A Whole Lot of Professional Development Going O n

Gentlest of Reminders, Don't Stop Learning

I was on the road for just over two weeks. I was able to travel around to a few places and present some sessions. But, better than that, thanks to SQL Konferenz, I was able to go to a couple of sessions and learn some stuff.

I'm lucky/cursed in my position at Redgate. We have a bunch of software, and a bunch of developers. For some reason, they seem to do quite a lot of work, expanding, enhancing and changing all those tools. And I have to learn it all. It's never ending. On top of that, I'm trying to pick up PostgreSQL (and you can read about my struggles). Not to mention, I'm absolutely not letting my existing skill set in SQL Server atrophy, so I'm trying to figure out how things work there as well. Oh, and Azure DevOps, AWS Developer Tools, Octopus, Github Actions and all the other DevOps tools & processes. Learning, non-stop learning, as you can tell, is literally a major part of the job.

It's a big part of your job too.

Sure, maybe you only, ever, work within SQL Server/PostgreSQL/Oracle/InsertYourDataToolHere. It could be you're in a position that's not going to do a cloud migration anytime soon, if ever. You may not have a burning need for automation and process improvement through building out DevOps-style deployments and testing. And you may not work for a software vendor constantly churning out new stuff. So, in this position, you can just sit back & relax. No learning needed right?

You must be joking.

Even if you're doing any of the stuff listed above, your data is growing. The estate you manage is growing. There's new stuff coming from your internal developers. You need to apply the latest service patch or upgrade to a new version of your data management system. You're hitting limitations on your servers and don't understand why. Performance is tanking in an old application. In short, you have metric tonnes of learning that you need to do, all the time, same as me.

So, if you're not learning, get on it. If you're unsure where to get started, I suggest starting with your community. Find the local meetup, user group or whatever. Go to that. Talk to people (yeah, I know). Find a PGDay in your area. Track down a Data Saturday or a SQL Saturday. Maybe go to PASS Data Community Summit with a couple of thousand of your closest friends. Pick up a book. Do something. Do everything. Keep learning, because technology isn't standing still, and you're going to need that job in the future, so prepare for it now.

Grant Fritchey

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