Tag Archives: politics

Admin

Something’s just not right

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Like every DBA, I have customers that are harder to deal with than others, and I have some that are just impossible.  Now, I’m not talking about those annoying ones that ask for weird stuff, I’m talking about the ones that you just hate to work with because they’re either condescending, or rude, etc.  I’ve got 2 such customers right now.  And whenever I see their names on a meeting request I try to pawn them off onto one of my other DBAs if I can.  If I can’t though, I have to suck it up and endure the meeting myself. 

Well, I actually had meetings with both of them today.  I was able to send one of my guys to the 1st one, but I had to attend the 2nd one myself.  Now, this is a guy who typically likes to attack whatever I say.  He doesn’t just disagree with me, he actually attacks me.  So I’m sure I don’t have to tell you guys that I wasn’t looking forward to this meeting.  When I got there though, he was polite, thoughtful, and actually listened to what I said.  And believe me, I’ve learned not to say much around him unless specifically asked something because I just don’t need the fight.  So we were about to leave, and everyone else was on their way out, and he pulled me back.  Ok, here it comes… this is what I’ve been waiting for, only now there are no witnesses.  So he says to me… I just wanted to clarification on this one thing.  Exactly what do we need to backup and where does it need to be stored?  OK, I’m starting to think something’s wrong now, because this guy never admits he doesn’t know something, and in fact, spends his time telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Then I get a report from my other DBA telling me that the guy in his meeting was the same way.  He just kept his mouth shut and answered questions, and that’s it.  No accusations, no insistance on ridiculous information, etc.  He just listened and went on about his day.

Now I know something’s up.  This isn’t normal and I’m trying to figure out where the real attack is coming from.  If this were chess it would be the equivalent of Bobby Fisher handing you his queen early in the game.  DON’T EVER TAKE THAT QUEEN.  So anyway, just waiting for the other shoe to fall.

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Dealing with stupid customers

As we found out yesterday there’s more that one way to deal with a customer you think is stupid.  And now matter how good or bad Cornhole was is irrelevant because he still had a customer he thought was stupid.  So whether you’re right or not isn’t important.  The bread lines are full of guys who were right.  So that’s evidently not what’ll keep you your job.  Good customer service is what’ll keep you your job.  And it’s not always easy to keep your temper in check.

I expect very little of my customers.  I know that most people know almost nothing about DBs so I don’t mind when they say something wrong, or when they ask what’s thought of as a stupid question.  What bothers me though is when they claim to not know anything about DBs but they don’t believe you when you answer their questions.  No, that doesn’t sound right to me.  This is a dangerous crossroad because your next statement can determine whether you go back to your desk after the meeting, or to HR.  Typically, what I do when they don’t believe something I say is I ask them what it is about it they’re having a hard time with.  So instead of getting into a pissing contest, just find out what they don’t like.  This way you can attack their problems one by one until they have no choice but to believe you.  I say that, but we all know those customers who refuse no matter what you say.  But by attacking their issues one by one you will quite often find that they didn’t understand what you were saying so they rejected it on the Big-Word Factor.  The Big-Word Factor has 2 sides and you never know which one it’s going to land on.  The first side is what we just discussed;  people discredit what you say because they don’t understand the big word you used.  And anything they haven’t heard of couldn’t possibly work.  The other side of that can do just as much damage.  This is when someone is so impressed with your big words that they blindly follow whatever you say.  I’ve seen this cause quite a few problems because a customer likes the sound of a word and it just gets them into trouble.  Clustering is one of those words.  More people implement clustering because it sounds cool and they don’t get what they really need.

So what do you do if the customer just insists that you don’t know what you’re doing?  Well at some point you’ve just gotta say, well it’s too bad you don’t understand what I’m talking about, but this is what we’re doing because I’m the DBA and you said you didn’t know anything about it.  So why would we do what you think is smart when you claim to have no knowledge on the topic and I do?  There’s a reason you let the brain surgeon (and not your husband or your kids) operate on your mother.  And I bet you don’t understand all the words they say either do you?  And a lot of people don’t realize this, but a really good IT guy studies just as much if not ultimately more than most doctors.  And we can experiment without any kinds of moral issues getting involved.

Admin

Is teamwork really that rare?

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Well, despite the saga today that you can read about in my other 2 posts (Why can’t voodoo be real? and The stupid have fallen), the day ended fairly well in my last meeting.  I’ll give you just a snippet of the backstory before getting into the meeting.

We do a lot of server builds.  And quite a few of them are clusters.  So the problem is that we’re expecting to be given a server in a certain state and we don’t always get it.  So sometimes we have to troubleshoot something ourselves to get the server to look like we’re expecting.  And of course other times it’s just what it should be.  So we had a meeting today with the DBAs, server guys, and SAN dudes and all of our directors to try to sort this out.

That said, I’ll just give you the end result so I can get on to the rest of the post.  What we decided to do is next time we have a cluster build we’re all going to sit in the same room and do our thing and we’re going to negotiate what each hand-off is going to look like.  So the server team is going to build a checklist based off of what we agree on and every server they provide us will look exactly like that.  And we’ll know exactly what’s expected of us, and so will the SAN dudes.  Personally I can’t wait, because that’s such an excellently low-tech way to solve a problem.

Now, this isn’t exactly a rant, but kinda.  Is that level of teamwork really that rare?  I can tell you that in my experience is certainly is.  In almost every company I’ve been in the different groups have been at such odds they could barely communicate.  They honestly forget that they’re all on the same team working towards a common goal.  My last job was the worst about that.  The ETL team manager made sure his team was at odds with everyone and they kept everything to themselves and never even discussed issues in a friendly manner.  It was very acrimonious and tense whenever the different groups would get together for meetings.  And I’ve been in several shops that distrusted each other like that. 

In fact, I actually sat in that meeting today and said out loud what a strange feeling it was to actualy work openly with another team like that.  And it really is.  Everything my team does is an open book.  I’ve gone out of my way to make sure my team doesn’t hide anything from anybody because we’ve got nothing to hide and we’ll make more friends if they know why we’re doing certain things.  So our reasons for doing something and what we’ve done are always an open book… even our mistakes.  We admit to them and tell the customer what we’re doing to fix it and how long it will take.  And I’m not saying that I’m the reason these other teams are playing nicely, but I’m certainly fitting into this portion of the environment for sure.  And I can’t say that all teams play this well together, but I know a lot of them do because I’ve witnessed it. 

I’ve actually been saying it for years… Let’s pretend we’re all in the same company!

Admin

Why you have to be on top of your game

10 Comments

I just heard from a DBA at my last gig who was keeping me in the loop about things I had done while I was there.
He said that they had to take away the 2 1TB LUNs I had them put on our DB server because they caused performance problems. The SAN guys warned us that having LUNs that big would hurt us and I guess they were right. Well, not really. This was the report I got back from the DBA, so not my words. When I grilled him about it, he did say that they had given us a single spindle that was 1TB for each of them instead of giving us several drives in the array.
So let me get this right… I asked for 1TB LUNs, and instead of doing it right you gave me a single drive and used it as justification for showing me you know more about disks than I do? I find that incredible.

So guys, yeah… you really have to be on top of your game and know your stuff so that when they do stuff like this you can call them on it. And I must admit that I’m not sure it would have crossed my mind to even check that it was a single spindle. Why would that even cross my mind? These are enterprise SAN guys… they know their way around and should definitely know better. What I didn’t realize was that they were into playing games. It just goes to show that you try so hard to be effective in some places and they just won’t let you.

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Valid Opinions

A friend of mine was in a meeting yesterday and he called me right after because he was upset. Apparently he and someone else had conflicting opinions about how to do something that neither one of them had ever done before… so they were both essentially guessing.

He was mostly upset because he said the other guy’s opinion was just as valid as his and so far it’s brought the group to a standstill while they figure this out.

I told him that there’s no way that both opinions are equally valid. In some instances that may be the case, but in this one, I happen to know who the other guy is and I know that when it comes to SQL brains he definitely got the short end of the stick. So I’m saying it out-right: not all opinions are equally valid. My mother-in-law likes to put her 2-cents in when we’re sitting around talking computers. She doesn’t know the 1st thing about it, but she likes to give her opinion anyway. So when I ask Jen’s brother something, his answer is worth more to me than her mother’s. The same holds true here right? Because someone is in a group and was invited to a meeting that doesn’t mean that they have equal say in things.

Here’s another really good example… let’s say that there’s a weird recovery scenario or even corruption scenario that you come across. And you come up to me and Paul Tripp at a conference and ask us what our opinions are. I’d say that Paul’s opinion in this case is worth far more than mine. Sure, I’m a qualified DBA and I’ve been around the block more than a few times, but Paul WROTE CheckDB so I think he carries a little more weight than I do. Even if it’s something neither of us has heard of before, I’d still take his guess over mine.

So no, I’m not one of those who believes that everyone’s say is as equally important as everyone else’s. Hell, I don’t even believe that everyone should even have a say. Some people are just not qualified to give opinions on a topic. In a restaurant you don’t see the dishwasher getting a say in what specials go on the board, and in a dojo you don’t see white belts chiming in on black belt promotions. So why is it that everyone in IT thinks they deserve an equal say just because they were invited to the meeting?

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The Juice Box

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I had a very typical conversation with my 2yr old yesterday.  It went something like this…

The Juice Box

Benji:  More juice daddy.

me:  Ok, go throw the box away and bring me another one.

so he goes and throws it away then looks at me.

me:  Ok baby, now bring me another box.

about a minute later he shows up with a brown box that some books came in.

me:  No baby, bring me a juice box.  The small one.

so then he shows up with a smaller shipping box.

me:  No baby, a juice box.  Bring me a juice box. A juice box.

(Benji looking around all over)

me:  it’s in the cabinet right there honey.

(keeps looking around)

me:  open the cabinet door and take out a juice box.

(looks at the fridge door.)

me:  No baby, the cabinet door.  Right there by the broom.

(goes to the other side of the fridge and looks at the wrong broom instead of the one right in front of him)

me:  no sweetie, the other broom.  Open the door by the other broom.

(opens the fridge door)

me:  no sugar, the cabinet door.  close the fridge.

(looks all around)

me:  the green door right in front of you. 

(Looks at fridge again)

me:  no no, the green door by the broom.

(goes to the other side of the fridge again and looks at the wrong broom)

me:  honey, bring me a juice box.

(looks at ceiling, floor, dog food, etc.  everything but the door right in front of him)

me:  sweetie, bring me some juice and I’ll open it for you.

(opens right door and brings the juice box.)

Now I ask you, how many of us have had conversations very similar to that with our end users or even our devs?  I know some of the devs I’ve worked with have been exactly like that.

So it really got me thinking about the skills a good DBA needs.  So as it turns out if you’re looking to make a switch to being a DBA, here’s what you should do. If you really wanna be successful as a DBA, then while you’re studying SQL and learning your job, open up a daycare and run it for about 5yrs.  Don’t only open it and run it, but actually get in there and work with the kids.  I’d say a good mix of 2 and 4yr olds should do it.  I’ve got 3 kids myself and I did it in reverse.  I became a DBA first and then had my kids, but I’m convinced that having kids has made me a better DBA because I honestly do have a lot of very similar conversations with my kids and my devs.

And this may piss of some devs, but any DBA out there who’s had to deal with a group of devs who thinks they know what they’re doing when you’re trying to show them how to do something, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

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Uniting at Last

The DBAs in my area have finally started using their connections through the user group in a way that will actually do them some good.  When they get an offer from a company they put the word out to the user group to get any info on that company that may do them some good in making their decision.  They typically ask what the company’s like to work for, what the bosses are like, what kind of vacation they get, if bonuses happen on a regular basis, if they expect you to work lots of overtime, what their work from home policy is like, etc. 

Personally, this is an excellent use of resources and I think companies have had it too good too long.  They way many of them just dump employees for silly, pathetic reasons because they know that it’s too much effort and cost to get a lawyer and sue so most people will just go get another job and forget about it.  Unreasonable demands on time and project guidelines are another favorite trick of companies when dealing with DBAs.  And they like to hold your head to the fire and then hold it against you when you get burned.  So maybe a little bad reputation will help to straighten them out. 

It’s always one of the hardest parts about starting a new job isn’t it… not knowing what you’re really in for?  So it’s really nice when you can ask someone who worked there before and get the full scoop before you take the plunge.  So I’d like to encourage all of you to keep it up and start working with the members of your user group to make sure that companies who don’t value their DBAs get found out.  So they’ll either change their ways or not get any quality DBAs.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA

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Head in the Clouds

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OK, so a while back I wrote a post about how Oracle doensn’t build as much of a community as MS.  And not only do I stand by it, but I’ve seen quite a few of the replies around the internet and those Oracle guys amaze me even to this day.

They spend an awful lot of time talking about how much better Oracle is than mssql and how much more stable it is and how much more Oracle users expect from their DBs because they tend to be more important than mssql DBs.  Also, Oracle DBs have more users going against them than mssql DBs so more people are affected when they do go down so Oracle DBAs have to be more on the ball because their users expect more uptime.  Whereas mssql DBAs’ users expect more downtime so the DBAs don’t have to hurry as much to get the system back up because that downtime is expected. 

Man, talk about having your head in the clouds.  I can’t believe that in this day and age that people are still so incredibly blind.  Do they really think that mssql has taken the market by storm because there are so many people with little insignificant DBs and they just don’t wanna pay for Oracle on these tiny little things.  It’s not under dispute that Oracle outshines mssql in some areas.  They’ve been around longer and they’ve had more time to bake their product.  But that doesn’t make mssql a slouch either.  I know you guys know this all too well.  Some of the biggest and most important DBs on the planet are on mssql and they require just as much uptime as those super-important Oracle DBs.

To make such statements is not only ludicrous, it’s just childish.  It’s like saying that linux apps are more important than windows apps.  Grow up guys.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA

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The Silent DBA

Be careful when you’re complaining about how much advice you get from your DBA because one day he might stop giving it.  And that’s not really a scenario anyone wants because it means he’s stopped caring about the systems and you won’t get any real help.  Because I don’t care what you devs out there think, you need your DBAs to keep your code playing nicely with others.

So when your DBA stops putting in his 2-cents your prayers haven’t been answered… in fact, just the opposite.  You’ve taken your DB support staff and turned him into a wallflower.

So now my question to you is what did you do to shut him up?  Because I guarantee you it was your fault.  Are you constantly going out of your way to circumvent procedures he puts in place?  Are you constantly disregarding his advice?  Do you refuse to setup things in a way that will make it easier for everyone involved to troubleshoot?  Do you refuse to follow any coding guidelines he gives you to keep things going smoothly?

OK so I realize that even though your code runs in double the time it could and it always deadlocks, that you’re the smartest dev out there and you don’t need advice from any of those dumb DBAs, but try shutting up and listening sometimes.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

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Snotting Rights

I recently ran across a perfectly delicious situation I wanted to share with you.  Someone actually wrote to tell me about this.  He just started a new gig and there was massive corruption in one of the dev DBs.  He went to ask the DBA where the backup was and he got a very snotty reply. 

Well, as it turns out this was something that the DBA had gone around and around with them about.  See, the devs didn’t want the DBA to do anything on their precious box so they refused to give him rights.  He tried to explain that they needed backups, etc but they wouldn’t hear of any DBAs pissing all over their dev box. 

And now when there’s massive corruption and they need to get their dev code back they call the DBA to ask for help.  Y, fat chance guys. 

I’m here to tell you that the DBA has full snotting rights here.  And it only goes to teach them a lesson I hope.  DBAs aren’t here to piss on your parade.  We’re here to make sure your parade lasts as long as you want and you can even start your parade over and over again if you need to.  Seriously guys all metaphors aside, we’re here to help.  So stop acting like we’re on different sides.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA