May 17, 2011 at 7:26 am
Balance (5/17/2011)
What frustrates me is that almost every business I've worked at has rewarded people who are visible for long hours rather than those who have worked hard and are proven productive and in these cases the two things are frequently mutually exclusive - senior management often like bottoms on seats which is a cultural problem.
That is a problem, and it comes from the factory/blue collar world where time = productivity. This requires a lot of manager retraining.
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May 17, 2011 at 7:26 am
Ninja's_RGR'us (5/17/2011)
Why are those the only 2 options?Why can't we have fun getting done what needs to be done and go home after that? No need for long NOR hard.
Hard != unfun.
Hard is an effort, and a challenge. It can be fun at the same time.
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May 17, 2011 at 7:30 am
To me 'hard' is finding energy and smartness to pack as much as you can do in the time you have. Say i have 3 tasks to do - restore a database, a performance troubleshooting issue and a meeting - i'd start the restore, start up a trace, attend the meeting, get back to the restore or the troubleshooting, wind up one or the other, then the last one - instead of doing it in sequential order. This requires a fairly high degree of focus/alertness but it can help shorten the time i spend at the desk.
May 17, 2011 at 7:47 am
On bad days I call this multitasking, "juggling bowling balls" and it can be exhausting. At the end of an 8.5 hour day my brain is fried.
I also think working hard is having to dig for answers to problems, try things that don't work, regroup when you made the problem worse, yet keep going until you find the right answer. Sometimes it is just sitting and analyzing a problem to understand it and finding a logical solution based on analysis.
I find IT folks who don't like to dig for answers. If the solution isn't readily apparent they give up and think that the IT Fairy will fix it.
Holly
May 17, 2011 at 7:51 am
In my experience digging hard is something one has to do for one's own sake many times...most people expect management acknowledgement/approval which often times does not come..instead you hear blame 'Microsoft sucks', 'isn't this something you could have figured out earlier'...on and on..that kind of attitude drains people. I must confess i don't 'dig' in situations when i know that is going to be the eventual response. I'd rather have them drop money on a service call to microsoft or live with the problem longer and tell me 'ok do what you need to do'.
May 17, 2011 at 8:00 am
roger.plowman (5/17/2011)
If you define risk as a potential loss of data, I agree 100%. The situation I've faced is more about risk of time expended. Even when a risky solution has a high potential for reduced total effort, as long as there is uncertainty, the fear seems to be that it will take "forever" to implement the clever solution.
Doesn't this arise from inaccurate assessments of the probabilities involved?
Don't people frequently underestimate the long term maintenance costs of a brute force solution?
Or am I the only person that has experienced this?:hehe:
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May 17, 2011 at 8:34 am
hlewis (5/17/2011)
On bad days I call this multitasking, "juggling bowling balls" and it can be exhausting. At the end of an 8.5 hour day my brain is fried.I also think working hard is having to dig for answers to problems, try things that don't work, regroup when you made the problem worse, yet keep going until you find the right answer. Sometimes it is just sitting and analyzing a problem to understand it and finding a logical solution based on analysis.
I find IT folks who don't like to dig for answers. If the solution isn't readily apparent they give up and think that the IT Fairy will fix it.
Holly
What happens then is we become the I.T Fairy because we see a need and the problem continues.
May 17, 2011 at 8:37 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (5/17/2011)
OCTom (5/17/2011)
It's not about the difficulty or complexity of the work. It's about the honest effort one puts forth.
True, though the difficulty is relative. Plumbing mystifies me and it's "hard", sometimes physically, but mostly mentally. So I contract it out.
There are DBA problems that are hard, setting up auditing, security, a few other things, and many people take the easy way out (sa, anyone) because they don't want to work hard.
I do agree that the effort is what's important here, working hard when it's required instead of just putting in more time and taking the easy way out.
Steve,
It's interesting that you mention plumbing. I spent most of last weekend replacing piping in my house. I find plumbing to be easy and enjoyable. I can sweat pipes like a pro. I'm really bad (or really scared) with electricity and tend to contract that out.
On second thought, maybe it's firing up the gas torch that I find enjoyable. 😛
May 17, 2011 at 8:45 am
roger.plowman (5/17/2011)
Think about it. Would *you* want somebody who enjoyed high-stakes risk taking being a DBA? Really? (laughing)
Depends. I take risks all the time, just not with the data. I put together a new maintenance plan that's more easily deployable than our current one and tied several installation scripts together with Powershell. It was a new experience for me and it was a risk because I didn't know how hard it would be to pull off or once I had a proof of concept if the senior DBA would agree that it was the path to go. All testing was done on personal test boxes first and we're in the process of rolling it out to application test boxes to make sure we don't see issues there so we're not taking risks there. However, when it comes to pushing the limits of what I know and can do, and potentially failing, I do take risks there as long as the potential repercussions don't involve bringing down servers.
May 17, 2011 at 8:55 am
roger.plowman (5/17/2011)
Would *you* want somebody who enjoyed high-stakes risk taking being a DBA? Really? (laughing)
Would you want to have everyone that works for you do things exactly the same way forever? Change involves risk. If we set data integrity as being not on the table, there are tons of risk-reward decisions we all make every day.
My point is that, many people are needlessly risk averse in areas where being so actually causes increased work, or even avoidance of looking for new solutions to problems.
In that case, fear masquerading as caution actually costs the enterprise money/time instead of saving it.
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May 17, 2011 at 8:55 am
dma-669038 (5/17/2011)
To me 'hard' is finding energy and smartness to pack as much as you can do in the time you have. Say i have 3 tasks to do - restore a database, a performance troubleshooting issue and a meeting - i'd start the restore, start up a trace, attend the meeting, get back to the restore or the troubleshooting, wind up one or the other, then the last one - instead of doing it in sequential order. This requires a fairly high degree of focus/alertness but it can help shorten the time i spend at the desk.
That's the smart way, but it also does require that focus, which many people don't have or don't want to expend. It also causes stress to have lots of balls going at one time. However it shortens work hours if you can handle it well.
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May 17, 2011 at 8:58 am
OCTom (5/17/2011)
Steve,
It's interesting that you mention plumbing. I spent most of last weekend replacing piping in my house. I find plumbing to be easy and enjoyable. I can sweat pipes like a pro. I'm really bad (or really scared) with electricity and tend to contract that out.
On second thought, maybe it's firing up the gas torch that I find enjoyable. 😛
I hate it. It may be a lot of the risk/stress of making mistakes, but messing with pipes, fitting, getting angled, worrying about holes, or incomplete joints, just bothers me. I just call someone.
Much easier for me to play with wires. There's certainly stress involved even at 100V, but it's more manageable for me.
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May 17, 2011 at 10:42 am
Long Work = Code, Network, or Spreadsheet Monkeys
May 17, 2011 at 10:48 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (5/17/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (5/17/2011)
Why are those the only 2 options?Why can't we have fun getting done what needs to be done and go home after that? No need for long NOR hard.
Hard != unfun.
Hard is an effort, and a challenge. It can be fun at the same time.
Agreed, but I see the vast majority of employees here wokring to exhaustion and without fun. After I burned out once, I decided to lower my total throughput I allow for work. I've felt better ever since.
May 17, 2011 at 11:03 am
Would "working harder" within the context of programming would mean taking fewer breaks?
I walk into the office at 8:30ish and leave about 6:30ish, setting aside about 2 hours a day for lunch, running errands, stretching my leggs, and web browsing. I guess I could just work straight through for 8 hours and leave the office at 4:30, but I don't think I would get any more accomplished. At 6:00pm, most people in IT are still here.
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