One of my goals is to read one professional development book a month. I have come to find that when I started making an effort in this area I better understood the business and I better understood how I might be inhibiting myself. Not only in interpersonal skills, but also in how I approached problems and looked at my technical skills. So I put a lot of weight now on finding and reading and applying the right professional development/business acumen books. They can make a huge difference.
And as Brent pointed out, one of the things I've also come to realize is that it is not my organization's responsibility to ensure my skills are up to date. It may be smart for them to do so, for the benefit of the organization, but if they don't and I get let go, pointing back at the company and saying, "They didn't train me!" doesn't cut it. Ultimately, I'm responsible for my own career. That's not to say that I won't seek advice and help from friends and acquaintances. I do. You need to. But they aren't responsible for ensuring I can stay gainfully employed, either. I am.
Amen, brother. Another issue. Linked server connection sticks around. No one notices the failed job before the next run. Step 1 goes to create linked server connection. Job blows up.
Just stay away from whale bacon.
And we should fling cephalopods at the audience. :)
I agree with you here. You've got to start somewhere and build up a skillset in one area. Trying to be too diverse too fast means you become a trampoline, since I'm into the word pictures right now.
My point is to do more than go horizontal. My point is to intentionally deep dive on multiple technologies. To put it in visual terms, Brent is saying be the octopus. One big lump representing your core compentency but putting tentacles out wherever you're interested. My viewpoint is multiple octopi, a bit smaller, where some tentacles touch and others do not.
My point is I have found great value in being more than just one job function. For instance, someone being a DBA, but also having had the experience in and having the skills for, say, a penetration tester or a project manager. Diving deep in more than one area. We see this a lot where you have system administrators with Cisco networking backgrounds (a couple of the guys I work with). Or developers who are also capable of being DBAs (like Robert Cain or Kevin Hazzard). In your own case, you're a DBA who could probably go and be an organization's lead SAN administrator or storage architect. It's related to a DBA role, but then again, it's far larger than a skillset belonging to a DBA.
Yes, I'm going to be nitpicky, but I'm a security guy and since you're pointing out a security shortfall (integrity and availability on the C-I-A triad) II think you need to better define "database protection." You are using it in a narrow scope, as in, "protect data loss or malicious data change." None of these solutions provide database protection from a confidentiality attack using the C-I-A triad. Something as simple as "net stop mssqlserver" and then copy off the .mdf, .ldf, and .ndf files. :)
Well said. Well said, indeed.
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Medley