DBA Rants

Somehow I’ve made it a pastime of pointing out how many times women are passed up for recognition while men are promoted around them. Its not that the men were identified as better or worse than women, but just about how heavily we scrutinize and limit women while everyone else passes them by. Now I’m going to ask the Oracle folks to not take this personally, but hopefully take it as a call to arms, but I know how we love to shoot the messenger.  Hopefully you already know that I will have no qualms about deleting abusive or threatening comments to this post, so please think twice before doing and really think on what I’m posting here.

I planned on finishing up and publishing a different post today, but after a number of conversations with DBAs in the community, this topic took precedence.

There was a great post by Noel Yuhanna on how he deems the number of DBAs required in a database environment by size and number of databases.  This challenge has created a situation where data platforms are searching for ways to remove this roadblock and eliminate the skills needed to manage the database tier.

I’ve been asked what it takes to be a successful evangelist and realizing that what makes one successful at it, is often like holding sand in your hands- no matter how tightly you hold your fists, it’s difficult to contain the grains.

The term evangelist is one that either receives very positive or very negative responses.  I’m not a fan of the term, but no matter if you use this term or call them advocates, representative, influencer-  it doesn’t matter, they are essential to the business, product or technology that they become the voice for.

Those that I view as successful evangelists in the communities that I am part of?

I love working in tech.  I can honestly say that nothing gives me greater satisfaction than working on a technical challenge or having a brilliant conversation about technology with peers.  Other days I feel like a broken record having the same conversations with the women in technology around me, facing a lack of diversity and the consistent exclusion in tech.

How many times have you had a developer come to you and say, “I just did a bad thing in the database.  Can you recover from what I just did?”

I was surprised on April 20th when I awoke to find a 1.3G OS update on my Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge+.  I’d never experienced any issues with an update before, so I quickly connected my phone to the WiFi and let it download then upgrade my phone, anxiously awaiting what new Android features awaited me.