I did 17 years of carrying pagers and fixing maint jobs, backups and so on. Got down to the MCM when it promptly went away. I wish I had Steve's...

I have no doubts at all that most of them are worth it. the problem is just about how much it costs to commute and stay for a night even...

In theory yes you are 100% right. If we charge for lunch really there shouldn't be any overhead running an event. But expectations have been hiked esp around swag/giveaways/before/after parties...

"Multiple events in a small area in a year" Wow, Steve that would be a dream !! Small events are already in a struggle for funding for sql saturdays, and...

15 years ago it took two days to get from south of india to Nepal (by train). Our school did an excursion - Nepal tourism promotes visits by foreigners/school kids...

I've interviewed lots of people for a senior DBA position we had open sometime ago (the company later took it away). As someone said some cities have a lot of...

In most cases i would expect a highly paid consultant to know what is he is expected to know. Companies do not pay consultants on their learning curve. On the...

Lynn, it makes sense to me. there are two things to it - if you 'study' for certs it is same as 'studying' for anything else in a way -...

Wow, you seem a really cool person to interview for!! I have not known or heard too many people who can write recommendations etc for candidates they were unable to...

An effective interview process should weed out bad candidates. But the best interview processes have known to fail, there are things about the person that simply do not come out...

I agree that no two people are similar and it is extremely rare that one would be faced with such a challenge. I must confess though that if certifications are...

Jeff Moden (6/19/2012)

michael vessey (6/19/2012)

What about the other person who doesn't have the cert? If I think that person is just as good as the certified person, doesn't that...

Before being certified i have felt picked on and antagonised that way but figured out later that they were MS Gold partners in one case who needed that for business...

Not at all. Almost all the dbas i worked with and hired are not certified but are among the best dbas i have met. But if you have regulations and...

To my mind discrimination is something that individual is helpless against - such as gender, skin color, ethnicity and so on. A degree or a certification is not quite in...