{"id":673,"date":"2014-08-27T10:16:47","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T17:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.209.169.194\/blogs\/erin\/?p=673"},"modified":"2017-04-13T09:19:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T16:19:25","slug":"what-i-wish-i-had-known-sooner-as-dba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/erin\/what-i-wish-i-had-known-sooner-as-dba\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Wish I Had Known Sooner&#8230;as a DBA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitter.com\/mike_walsh\">Mike Walsh<\/a> posted <a title=\"4 Attitudes I Wish I Had Earlier as a DBA\" href=\"https:\/\/straightpathsql.com\/archives\/2014\/08\/softskillsiwishihadasdba\/?UA-7050619-1\" class=\"broken_link\">4 Attitudes I Wish I Had Earlier as a DBA<\/a>, and tagged a few people to respond. Here goes\u2026<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.<\/strong> Interacting with colleagues who have had different experiences and know more about certain topics is the fastest way to grow, both personally and professionally. While it\u2019s nice to be known as a person who can answer almost every question, where\u2019s the challenge (and fun) in that?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Take vacations, and don\u2019t take your laptop with you.<\/strong> I have taken my laptop on way too many family trips. This doesn\u2019t serve anyone. I\u2019m not fully engaged in my time with my family, I don\u2019t give my full attention to my customers because I\u2019m stressing out about not spending time with my family, and my co-workers are just thinking, \u201cWhat the heck?\u201d If Jon or Glenn go on vacation, I am more than happy to fill in and do whatever is needed because they <em>need<\/em> that break. We all do. So stop worrying. You have <em>earned<\/em> this time. Leave the laptop at home.\u00a0\u00a0 Turn off your phone. Stop checking Facebook and Twitter. The world will still be there when you return.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Take the time to mentor others.<\/strong> You didn\u2019t get to this spot on your own, and that new DBA is never going to be able fill in for you when you\u2019re on vacation and want to be completely disconnected (see above). You don&#8217;t just have to mentor one person, you can mentor many, in different ways and it doesn&#8217;t have to take a significant amount of time.\u00a0 At my previous job, when I worked with anyone in Technical Support I would explain what we were doing, why, and talk them through the process.\u00a0 This took maybe an extra 10 to 15 minutes.\u00a0 If they asked questions, I knew immediately they wanted to learn more and I repeated that process every time I helped them going forward.\u00a0 Eventually, they could troubleshoot basic database issues without me, freeing up <em>my time<\/em>.\u00a0 At a leadership course I attended the facilitator said, \u201cYou should always be trying to work yourself out of your current position.\u201d That means you\u2019re teaching someone how to take over yours.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Save every script you write.<\/strong> I love writing T-SQL. Sometimes I think I should have been a developer. In the beginning, I didn\u2019t save many scripts, so when a similar problem came up I had to start over. At first I didn\u2019t mind, because I got to write some code and I\u2019d try to remember how I did it last time and how to make it better. Then I didn\u2019t have enough time, and writing that code became a bottleneck. Also: organize your scripts. Everyone has different methods, one of mine is to use the same first word to name scripts with a common task. For example, Check_Baselines.sql, Check_Backups.sql, Create_DB.sql, Create_RG.sql. <em>Find a system, stick with it, start saving.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I&#8217;m not tagging anyone in this post by name, but if you&#8217;re thinking &#8220;I wish she had tagged me&#8221; then you&#8217;ve just been tagged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Walsh posted 4 Attitudes I Wish I Had Earlier as a DBA, and tagged a few people to respond. Here goes\u2026 Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Interacting with colleagues who have had different experiences and know more about certain topics is the fastest way to grow, both personally and professionally. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.9.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What I Wish I Had Known Sooner...as a DBA - Erin Stellato<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hindsight is 20\/20 and there are a lot of things I wish I had known 5, 10, 20 years ago. 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