The transition is a nearly-inevitable one. First, most operational DBAs started as something else. Sometimes they started as server/network techs, and sometimes they started as software developers. In most cases, they started doing DBA type work because there was nobody else to do it.

Second, there is a shortage of good operational DBAs. You realize this when you hang the labels ‘DBA’, ‘SQL Server’, ‘DB2′ and ‘Oracle’ on your LinkedIn profile. Since I first put the DBA label up, I have gotten regular (even in slow periods, 1-2 month) inquiries about availability. I just got my first one after starting this job three weeks ago.

Anyway, as a full-fledged operational DBA, I get hit with things coming from the left and the right and right up the middle like a locomotive. Even here, where I’ve been on the job three weeks, I get people stacked up to talk to me on a bad morning.

One of the things developers have learned is that if you invoke the magical ‘production problem’, you will move up the queue.

I am currently working on rebuilding a test environment prior to some software being rolled out to production next week. They’re getting fairly frantic to have it running, but there have been a series of problems all revolving around the facts that 1. this hasn’t been done in over a year and 2. there isn’t anybody around who has done it before. Nor did they leave any instructions or scripts or what have you.

So I’m working on this and an annoying developer walks up. Do you have a minute? he asks. No, I say, I don’t. This is with regard to a production problem, he says. I still don’t have a minute right now, I say, give me two minutes to finish the email I’m writing and I’ll talk to you.

Two minutes later, I go get him.

We sit down at my machine, and I pull up the production system and run a query or two. All looks fine. About that time, another co-worker wanders in and gestures towards the door. You coming? he asks.

Yeah, the developer says, and gets up.

Wait a minute, I said, what’s your production problem?

Well, he says, there’s no actual problem, I just wanted to see this data in relation to the problem, to see if it is fixed. Can you send it to me? I have to go for lunch.

So that particular developer has burned his ‘production problem’ credit with me.

“This doesn’t work!” they cry.

I dig in and start investigating and eventually find Yet Another Database. I know it is new to me because I have to connect with sa – my own domain credentials don’t work.

I am wondering how far down this particular rabbit hole goes…

One of the major differences I’ve noticed in my last 5 years of employment is how managers treat me.

I’ve only had perhaps 15 minutes interaction with my manager since starting here. He was on holidays for my first week and part of my second, and then he was busy when he did get back. Yesterday, he finally got round to talking with me about how things were going, and it went like this:

“How are things going. You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Ok. You’re a senior guy, I’ll leave you alone. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Ok, sure.”

Now, your status is enhanced by a larger cell phone.

First it was trucking, and you know who runs the trucking industry.

Then it was gambling.

For the last two years, it has been the Red Light District, a company that provides the infrastructure for people who want to try to hook up with other people.

I’m not really sorry to be leaving here. I’ve never really felt like I belonged here – the people are friendly enough, and I got along with most people well enough, but it just didn’t feel… right. It is hard to describe. I quite like my immediate manager, like my co-workers, but have always had the sense that we share occupancy of a handbasket.

Foremost among the things I felt here was the sense that, should I be deemed replaceable, I would be replaced immediately. A good company cares about its people and if it does, its people will care back. Nobody cares here, because they know that the second the company considers them expendable, or even inconvenient, they will be gone with the minimum that the law requires.

It’s slow poison to a person like me. I am a straightforward guy – I mean what I say and I say what I mean, and I expect other people to do the same. I treat people with respect, and I expect to be treated with respect in return.

On Monday, I expect a return to normalcy, a return to a company that cares. A return to a work community. I am really looking forward to it.

One of the big stressors in recent times has been my employment situation. I haven’t written much about my current place of employment other than to name it The Red Light District. I came here after leaving The Wild West, which was a poker company that announced that it was moving countries, and anyone who didn’t want to move should find another job.  I found another job.

The Red Light District had massively downsized in the recent past, shredding 75% of the headcount. At the time I was hired, they were saying that they had turned the corner and all was good.

All was not as good as they implied, and attention slipped away from the core product to new social media ventures.

I considered, and considered. I’ve worked many different places the last 20 years (I should count them) and most of the time when I leave them, something has forced me out, whether it is blatant downsizing, or a move, or a buyout… thinking quickly, I’ve only left one job where the move was truly voluntary, and this was a company whose product was so blatantly bad that I was ashamed to have my name associated with it.

In this current case, the product isn’t bad. The people are good. But it is one company owned by wealthy people who, if it fails, can just sell off the dregs and move their attention to other ventures. And if it fails in, say, 5 years, and I’m out on the street, I’ll be pushing 60 and looking for work in an industry that displays blatant age discrimination.

This move is carefully considered. I didn’t get everything I want: it’s still a drive to get to it, but realistically I’m not going to find a company that offers what I want close to home – doing what I do, I have to work for a company with some heft. And that means big urban centres.

But I do get a job that will be long term, at a very stable company that is consistently one of the best companies in Canada to work at. It is my sincere hope that I will close out my working life there.

It feels odd to be recognizing this – at some point in the last couple of years I have shifted from thinking of my future career as an open-ended thing to seeing it as finite. Which, of course, it is.

Welcome to middle age, Dean.

No bounds checking. If it blows up, it’ll only be a problem for the next 24 hours or so.

No error handling. This time tomorrow, nobody will care, and concerns about data corruption will have been shoved aside by actual physical corruption.

No testing. Everybody who depends on this functionality will be dead tomorrow.

No parameter cleaning. SQL Injection? Let’s see you try it with flaming fireballs raining down death, pal.

I am editing straight in Production. That, my friends, is End-Of-The-World coding.

I am a communicator. At home, I tell Chris what I am doing, mostly, unless it is trivial. I discuss things with her. One of my favourite times of the week are the few minutes we spend in bed together on Saturday and Sunday mornings: I make her a latte and bring it to her, then slip under the covers while we drink our coffee and talk about life, about the kids and what we should do that day.

I am a communicator at work, too. I am easily my team’s most prolific emailer. I send out emails when I do important things. I send out results of things I am investigating. I send out emails suggesting changes, noting problems…

I send emails asking for information, copying everybody I can think of. I do this partly because I want an answer and don’t want to go stand in someone’s cubicle like a 250 lb toddler – you know how kids are. They demand an answer NOW. I don’t want to seem like that, so I send email. I communicate my desire for information. I include the people who care.  I am a good corporate citizen.

That is only part of the reason I send email. The other part is so that I have some sort of paper trail when my question doesn’t get answered, and whatever it was that was depending on that answer gets shuffled aside.

Like this morning, where I have been struggling with some code that attempts to sort through a large amount of data to find whether or not there is a corresponding entry in a log file. That this is necessary is a legacy of bad design and piecemeal construction (I won’t call it ‘engineering’ because there’s no goddam engineering involved), but it is necessary… or is it? That was the question I asked last week – do we need to know this Thing about This Entity? Is it truly important?

This morning, after struggling since last week with a method of getting this info from a 1.6 billion row table in a timely manner, I found out that no, it isn’t important. The thing is, I found it out from a co-worker, not from any of the people I’d asked or copied on the email. They had discussed the issue and come to a conclusion, but not one of them had bothered to either tell me in person or reply to the goddam email. I only found this out because I asked this co-worker about a different issue and she noticed that I had the troublesome code open on my screen. If I hadn’t been talking to her, or if she hadn’t noticed, I might have continued working until I had a solution to a problem that didn’t need solving.

Nobody, apparently, sees the amount of waste this generates.

Edited to add:

And then, a few minutes after I posted this, I got a reply back, an actual email reply, on one of two emails I had sent earlier today, in which I went on at some great length on the problems and solutions to an issue this person had raised the previous week.

“Oh, that’s ok,” she said in her reply, “We decided on Friday just to go back to the old way of doing it and forget about  doing it the new way.”

Once again, an email to me, someone from whom she had requested (and received) a reply, would have probably saved me 2 hours work. But no: request something, and then tell the person you made the request of that you have changed your mind only after he has done the work requested.