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I’m It – Survival Techniques for the Lone DBA by Monica Rathbun
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Nov 16, 2023
Watch the sixth session of the Women in Tech Virtual Conference by Monica Rathbun as she discusses how one be a successful lone DBA while she shares her own experience and journey. C# Corner - Global Community of Software and Data developers https://www.c-sharpcorner.com Conference Website: https://www.2020twenty.net/womenintech #Cshaprcorner #womeintech #diversification #virtual #conference #girlpower #graphs #databases
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Good. So next today at the Women in Tech virtual conference, we do have Monica Radbun, who is a consultant, Microsoft Data Platform MVP, as well as a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert, regional mentor with over 50 years of experience working with a wide variety of database platforms with a focus on SQL Server
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She is also the leader of the Hampton Roads SQL User Group and a frequent speaker at IT conferences
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And we're very excited to welcome Monica today here with us for the Women in Tech Virtual Conference
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So let's move to Virginia, United States for the session I'm It, Survival Techniques for the Loan DBA
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Welcome, Monica. Thank you
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Hey, everybody. I love those little intro videos
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I know. Were you also like dancing a little bit? Thanks for having me here today. So far, this has gone really well. I appreciate you guys
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providing the platform for us women in technology to get our voices out there. So thank you. I
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Appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here with us today to also have your voice heard and very, very much looking forward to your session
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And the next 30 minutes, this virtual stage is all yours. All right. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it
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So if you guys can see my screen. Awesome. Yeah. So to go over this session and I just want to let everybody know that this is normally a 75 to 90 minute session
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I am going to bring it to you and hopefully 25 minutes. So I do talk fast
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So we should be able to accomplish this with no problem. If you want to watch the full session, it is on my website
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I encourage you to go and download it and take a look. So this is Survival Tips for the Lone DBA
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I am Monica Rathbun, and I show this slide of all the things that I'm involved with just
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to kind of emphasize that even though you're a lone DBA and you're doing it all yourself
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you can do even more. You're able to do it. I've done it
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we're going to talk about how being a loan anything, whether you're a database administrator
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whether you're an admin, a sysadmin, or whatever facility you're doing your job in, that you can do
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it, and you can do more, and you're not alone, and people like me have done it, and we thrive
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doing it. So I want to kind of go over how I survived being a loan DBA for the amount of time
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that I did, what I loved about it, and what are the good things that you as a loan DBA should take
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away and say, you know what? I'm able to do this. I'm significant. I can accomplish a ton. And I am
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extremely marketable because of that. So let's take a look at some of the things. This is kind
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of a condensed agenda. We're going to talk about being it, that it's just you. We're going to talk
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about putting away some of our own insecurities and not trying to be the master of everything
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It's OK not to know something. How to get outside resources. How to make it so you aren't alone and you are able to work with a team, although there's not a team in your current position job
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You have a team out there that you might not know about. Managing expectations
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How to be how to not be a yes man, a yes woman. How to be able to tell the company you cannot do something or they shouldn't ask you to do something as as an army of one
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Leaving yourself some breadcrumb. As a loan anything, loan DBA, we do a ton of stuff
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We are responsible for so much in our day-to-day that sometimes we can forget what we did an
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hour ago, what we did last week, what we did last month, and forget about the code we touched
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six months ago. Leaving yourself breadcrumbs helps you survive this kind of scenario, and we'll talk about
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the best ways to do that. And then we'll talk about number six
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They know you're smart. The people who hired you know you're smart
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You don't have to prove it. So let's talk about some ways that you can actually work even smarter
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and better without having to prove yourself. And other people have laid the foundation for you
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So let's get started. It's just you. So here's my story. And I like to give my story just so you
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can understand that, yes, I've been in your shoes. I kind of know what I'm talking about. I've been
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there. I've survived and I've thrived and you can too. So here's a little bit about my story
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I was a lone DBA for 16 years, got my first job straight out of college with zero, did I say zero, database administration experience
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All theory in school, that's it. I got a call from a networking person that I knew, networking meaning a colleague, actually a sorority sister
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She actually was in charge of the human resources at the Port of Virginia, and she knew I was graduating with an IT degree
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and she called me and said, hey, you need to come interview. We've got a brand new position
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Come do it. Well, I got the job and I was in charge of the port's entire database infrastructure
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56 SQL Server instances, 40 servers themselves, and two Oracle databases. Fast forward to that, I actually worked for Massimo Zanetti. It's the third largest coffee
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company in the world. After 12 years, I transitioned to them and I took on 16 instances
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15 servers, and I still got stuck with one Oracle server. You can never seem to get away from that
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As a lone DBA, when I told the port that I was leaving because I was there for 12 years I was the only one doing the job they freaked out They said you can leave because you have all of our knowledge You are the only one maintaining stuff So guess what they did
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They kept me on staff full time while I worked full time for the coffee company because they
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got put in a position. So what did I do? I worked full time for two companies for two years to keep
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them afloat. It's not a situation that you want to put yourself in. So part of that is what I'm
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going to go over and how to make sure you can leave one job to go to the next. My knowledge base
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then and now is everything but the kitchen seat. As a lone DBA, you have to know every facet
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of SQL Server, every facet of your job. You cannot be an expert on anything. So I knew a little bit
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of everything that got me through my day and kept the port and the coffee companies running
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here's what the challenge was I'm very much a type a personality I want to know everything I
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want to be a perfectionist I want to learn what I need to learn to be a master at whatever it is
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I need to tackle well when you're alone DBA you cannot do that you have to change your mindset
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you have to learn just enough to get the next point done to get the next project going to make
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sure the server is up and running. So you need to have a broad skill set. You need to be a self
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learner. Do not rely on the company to train you. Do not rely on others to give you the information
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You need to do what you're doing today and attending conferences and training sessions
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on your own, such as the one that I have on the screen, to up your skill set and make sure you're
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ready to tackle the next thing that falls your way because it's just you. And because it's just
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you. You need to be able to have the knowledge or the skill set or the know-how of where to get that
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information on your own. You cannot rely on anybody else. So these are some great things that I've
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actually learned from myself, including C-sharp Corner, that helped me grow my knowledge base
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Embrace social media. I think people don't realize the biggest asset that you have are things like
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Twitter, Slack, and LinkedIn. We are very, very lucky in the SQL Server community to have a huge
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presence on Twitter. We call ourselves the SQL family, and we have a hashtag that says SQL Help
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24 hours a day, because everybody's global, I can put a question in that SQL Help hashtag
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and get the biggest minds in SQL Server to answer those questions for what? For free
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They have helped me with production issues on things that I didn't know from a 240-character
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tweet. I was able to actually fix issues in the middle of the night because there were experts
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out there on Twitter helping me every day. So when a company hires you, one person, what they've
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really done is hired you and a thousand co-workers. You have thousands of co-workers working with you
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every day doing the same thing with you, helping each other on social media to get our jobs done
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So if you take away anything from this presentation, this is the slide you need to really, really think about
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If you're not taking yourself and diving into what the social media can give you, you're missing out and probably creating a little more work for yourself than need be
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So definitely take note and dive into it because we're out there to help
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Building your network. You can't do it all on your own. We all write code
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We all have ideas. but sometimes our own ideas we think are right may not be what's best for the environment. So
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sometimes we need a sounding board. We need somebody to throw ideas at, even though we're
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just by ourselves in that office as the lone DBA. So how do you find these experts? One
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social media I talked about. Two, getting out to events, in-person events when we can
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and start building a network of people. Start having conversations with presenters
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Start finding some gurus, right? I'm not very good at PowerShell, but one of my best friends is a PowerShell expert
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And if I need help writing something, I've got the expert for that. I'm not fantastic yet
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when it comes to things like Azure. However, I do know some Azure experts
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and those are my people I'm going to go to. Maybe I need a code review
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Maybe I need to have somebody that's really good at T-SQL that can look at my code and say
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hey, Monica, you're not doing something right here and they can help me make it better
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How do I find these people? I just start talking to people. I talk to those speakers. I start
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building a network on purpose for things that I may need later. And those experts is who you need
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to get in touch with. So you can go to them and get that second set of eyes. Saying no is okay
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How many people like to say no? I don't. I don't want to disappoint people. It's very hard to tell
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your boss no. But no is an answer and no is okay. You've got to manage your company's expectations
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Right. Workload management. You're expected to do the work of five, 10 people, maybe a whole a whole group of people
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Twenty people is what's really needed, but it's only you. So you've got to be able to let your bosses know, hey, you've given me too much or maybe visually keep a whiteboard in your office that has a list of all of your tasks that you do
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So when they walk in the door, it's visual in your office that they can see how much work you are trying to do before they add more
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Keeping them in, maybe fill your calendar, sharing your calendar shows how busy you are
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It kind of gives a visual and lets people know, hey, maybe they shouldn't add more onto you
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So workload management, keeping that visual and being able to say, no, don't let them burn you out
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There's nothing worse than having to go to work and dreading it because you have so much
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or you've given so much and you don't feel appreciated. Don't let them burn you out
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You control it. They need you. You are important to that company. lay the law, make, make restrictions, be able to take a little bit of control from that
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get some tools, get some tools. We have two arms, but if you have tools such as monitoring tools
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or things that clean your code, or there's lots of different tools out there that allows you to
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accomplish tasks with a push of a button, rather than having to write a lot of code or investing a
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lot of time, sell them on paying the money to get you some tools. It's cheaper to get tools
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than it is to hire another you. So definitely do that It makes your life easier Use your boss as a shield Make them say no right Make them deal with the hard to deal with other employees in the company that kind of
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make your job a little harder or tend to throw a lot of work your way. Use your boss
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Create a relationship in which you can have them help manage the other people in the company's
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expectations of what they expect you to do. Admit you can't do everything
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it's okay to say it's too much and I can't do something. It's okay to hire consultants
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Hire a consultant so you can breathe, right? So you can take a break, so you can take a vacation
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Hire a consultant to work with that other vice president that you don't like to work with on
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projects that you have to work with on the next one. Let somebody else do it, right? It frees up
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your plate so you can actually do stuff that you enjoy or invest your time in something new you want
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to learn. Don't be afraid of it. There is one company when I worked for the port, if you hired
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a consultant, they said, oh, that means you can't do your job. That means that you're incapable of
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being able to do that. And as a woman, I don't like to do that, right? We all have this, we must be
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perfect at everything. Otherwise, we don't try it. Or there's this insecurity about our own jobs
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that we don't want to give it to somebody else. Guess what? Your sanity is important
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Freeing up your plate is important. Your in-house knowledge, what you know about the company
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how things work, why data is the way it is, why code was written the way it is
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that's your safety net. A consultant can't take that from you. Another employee or a new hire can't take that from you
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That knowledge is key. You don't have to worry about it. Hire the consultants, get some help, don't burn you out
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leave yourself breadcrumbs, right? Again, my mind, I'm getting older, but I do a lot of things all
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the time. So I call this my hit by the bus handbook. Take everything in your head and dump
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it to documentation. Write a book, a physical book, run book that talks about all the jobs
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that talks about all the code. What calls what? If something fails, they need to do A, B, and C
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to fix it. If B fails, they need to call you. You need to put this stuff down in writing so you can
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actually have a life and take a vacation. It's easy for my backup, who happened to be the SharePoint
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person at the time, to take my book when I was driving home from work after something failed
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when I left the office to say, hey, Monica, we had a failure. I have your book in hand. I did A, B, and
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C, but I have an issue. So therefore, I called you now. And I can get us through to the next thing
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and walk them through this book of how to do stuff. And guess what else this does
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This puts all my knowledge written down. I'm sharing that knowledge because then that allows me to move on to my next job
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That also allows me to be promoted. I'm gonna pause right there because guess what
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If you have all the knowledge in a particular job, a particular position, you're never gonna be promoted
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You're stuck because nobody can feel your shoes. Don't put yourself in a situation that you cannot move up or out or have some kind of control and get that knowledge written down for somebody to be able to take it
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It's not that you're giving it up. It's not that you're that you need to hold it for security
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You need to put it down so somebody else is capable of filling your shoes. If and when the time arises, do yourself that favor
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Also, document your code. Again, I said I'm old, right? I don't know what I did, why I cut stuff
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So in front of all of my code, I have this preamble. It will actually give me, if you notice, the run statement right there
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You can't see my hands because obviously we're not looking at each other here, but a run statement
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I need to know how that store procedure needs to be run. So I put an example there. Makes it easier for me
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If I have a ticket that told me to make a change on the store procedure, I have a ticket number next to it
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I also have a description, which I make it very verbose so I can know why I made that change
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And guess what? I also put down who told me to make that change. Right. So I can go back several weeks later or maybe a year later and look at my code and figure out what it's used for and and why I made that change
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So that's for me. That makes sure I can pick up and go quickly without having to dive in and figure out what the heck I did
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So you don't need to prove you're smart. Right. You don't need to prove you're smart. Avoid customizing code
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everybody wants to look smart and take the time to write something that's got this wow factor
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right something that's just truly impressive that uh you made sql server do or you have going on in
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your environment guess what as a lone dba or a lone anybody you don't got time for that
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you don't i don't need to spend three weeks a month writing something when there's already
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tools out there the problem for some people is that they do not know these tools exist
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So I'm going to give you several of my favorites here. And these are ones that are actually built by people in the SQL Server community that I use every day
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And I have used since I was a consultant. I mean, since I was a consultant and when I was a lone DBA before becoming a consultant
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And that's Glenn Berry. If you look at this link, he has about, I think there's 64
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I could be wrong. Different performance queries that you can look at that looks at the SQL Server DMVs and presents performance information to you
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that is valuable in order to performance tune things or to troubleshoot
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or to really dig into what your system's doing. You don't have to write that stuff
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He's provided it for you and I use it every day. On top of that
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when you're doing index maintenance and database integrity, there's a script here by Ola Hollengrin
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It's used community-wide, industry-wide. Everybody uses it to maintain this stuff. There's no reason for you to build things
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Use what the community has out there for us. It's been vetted
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It's used in the highest places, high volume places and things like that
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We all use this. Don't waste your time writing your own. Adam Mechanic has given us SP who's active, who helps us find things that are going on
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right now, blocking what transactions are happening, what's our lead blocker, what's
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consuming some resources, things like that. Do not bake your own monitoring tools Do not prove yourself as smart Do not take a month to write something just because you can It important when you alone DBA that you get in get out get it done
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It's out there for us. The problem is a lot of people don't know what's out there and what other people are using
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But how did I discover this? Twitter, social media, asking around, going to training events like this
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This is where you find out the information and resources that are out there for you. So definitely take advantage of these
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If you're not using them, go look them up. You'll see industry-wide that we use them
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So I got four minutes left. And well, I got five minutes actually
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And I did that on purpose. This is my contact information. I want to kind of sum things up and let you know that as a lone DBA, although you are completely stressed out, it's a lot to handle
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It is overwhelming and it can be daunting. And I've been in your shoes, but guess what
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You are some of the most marketable people out there in our industry
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If you get hit up in LinkedIn and other things by recruiters, they always give you a list
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long of things and expectations that they want their candidate to do
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There's a lot of people in our industry that have a very narrow field that they're really
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great at. They're experts at something. But when companies want to hire one person or they're trying to fill several roles within one job, their list is a mile long of what they want you to touch
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Well, guess what? You've done that mile and you've done that mile plus some because you've been the only person and you've had to tackle each one of those facets in order to get your job done
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Whether it was in a troubleshooting mode or it's something you just wanted to learn and implement, you've done it
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So you are the best candidate for that job. And you are a mile ahead of those who have the smaller piece of the puzzle
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So pat yourself on the back. If you're alone, anything or you work on a small team and you feel overwhelmed, you've got this and you can move on from it
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And you are going to grow beyond some of the competitors that you have going out from your next job
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So congratulations to you. My name is Monica Rathbun. You can reach me out at Twitter
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I'm at SQLEspresso.com, SQLEspresso on Twitter. Hit me up at any point in time
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I can introduce you to the SQL family. I can get you started in some of the conversations
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I'm a consultant. I can give you some information on how to problem solve as well
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I'm always there trying to help. You can hit me up on LinkedIn. I have a blog
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I try to keep my blog simple, straight to the point. Let's have a conversation about whatever issue that I've had to tackle lately
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So I'm just going to wrap that up. Thank you guys very much for having me
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I appreciate all the time. We made it with one minute and 48 seconds left
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So not too bad for a 70 minute session. So if you guys have any questions, feel free to hit me up now or after
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Amazing. Thank you so much. That was a really great session. So much insight and knowledge in there
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I especially love this, the type of like war stories from trenches type of feel that you had
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I can feel that you really have been there and suffered or enjoyed over these topics a lot
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Oh, my gosh. I always kind of say this is so I'm a single mom and, you know, doing all of this is a lot
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and being a woman in tech, sometimes juggling life balances and making this happen is difficult
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My daughters dance, like they truly dance 30 hours a week on top of school
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I was able to actually do all of this on flex time, right? I was able to take them to dance
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and work from the dance studio. I would have food delivered to my car
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so I can work from the dance studio. Managing your time, letting your boss know
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hey, I can do my job 24 seven from anywhere is important. Ladies, you can do it. Men, you can do it. Make sure you're doing it on
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your rules. You can make it happen. They need you, right? For sure. Really great. Loved it so much
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Yeah. Thank you, Monica. Yeah, that was for us also, I think for any of myself
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it's also very cool that we can follow the sessions and listen in. And yes, we still have
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like two more minutes to go. So I did see, so you have your own SQL server user group, right? Which you lead
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And so what I wonder, how are you dealing with the, with the current situation? Like
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are you having an in-person user group or, or is everything kind of stopped for the moment
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We're doing virtual. So we have our meetings once a month and we hold everything virtual
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We kind of check in with everybody and continue to go on with the training
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because usually when you have a user group, we present a session and then we have networking associated with it
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We do that online as well. So, yes, I run the local user group here
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We keep in touch. There's no plans to be in person anytime soon. It's not worth the risk. And these platforms make it easy
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So, yeah, we'll continue to do that. Wow. So really juggling with the kids and the dancing and the working and keeping the user group up and running
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so yeah I think both Annie and I are very happy as well as the audience to have you here with us
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today you make time available thanks yes and actually I am joining the C-sharp coffee time
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this Sunday so I'll be online talking to talking to you guys and and I look forward to spending my
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Sunday morning with everybody wonderful Annie do you have anything else you would like to ask or
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you would like to add? Not too much. I was thinking throughout the whole thing that even though it is
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it was for a specific profession and I, but I have to say that even, even if I don't do that job
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it still taught me a lot the whole session, because I think a lot of the, for example
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the hit by a bus handbook, like really hits home for, I think every profession
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you really have to kind of manage your time and expectations and everything. Yeah. Great. But I think we can now introduce the next speaker
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