Fellow IDERA ACE Mohammad Darab (b | t) presents this month T-SQL Tuesday blog party and the topic is absolutely wonderful for an introspective introvert like me: “Dear 20 Year Old Self”. Seeing as I am 40 years of age as I write this, 20 year old me existed in 1999 which was, thankfully, referred to in the Prince song that the title of this post references (I was getting desperate for a title). 20 year old me thought he had it all figured out, so I thank Mohammad for the opportunity to set 1999 Matt straight. Without further ado, here’s the letter to 20 year old me…

Greetings, 1999 Matt! Congrats on the sweet 8 GB hard drive you just bought. In 20 years, even the free thumb drives you get at conferences where you’re speaking (crazy I know, but we’ll get to that) will be larger than that and you’ll have a phone with 32x that amount of storage. Also, Clemson will have won two national championships in college football but not with Tommy Bowden (who you are very excited Clemson just hired but wasn’t the answer to our championship drought). In some ways, the future is pretty cool. But I’m not here to damage the space time continuum or give you a leg up in the NCAA championship future pools in Vegas. I’m here to give you advice. Here it is in semi-bulleted form since I still like that format and know you like it too:

Don’t Be So Dogmatic

You think you have it all figured out right now. While that confidence can be healthy and may serve you well off and on in the future, you’re wrong about a lot of things. Your world is small. Most of the people you know look like you and have similar experiences to your own. That’s fine, but seek out people from different backgrounds who can broaden your horizons. They will enrich your life and make you a better person. You are capable of critical thinking – apply that ability to examine the world and people around you and make the choices that make sense to you. Those choices may not be preferred by the people and structures around you but as your horizons expand your self-confidence will come from your comfort with yourself and your place in the world and not what you think you know. Make an effort to be a good person and present in the lives of those around you – being “right” doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think.

Learn More About Data

You think you are going to be an application developer when you grow up. You’re currently working your way through Clemson as a part-time general IT person but you really have no exposure to a database at all. If somebody submits an Access or Oracle ticket to the help desk, take it and run with it. Before you know it, much of the technical world will revolve around data. Those with the ability to understand, visualize, and explain where that data came from, why it’s important, and the value it can add will be in high demand and compensated fairly decently for their knowledge and adaptability in a rapidly changing world. You already know about as much C and C++ as you will ever need in the future, but take every data-related course you can take even if you think it’s beyond you. All the knowledge you absorb about data and data structures will be very important to you in the future.

You will work with new languages and platforms nearly all the time 20 years from now. Learn how to learn and learn how to study now and you’ll be in a good position once you graduate (yes, you do graduate eventually). And, no, your GPA really doesn’t matter so don’t stress about the letter grades.

Trust Those That Believe In You

Those friends of yours that believed in you enough to put you in charge of a student newspaper saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself. They saw somebody who could represent an organization not just in writing but in person. Sure, you may stutter or stumble over a sound or letter now and then – so what?

When you were paralyzed with fear to speak in front of any group of people, no matter how large, you needed to take that challenge head on instead of finding every excuse to hide in the corner and stay quiet. Fear of embarrassment held you back for a long time and cost you opportunities. Your friends believed in you despite the flaws you perceived in your “public persona”. You’ll eventually find people in your professional life who share the belief in you that those crazy college friends of yours had and those colleagues will change your life. They will set you on a path to work and speak to audiences all over the world about what you do with data and how you can help them in their work and it will be fantastic. Don’t wait 17 years to take to heart the belief that others have in you even when you may profoundly lack that belief in yourself.

Have a good one, 1999 Matt! The next twenty years contain some very cool things and do whatever you can to remember those things and share them with those around you. You’ll also end up really liking soccer, so be prepared for that.

Sincerely, 

Future Matt

First of all, thanks to Kendra Little (b|t) for hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. This month’s topic (Interviewing Patterns & Anti-Patterns) is a great topic that’s generating a lot of interesting responses from many different perspectives. Beyond that, I’ve seen Kendra present at PASS events and various webinars and she presents deep technical content in a very engaging way. Definitely check out her blog and follow her on Twitter!

As for my submission to this month’s blog party, I was excited to cover the original topic I had for this post – “Interviews Aren’t Trivia Contests”. I may still blog that at some point, as I believe I’ve definitely improved as an interviewer and would like to pass along some things I’ve learned the hard way so you don’t make the same mistakes I have.

That said, a couple of conversations I had at SQL Saturday Louisville this weekend changed my mind on my post for this edition of T-SQL Tuesday. Hearing women discuss the subtle and overt sexism that they have to deal with in IT is always jarring and it prompted me to relate an interview story from my wife. Even though my wife has been in technical fields her entire career and I’ve both managed and worked alongside women in IT, hearing these types of stories is always jarring, upsetting, and thought-provoking. This post is most certainly about a couple of interviewing anti-patterns, as you’ll see below.

While my wife is currently in IT (she is a PMP-certified project manager specializing in software delivery and implementation), this story dates from 2012 when she was interviewing for a ceramic and materials engineering position in the Midwest. She has a B.S. in Ceramic Engineering, an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, and has her name on at least one patent and multiple academic papers. Long story short, she was indisputably qualified for the position for which she was interviewing.

Anti-Pattern 1: Subtle Sexism

This interview, as many others are, was a series of one-on-one meetings with folks in HR, on the technical side, and points in-between. There had been nothing particularly noteworthy until she interviewed with a guy in a very senior technical position. After a few minutes, he asked my wife a seemingly innocuous, albeit cringe-worthy, question (but more on that in a bit): “how does a woman get into engineering?”. My wife explained her interest in and aptitude for math and then a little more about what drove her specifically towards materials science and engineering.

Anti-Pattern 2: Shocking Sexism

His response was “interesting, most women who get into engineering are more flat-chested.” This is the part of the blog where you should hear a record-scratching noise in your head as you’re shocked by what you just read. Sadly, the few times I’ve relayed this story over the years the women I tell are not nearly as surprised as the men I tell. It goes without saying that this is an interviewing anti-pattern of the highest order. It’s sexist, demeaning, crude, lawsuit-worthy at best, and illegal at worst.

Summary

But I said I’d take you back to the seemingly innocuous question, as over the years it’s troubled me nearly as much as the obviously horrifying commentary on my wife’s figure during an interview. “How does a woman get into engineering?” As one of my wife’s friends said, the proper response was “the same way a man does”. The subtlety of this is perhaps more insidious than the overt sexism of the crude comment, as the implication is “why are you here, you don’t seem to belong?”.

If you take anything away from this post, I want it to be this sentiment: as an interviewer, that candidate across the desk/phone from you is there because they believe they’re qualified for the opportunity and want to work with you and your company. Everybody’s career journey is different, but the subtle or overt implication that because they don’t fit the stereotype in your head they don’t belong there is simply unacceptable. Not only could you be costing your company the best candidate for the position, you may plant a seed in that person’s head that takes them years to overcome or puts them off their chosen career path entirely.

To end this on a positive note, this did not have a negative impact on my wife’s mentality and she’s fantastic at her current job. I still wish she would have slapped the guy, though!

 

 

First of all, a sincere thanks to everybody that took the time to contribute posts to this month’s T-SQL Tuesday (#87) – Fixing Old Problems with Shiny New Toys. I realize the time it takes to put a post together, so thanks for participating and helping the community.

Secondly, I couldn’t decide whether or not to call this the “rollup” post or the “roundup” post, but since I’m in Texas this week for work, “roundup” won the day. If you think I should have gone “rollup”, by all means email Adam Machanic (amachanic at gmail dot com) after taking a look at the T-SQL Tuesday hosting rules, agree to host a month, and call your summary post whatever your heart desires!

On a personal note, one of my goals for 2017 was to be more disciplined about blogging and this has gotten that initiative off to a solid start. I highly recommend hosting/participating in T-SQL Tuesday and hope you’ll return here to read my regular posts as the months and years go on.

Finally, as a first time host, I was obviously hoping that this topic would garner some responses, but you never know until you hit that post button whether you’ve selected something of interest to the community or not. Thankfully, this month’s topic picked up views from over 20 countries and over 20 blog responses. The list (with a brief post-by-post commentary from me) is below. Happy reading and thanks again for reading/writing/participating!

This Month’s Responses

Row Level Security – Steve Jones provides an intriguing solution using very new toys (SQL Server 2016 and/or Azure SQL Database) to solve a very old problem (users seeing data they shouldn’t).

Fixing Old Security Problems with Shiny New Toys – Duncan Greaves reviews four new or new-ish security features that you need to understand (and should probably be using).

SQL Server 2016’s JSON Functionality – Bert Wagner details JSON support in SQL Server (from community support to official support) and some use cases for it as well.

Calculated Tables and Role-Playing Dimensions – I was really pleased to get a few responses on SQL Server topics outside of the database engine. My colleague Ginger Grant provides a blog that’s guaranteed to save a few SSAS users some hassle.

Data Theft and Backup Encryption – Mark Southall provides a fascinating object lesson on how useful it can be to encrypt your backups. This one should give all of us something to think about.

Server Level Database Permissions – Kenneth Fisher gives us a great reminder that server level database permissions exist and that they make our lives easier.

Solving the Net Changes Problem with Temporal Tables – Adam Machanic (thanks again for letting me host!) gives us a detailed look at how we can use temporal tables (a shiny new toy) to potentially replace the functionality of change tracking (a less shiny, older toy).

String Splitting – Aaron Bertrand gives us a look at string splitting in SQL Server 2016 along with a bonus look at the STRING_AGG() we’ll see in SQL Server vNext.

Granting Read Permissions on Everything! – Shane O’Neill gives us an interesting look at easily granting read permissions to users.

STRING_SPLIT – My colleague Steve Hughes gives us another look at one of SQL Server 2016’s hidden gems.

New Way to See Wait Stats for a Single Query – Robert L Davis gives us a great look at how to zero in on the wait stats (including the worst offenders) for a single query.

Beware Shiny New Toys – Wayne Sheffield turns my topic on its head and warns us about the danger of blindly trusting shiny new toys.

Better Index Maintenance in Maintenance Plans – SQL Cyclist shows us the improvements in index maintenance tasks within maintenance plans.

Where Did My Backup Compression Go? – Garry Bargsley gives us a great look at backup compression on TDE databases in SQL Server 2016.

Angle Brackets vs. Curly Braces – Riley Major reminds us that not everybody has these shiny new toys but that there may be some different ways, in older versions, to approximate the way some shiny new toys (like JSON support) behave.

Using AT TIME ZONE to Fix a Report – Rob Farley gives us a great new solution to solve those brain-bending timezone issues for reports and other query-driven datasets.

Providing Data to Customers More Quickly – Jens Vestergaard gives us an interesting look at how SQL Server 2016 SP1’s performance improvements (and an Azure VM) provided the horsepower to generate data that had been previously requested but whose generation used to take far too long before now.

Power BI in SSRS – James Anderson gives us a look at a cool new innovation in the BI realm of the SQL Server world: Power BI in SSRS 2016.

Musings on SESSION_CONTEXT() – Ewald Cress takes a deep dive into SESSION_CONTEXT(). Great, in-depth thoughts here.

Temporal Tables – My colleague Bob Rubocki gives us a blog version of his well-received temporal tables webinar. This is a good, easy-to-understand walk through this shiny new toy.

Performance Tuning Out of the Box (tempdb) – Björn Peters gives us a good look at the tempdb configuration options Microsoft included in SQL Server 2016 setup. Although I took 3+ years of German, I had to break out the English translator for his one, but it was awesome to get responses in multiple languages!

Two New Useful DMV Columns – Rodney Landrum points us to a very convenient way to check whether or not two important configuration options are set without having to fire up Microsoft Management Console.