Slack was a useful tool until I became overwhelmed with the number of groups and communities that wanted to use Slack to communicate. At some point, Slack went from a productivity saver to a productivity killer for me. And I’m not the only one that has noticed issues. Here’s a thread from Hacker News where people debate if Slack is good, evil, somewhere in-between, or if people just don’t know how to use Slack properly.

All that aside, my main issue today with Slack is this: there is no way for me to block or mute another person.

SlackHQ Conversation on Twitter Last Week

Late last week I had an exchange on Twitter with @SlackHQ, where I asked for the ability to block or mute a person. Here was the response:

This isn't possible at the moment. As Slack is mostly used for work, blocking a colleague wouldn't be productive.

— Slack (@SlackHQ) March 16, 2018

I won’t disagree with that line of thought. We use Slack for work at SolarWinds, and many companies use Slack. However, it’s not just companies, as I reminded @SlackHQ:

Sure. But Slack is also used for communities, too. And communities need such features. Otherwise people won’t join, because @Slack will be the blocker due to it lacking such features.

— Thomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar) March 16, 2018

Well, to be fair, people *will* join the communities, then find out that the ability to block or mute a person does not exist. And then they will disengage, and leave.

Why I’m Leaving Slack Communities

The ability to block or mute other users is vital for any platform that is being used by a community. If the platform is not able to provide that service, then a percentage of community members will not engage. I’d rather use platforms that allow for me to engage with as many people as possible.

But that’s not the only reason. Here’s a few more:

– I now have 172 inboxes. Managing threads, channels, and communities is out of control. I need tools to help me be more productive, not less.
– The client app now consumes >3GB of RAM at times, mostly because I’m a member of way too many communities.
– For Slack to be useful you need to be able to archive your content and message, and that can cost you some real money.
– Slack works about as effective for me as instant messaging, and I have better tools for sending messages.

Slack started out as something so promising but is now a victim of its own success. With everyone using Slack, it’s now hard for Slack to live up to the potential it once had.

Summary

Today I left a handful of Slack communities. It’s going to be good to have fewer distractions. I’m going to go back to focusing my time on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If anyone needs to find me, check those places. Between those three platforms, I will have every opportunity to interact with the people I want to interact with daily.

I will still have Slack for work for now, until the next new tool comes along and promises to make our office more productive (hello Asana!)

The post Why I’m Leaving Slack Communities appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

Frequent readers of this blog know a few things about me. You know about my hatred of NULLs and distrust of Wikipedia. You may also know I wrote a book review for The Cult of the Amateur, which helps to explain how websites such as Wikipedia are making many people dumber, not smarter. In The Death of Expertise (DoE from now on, because I’m lazy), Nichols hammers home this point by sharing personal stories as well as data to back up his assertions.

In my career as a data professional, I witnessed examples where a person with less knowledge and experience than another has dismissed the expert as being wrong. At times it would appear the reason for the dismissal is only the result of the person being an expert. It is “hip” to bash someone for the simple reason that they have knowledge and you do not. There were also times I saw an expert opinion dismissed because they “weren’t well known”. This is a common tact by which one person tries to elevate their status by demeaning the status of another.

[Look, if someone wrote code for the SQL Server Engine you might want to take their word for how things work. Their word is better than some random blog post or Wikipedia article. But hey, that’s me. You should do you.]

DoE helps to break down why the human race is getting dumber with each passing year. I’m not going to ruin the book for you, but I do want to share my take on some of the points made in the book.

Access to the internet has made everyone believe they can be an expert in anything. You can’t read a book about databases, or business, or consulting and think you are an expert. And yet, that’s what we are seeing daily. There are many blogs, podcasts, and newsletters from people claiming to be an expert by…well…because they said they were an expert, I guess.

Much of the information searched for online is a result of confirmation bias. That is, we search for or accept information that confirms what we already believe to be true. When facts do surface, they become evidence to support the claim. But anything to the contrary is often dismissed as not reputable, or “fake news”.

The rise of the Internet, along with confirmation bias, also leads to cognitive bias. The most famous cognitive bias is the Dunning-Kruger effect. The simple view of Dunning-Kruger is this: the people who are most certain about being right are also the ones with the least reason for such self confidence. From time to time we all overestimate our abilities. But those of us with the least amount of competence do it the most often. Every profession has over-achievers that aren’t that good at their jobs. Thanks to the Internet, those people are able to GO ALL CAPS AS NECESSARY.

In addition to all of the above, I want to mention that a college education is no longer about knowledge. For over sixty years colleges have been more about being the business of higher education rather than providing an education. Schools are there to make a profit. They do that by having customers (i.e., students). And the customer is always right. This is why issues such as grade inflation exist, along with the idea that everyone wins a trophy.

The end result is that students believe that it is their right to earn an A, regardless of effort, or if they actually know the material. I once witnessed a woman discussing with her professor a failing grade in a class on Real Analysis. She was upset about failing, as can be expected. When she pressed about the grade the professor asked a simple question:

“If I asked you to tell me right now what it meant for an infinite series to converge what would you say?”

Her response?

“I don’t see what that has to do with my grade!”

Colleges are in the business of creating alumni, not scholars. If a college happens to find a person good enough to be both, that’s just a bonus.

Summary

Too many people want shortcuts in life. The internet provides shortcuts for everyone.

The internet also provides a platform for people to profess their expertise in subjects for which they are not experts. It is also great at sharing pictures of cats.

All of the above reasons (and more) are why we are witnessing the Death of Expertise.

But, you should buy the book to read for yourself, and draw your own conclusions. Don’t just take my word for it.

I’m not the expert on such things.

The post Book Review: The Death of Expertise appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

The thing about Rob Collie is that he has a way of asking the most direct questions possible in the nicest way possible.

The year is 2010, and I am at TechEd in New Orleans. It’s my first day on the job for Confio.  We are in a bar on Bourbon Street, upstairs in a private room for one of the vendor social events. I have no idea how Rob was even there, to be honest. But he sees me and, being Rob Collie, he wants some data. So he decides to get it by accosting me in front of others.

“What do you mean,” I ask.

“Your people. You DBAs,” Rob continues. “You are all so miserable, all of the time. I see you all talking to each other on Twitter, and it’s mostly depressing. Why?”

I’m stunned. I’ve got no answer for Rob. I’m defensive, trying to tell Rob that we aren’t so miserable. Rob sees this and presses but does it in that Rob Collie way that lets me know it’s safe to open up a bit, even though we’ve just met.

I’ve never looked from the outside on our SQL Community and how we treat each other, or others. It only took a few minutes of conversation with Rob before I realized he was right. We are a bunch of curmudgeons. We complain a lot. We like to prove we are smarter than others. We like to prove we are better than others. We strut and point out the mistakes others make. We are dismissive of others, especially non-DBAs. We talk down to people with new ideas. We are everything you aren’t supposed to be online. We are a miserable lot.

I try to explain that DBAs are miserable because our jobs are miserable. On a weekly basis, we are asked to convert pickup trucks into Ferrari’s, colored green, and if we can’t do it then management will find someone else who can. Or, at least promises to try. We are asked to do things, crazy things, and when we try to explain why something might not be a good idea we are just seen as saying “no”. It’s not fun for many. And saving everyone’s ass at 2am because an end user did something silly gets tiring, especially when the people you save don’t even acknowledge that you’ve saved them. You are Superman, unbeknownst to anyone, and without a three-movie contract.

It takes about ten minutes of conversation before I see Rob’s eyes light up. It’s like he just discovered that he never need to do a VLOOKUP again, that’s the look he has in his eyes.

“Oh! I get it now! You are just like us! Excel professionals suffer in the same ways that you do. We can be a miserable bunch, too. But we don’t do it in public. And we always come together to help each other.”

And that’s when I realized Excel was a thing. It was no longer a spreadsheet. Excel became alive to me. Excel wasn’t just an application that came with Office, Excel was a Community.

Excel also had Rob. And I wanted to hang with Rob. And not just because he had a seemingly endless supply of Rum ‘n Cokes to hand out at conferences.

It’s been seven years since I met Rob. In that time I have found out things about him, personally and professionally. I found out that Rob was a former roommate of Conor Cunningham. Yes, that Conor Cunningham. Rob also worked for Donald Farmer. Yes, that Donald Farmer. Rob worked at Microsoft helping to build PowerPivot into Excel, which has changed how millions of data professionals do their jobs. Let that sink in for a minute the next time you think it’s cool that a few people are using a script you wrote. Rob’s contributions to data are cool, squared.

In short, Rob Collie knows a thing or two about data, databases, the business of data, and Community, too.

If you don’t yet subscribe to Rob (blog | @PowerPivotPro), you should. His writing is wonderful. What’s more wonderful is reading how he helps makes people lives better.

Using Excel.

I’m serious.

I didn’t believe it at first. Excel is just a spreadsheet, right? Yeah, it’s a spreadsheet used by 300+ million people. Excel secretly powers every business on the face of the Earth. Embedded in a world of Microsoft SQL Server I find myself in many arguments about what database platform to use. Now I look and smile, knowing that the single most important feature of any application is the ability to export to CSV so someone can bring the data into Excel and PowerBI.

Why Am I Telling You So Much About Rob Collie?

Rob wrote a post yesterday, a personal one, a post that struck a chord with me. Rob knew this, too. Because last night he tweeted to me as I watched the Celtics.

@SQLRockstar will like today's post, we think.

— P3 (PowerPivotPro) (@powerpivotpro) May 4, 2017

Rob, as usual, was right. I did like his post, The Intertwining of Professional and Personal: a Note from Rob. In the post, Rob talks about the phrase “It’s not personal, it’s just business” and explains why INPIJB is not acceptable. It’s a way for one person to absolve themselves from hurting another. I’ve had this phrase on me more than a few times and I’ve never accepted it or any variation. Here’s my reason why: When you use this phrase you are telling the other person that money is more important than your relationship.

Let that sink in for a minute.

You are telling someone, perhaps a (current, maybe soon to be former) friend of yours, that you would rather have money than their friendship. And while some jerk is now getting ready to leave the comment “everything has a price” my answer is “not my friends”.  If you can put a price on your friendships then maybe you need better ones.

A wise woman once said, “If money is all that you love, then that’s what you’ll receive.” I cannot, and will not, accept being told that my friendship has a price. I value friendships, honesty, and loyalty over money.

We are all human. All that we have is personal. INPIJB is a lie people say to make themselves feel better.

I am certain that there are circumstances where the money would matter more. But I am also certain that, no matter what the circumstance, you can put the relationship first and figure out the business part later.

Seriously, What’s This Post About?

It’s just personal, it’s not business. As Rob talked about in his post, there is a blend of professional and personal in everything we do. If you are coming to this blog for a steady stream of SQL Server tips and tricks then today I let you down.

I have long advocated that writing is something that must feed one’s own soul first before it feeds the souls of others. I needed to get these words out. Today, I woke up and this post needed to happen.

That’s how writing works for me. You should do you.

But don’t let people put a value on your friendship.

Relationships matter more than money.

The post Relationships Matter More Than Money appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

You may think you’re cool, but you’ll never be ‘Steve McQueen driving a Ferrari at Le Mans’ cool.

Last week I received an email from my friend Mike Walsh (blog | @mike_walsh), who commented on the look and feel of this blog as well as the general content. Mike and I have been friends for more than 10 years now so it’s safe to say “he knew me when”.

I reminded Mike that this blog had a makeover last year, and replied to his comment about the content I’ve been writing for the past six years. Mike’s comment about my content was this:

“…more general and less sql. Makes sense with your role.”

Mike’s comment wasn’t a negative one, it was just an observation of his, and his note was supportive of my work here over the years.

Still, that comment got me thinking about what I’ve been doing here. I don’t post as frequently anymore, maybe only a few posts a month. The reason for that is because my writing is in demand in many more places these days and it can be hard to find the time for blog posts here. But the content itself, is it less SQL?

Maybe it is, and in my reply to Mike I told him how I’ve always viewed having a data professional career is similar to how an F1 racing team can be broken down into three roles. If you don’t know what F1 racing is because you only know NASCAR and left-turn only stock car racing then let me tell you that F1 is where Juan Pablo Montoya used to race.

Mechanics

The folks that keep the engine running in peak condition, are always there to work fast, and put out any fires that crop up. Many DBAs liken their roles to being a mechanic, and with everything under the hood of SQL Server these days I think an F1 mechanic is an apt comparison. You are expected to know a lot about a very specific thing (database engine, car engine), you are expected to have an amazing set of tools, and you are expected to fix issues quickly no matter what the situation. Hard skills are of most value here.

Drivers

Some people don’t want to be under the hood, they would rather be behind the wheel. These are the folks that have their hands “less dirty” as they progress through their career, most often into middle management roles. They enjoy project work, they enjoy working close with the mechanics (but not being one), and they enjoy being in the winner’s circle from time to time as the result of being part of a winning team. Hard skills and soft skills have equal value here.

Owners

Some people just want to help put all the pieces together and run a successful business, or team. These are the executives, the architects, the folks that don’t get paged in the middle of the night unless their driver or ace mechanic needs bail money. They can see, and they can comprehend, the bigger picture when it comes to the data industry. They pay attention to trends, they gather data, and they know that if you wait six months everything will change. Hard skills aren’t valued much, if at all. Soft skills reign supreme for owners.

When Confio bought me all those years ago, they weren’t looking to have me be a mechanic. They wanted me behind the wheel. Over time I’ve taken the steps to learn about what it takes to be an owner. My role now at SolarWinds is to be someone that can help make a big push when needed. Mechanics don’t move the needle as much as an owner can.

So, yeah, I guess I don’t write as much about weird SQL things as I once did. And I think that’s just fine. I’ve often said that blogging should be done to feed your soul, not the soul of others. If you find yourself blogging because you think you need to keep up with others, then you are doing it wrong. Write what you want to say, when the words feel like they need to come out of your fingers, and publish when you want and not when someone tells you to publish.

Final Thoughts

There’s nothing wrong with gravitating towards any one (or more) of these roles in your data career. I have friends that have moved between each of these roles, as it seems every few years they need to try something different.

How you become a mechanic, or driver, or owner isn’t important to anyone else. Some paths may take longer than others, so you need to remain positive and keep visualizing the end result. No one is going to be concerned about your past, all they will want are tangible results delivered with a ribbon on top.

Getting there can be tough. Being there can be tougher. And staying there can be the hardest thing of all. And if you want to move beyond the role of a mechanic then you must start working on the soft skills. Hard skills have a salary cap, but soft skills do not. Even the most talented mechanic, the ones with more hard skills than anyone else, can (and will) be replaced if they also happen to be jerks to everyone else around them in the garage.

Lastly, make sure you take time for yourself. Put your family first whenever possible, but remain responsive and responsible, and never be afraid to admit that you do not know everything. You spent a long time getting to your role, so make certain you are enjoying your life, your career, and the ride.

The post More General and Less SQL appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

The IT industry has a long-term memory disorder.

This disorder is the result of IT workers getting on in years and suffering from other common memory disorders. I say these things because I see how IT likes to recycle the same ideas every ten years or so.

I’ve also noticed that these “new” ideas end up with similar problems as before. But our hubris gets in the way and we think to ourselves “this time, things will be different”. Except they aren’t, so instead of solutions we come up with buzzwords like ‘DevOps’ in a never-ending effort to solve an issue that hasn’t been solved in thousands of years of civilization.

Here is a list of the continuing problems that exist in every IT shop around the world. And they aren’t all new, either.

Performance improvements WITHOUT touching code

The proliferation of 3rd party applications over the past 15+ years has put many IT shops in a state of playing host to a plethora of applications (like Sharepoint) that do not allow any code modifications. And yet the end users continue to expect top performance. Even for in-house systems the business custodians are more willing to throw hardware at a performance issue as opposed to touching code.

Administration of data

Data is the most valuable asset any company has. As a result, data hoarding is an issue for every company. As data volumes increase many IT shops cannot keep up with the demands for adequate disaster recovery and high availability solutions to meet their business needs. The HA/DR solutions that were rolled out 10 years ago worked fine for the data volumes then, but that is not the case anymore. This is a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.

Security of data

With each passing day there is a new data breach reported. Such breaches raise awareness and force IT shops to double down on their security protocols (assuming any protocols exist). The funny part about this is that companies are more motivated to stay of the front page then they are to protect their data from a breach. In other words, most companies aren’t securing their data because they haven’t suffered a breach yet.

Maximize ROI by reducing TCO

(because I like using TLAs* whenever possible).

Everyone in IT has the ability to take steps that they know can help the bottom line. Whether that means virtualization, or Cloud, or 3rd party apps versus in-house development the fact is that every IT shop has awareness about what things cost and are looking for ways to help the company save money when possible. IT needs a way to make certain they are using all of their resources in an efficient manner.

Communicate your results

When a sysadmin makes a handful of changes that improves performance and reduces costs, how does that lowly IT worker get that information to be displayed to the CFO in a meaningful way? Tools such as PowerBI give everyone (including sysadmins and DBAs) the ability to collect, analyze, and display data in a concise manner for others to consume. It can be frustrating for IT folks to know that they are working hard but their results are not being recognized. A few simple reports on things like uptime, improved throughput, or the number of #datahugs given would be helpful.

* – Three Letter Acronyms

Summary

Today’s technology innovations are rarely new ideas. The issues we face in IT today are similar to the same issues faced fifty years ago (or more). There is some debate that any ideas are ever new.

Gerald Weinberg’s Second Law of Consulting states “No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem.” This is why applying technology to solve any problem often results in a new set of problems. If you wait long enough the original problems come back and the cycle repeats itself.

For folks in IT the trick here is to understand that your problems aren’t new, your situation is not unique, and you are not alone. To that end I give you four things you can do better when trying to avoid this déjà vu:

1. Determine the root cause by asking “Why?”
2. Find a network of peers and talk through the issues you are facing.
3. Conduct a proper cost, benefit, risk analysis for any proposed solution.
4. Deploy the right tools.

And have your headaches go away.

The post Everything Old Is New Again: 5 IT Headaches That Never Go Away appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

First up, you may have noticed things look a bit different here. The blog has been redesigned. In fact, it’s not really a blog anymore. It’s a real website that just happens to have a blog attached. The design work was done by the wonderful Business Betties and I could never thank them enough for the work they have done and the patience they showed with their most difficult client ever, me! So, thanks to both Alison and to my beautiful bride Suzanne for all their work since the start of the year. And if you like what they did for me here, check out the services they provide to see if they can help you, too. Mention my name and…wait…might be best for you to not mention anything about me, ever.

Yes, I said ‘start of the year’ just now. This blog isn’t my full time job, nor theirs. We’ve done the redesign in small steps over the past ten months. We’ve made some changes, then changed the changes, and applied other changes, and finally gotten to the point where we want to officially announce that changes have been made. You’re welcome.

Also, I haven’t done much with my blogger rankings for a while now, updating them infrequently at best. When I started them 8 years ago it was meant to help promote and encourage others to participate in blogging. Eventually my RSS feed exploded and these days I find myself not able to invest the time necessary to keep the rankings current. Many of the blogs on the rankings have become stale or evolved into marketing mouthpieces. I want to turn back time and focus on finding ways to help those in need of some encouragement with blogging and writing.

It’s time to blow things up and start over, I just haven’t figured out what to do yet. There are a lot of bloggers out there that talk about wonderful parts of technology that exist outside of (and yet influence) the SQL Server core engine. I will need to spend time thinking about what steps to take next to build the ultimate “who’s who” list of bloggers. In the meantime I will continue to update the current page infrequently.

As always, thanks for reading. It’s been 3 years since I last updated the blog. It was time for a makeover and I will have more announcements in the coming weeks.

I’m really happy with the new website, the blog, and the direction we are heading.

The post Blogging Update appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

After some thought I realized that the items on that list are not only applicable to tweens, they apply to DBAs also. And with a few modifications we can have our own list of phrases that will often result in eye-rolls, grimaces, and general grunting from your DBA.

So, here’s my list of 42 things you should never, ever say to your DBA.

As always, you’re welcome.

1. How was the status meeting?
2. What’s wrong?
3. How much longer?
4. Are you in a bad mood?
5. Hi.
6. You can’t possibly still be hungry.
7. Why are you doing that?
8. But I read on a blog that this would work.
9. Where are you?
10. Where were you?
11. Where are you going?
12. But…
13. Hello.
14. Want some help?
15. Do you know how we do that in MS Access?
16. I knew that would work.
17. Are you tired?
18. Can you set all the passwords to be the same?
19. I did that as a junior DBA once.
20. Will you be late with your weekly status report?
21. Go say “hi” to the developers.
22. Can you give me a quick download of the customer database?
23. Why won’t you tell me what you did?
24. Smile! You’re prettier when you smile.
25. Can I go with you to the datacenter?
26. It’s cool, it worked fine in dev.
27. Are you done yet?
28. You know you have to wear pants tomorrow, right?
29. How many rows fit in the product table?
30. I need you to restore this one row.
31. Do you know the syntax for restoring a database?
32. Can you email me the SA password?
33. Do you know where we keep the backups?
34. Why are you always so grumpy?
35. Do you always say “No”?
36. That’s not agile.
37. There’s no more bacon.
38. I got an error. Can you help?
39. Why don’t you just do what the developer is telling you to do?
40. Do you know who I am?
41. There’s this NOLOCK trick I heard about.
42. Good news. We found 5 really cheap DBAs to help you out.

Now I’m thinking we need a similar list for developers, architects, and sys admins. It seems my work is never done!

The post 42 Things You Should Never, Ever Say To a DBA appeared first on Thomas LaRock.