell-us-what-did-you-learn

It’s disconcerting to see this as a parent of a college kid, but I think this also can apply to work. You ought to think about what you've learned at work on a regular basis. If you're not learning, then you're adding another year of the same experience.

At the end of five years, do you want five years of experience, or one year of experience five times? Employers, and especially technical interviewers, are getting better at separating these out.

Work on your career by learning more. Assess yourself, and try to determine if you’ve learned to actually do new things each year. Make a list, or keep documentation when you learn something new and can apply it to work.

You should ensure your branding reflects this.

Reduce Your Incompetence

Are you unconsciously incompetent?

I hope you answered “yes”, because if you didn’t, you’re really unconsciously incompetent.

I’m not trying to offend you, but it’s a fact that all of us don’t know various things, but there’s an even larger set of things that we aren’t even aware that we can’t do.

For example, in databases, I wasn’t aware that there was a DBCC Check Constraints until I read this post. I didn’t know this was even an option, much less what it did. There are probably lots of people in a similar situation in my field, people that don’t know some feature or option exists, and never use it.

That’s the case for most of us in many fields, but also in our own. One of the ways to advance your career, maybe shape it in a way that suits you, is to learn something new about your field, try to expand your horizons. You may learn there’s an area you’d like to move into, or one you want to avoid (perhaps more important).

You don’t have to do this, or any specific piece of advice I give, but do something.

It’s Never Too Late to Learn

I ran across this story of Ira Classon, who learned to not only program, but do it well enough to get a number of speaking engagements and an enormous amount of respect in 18 months.

Not all of you are going to be extremely talented programmers that just need to work, and many of you certainly won’t learn be a top notch programmer in 18 months, even if that’s your job now.

However if you think about the future, and you think about trying to learn to be a much better programmer across the next 5 years, I think you’ll be amazed at how much you can improve your skills.

The trick is to work at it, regularly, and seriously. Pace yourself, remember you have more to your life than just improving your career, but you can do it.

This isn’t just for programming, but almost any professional endeavor, from the medical field to teacher. You can improve your skills, and perhaps your work situation with regular effort.

Be sure that you track your effort, get second opinions on what you do and write, and you should be able to find the job you want.

Resources for Learning

I wrote last year about the Khan Academy over at The Voice of the DBA blog. It's a resource that one man set up for his kid and it has grown into a great learning resource for a number of academic subjects. It's a great resource, and if you have kids, check it out.

However, if you're interested in being a teacher in one of those subjects, it's also a good resource. You could get background on a subject, view how others teach the topic, or brush up on portions of the subject you aren't familiar with. That's in addition to being a great teaching tool.

In my industry, the SQL Server/data professional field, we have tons of resources available to us. Microsoft provides various hands-on labs. The company I started provides daily resources to learn from. There are plenty of other resources as well, including free events, and webinars from a variety of sources.

I know the tech industry is probably ahead of others, but more and more doctors, lawyers, and others are blogging and providing free or cheap education all the time. You just have to look for it.

Take control of your career, and seek out resources that can help you get better, learn new skills, and hopefully find the best job in the world for you.

How do you learn the advanced stuff?

An editorial on technical work, but one that might apply in other areas as well. This was originally published on The Voice of the DBA blog on Oct 4, 2011.

I was talking with someone recently about features in SQL Server and they mentioned that partitioning was something DBAs should know. It’s only available in the Enterprise and Data Center editions for production use, but my friend noted that it works in Developer edition and felt there was no excuse for a DBA not being familiar with a feature that’s been out since SQL Server 2005, nearly four versions removed from its introduction.
I can understand that, but if you don’t have the ability to actually tune large data sets and see the impact of partitioning in a larger, production environment, it’s easy to dismiss this as a feature that doesn’t provide many benefits in a smaller situation. The same could be said for clustering, SSIS imports, or any number of features that aren’t often used. So how do you actually learn to get some experience with these features?
The first thing you need to do is get a copy of SQL Server Developer Edition and install it as a virtual machine on your primary computer. I use VMWare, but you could use Virtual PC, Hyper-V, or VirtualBox as well. The important thing to do is have a sandbox to play in and a machine you can easily copy, clone, or destroy as needed. I would recommend a base install of Windows and SQL Server DE, and then copy that for a machine you can experiment with.
One way to learn is duplicate the work that someone else has done. Make a copy of your virtual machine and then implement partitioning as described in an article. See if you can duplicate the way the author used the feature and get the same results. If you can’t, find out why, and if you can, experiment with the feature and try to improve the author’s implementation. The SQLServerCentral Stairway Series is a great way to do this in SSIS, SSRS, or other features that you may never have seen. Set aside an hour or two a week to learn some feature. After a month or two, you might be surprised what you’ve learned.
The most important is to understand how a feature works and gain some experience in using it. You might not become an expert, but being able to talk about the feature, and explain how you might use it in a situation comes from practice. That ability  might get you the project or job that allows you to become an expert over time.
Steve Jones

It’s Your Career

It’s your career. It’s something you have to take ownership of and work on. I know that life is busy, and training budgets are tight. That’s one reason we started SQL Saturday; it’s a way to bring a training event and a conference experience to many people.

I posted this tweet almost a year ago, seeing Brent in a class somewhere, learning and taking notes during some session. It was in humor, but I’m a little serious here. We all have more to learn, and while you don’t need to cram it all in this year, you should be taking advantage of your user group, local events, conferences, classes, even reading something in a newsletter on a regular basis.

Many of us are out here to help. I’ve spoken at 12 events this year, 10 of them free, and will be at another free event this week (SQL in the City - LA). However, you’ve got to make the effort to improve yourself. I , and many others, will try to help you, teach you, but you’ve got to do some work yourself.

Pace yourself, learn at a reasonable rate given the other responsibilities in your life, but don’t ignore this aspect of your career.

PS - If you’re in the LA area, there’s still time to register for SQL in the City and get a free day of training. I’ll also be at DevConnections next week and SQLInspire the week after that.

cross posted at The Voice of the DBA blog.

Virtual Labs - A Great Resource for SQL Server

I had someone send me a note recently asking some questions about how to get set up to work with SQL Server. This was a person that had used SQL Server in the past, but had become a manager and then lost their job. So they wanted to start working with SQL Server and get a new job, however they didn’t have a server or many resources.

My first recommendation is that you grab the SQL Server developer edition for US$50. You can get it from Microsoft, Amazon, or many other places, but this is essential. It gives you a good basic point from which to start and test features.

However if you don’t have a spare machine, or you don’t want to put SQL Server on what you have for some reason, you have another option.

TechNet Virtual Labs

There are a whole variety of labs available, including a series on SQL Server 2008 and other versions. These allow you to RDP to a virtual instance of SQL Server and actually practice working on things.

There are other labs for Windows, Exchange, etc. You can spend time working on these technologies, either guided or unguided, and get some hands on practice. You can’t necessarily save your work, but this is a great way for you to get started on some technology that you want to add to your skillset and resume.