When I was younger, it seemed that everyone I worked with in technology knew how to build a computer. Most knew how to work with a BIOS, were comfortable with command lines, and could assemble complex compiler directives into a Make file. Over time, it seems many people, especially Windows and MacOS users, became focused on the things they needed for their job, lacking a lot of knowledge about how computers process instructions and the low-level operations they perform.

There are plenty of very talented developers out there, and many great data modelers, but as I work with many of them that try to make the transition to DevOps, I see lots of uncertainty and tentative behavior. They often approach builds, automated tests, and deployments as though these are completely new skills they need to learn. New software that is foreign to them.

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One of the biggest challenges to becoming better at building, deploying, and operating software is the culture changes required. DevOps requires we work as a team, which can be hard to do. Often people have competing interests and goals. They don't trust each other as much as we'd like, and maybe more importantly, management doesn't trust the people doing the work.

There is plenty of blame thrown around when things don't work as expected (or aren't delivered). That's a poor culture in which to be creative or experimental. In reality, those things are a lot of what we do in software development. We aren't solving the same problem over and over, building a bridge or house that is mostly constructed as many others are. Instead, we are assembling more complex systems in different ways.

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DevOps is a culture shift in your organization. Technology enables things inside of this culture, but the culture is important. If you don't know how to build a new culture and support individuals as they adopt it, often you're just renaming an existing broken process inside your organization.

Often, I think the failure to reach the efficient levels of a Spotify, Capital One, or any other DevOps success story is because of a failure of management to change culture.

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For years, those of us in technology have often worked outside of the core working hours for the rest of our organization. Whether this is being on-call, staying late, or coming in when asked. It's not uncommon for many developers and Ops staff to work 60, 70, or more hours to get things built/deployed/supported for our customers. Often we do this while juggling lots of tasks on a to-do list. While many things might be in a ticketing system, often I find there are tasks on a project plan, requests from team members, and other items which don't fit neatly into a ticket. I'm juggling more than one to-do list.

The line between work and personal life has often been blurred for me. I've taken work calls on the golf course, in an airport, late at night in my bathroom, while shopping with my wife, even at kid's sporting events. I regret not pushing back more to a few managers early in my career, but I also recognize that I (and many of you) are sometimes in poor cultural situations and we don't have a choice if we want to keep employed.

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At this year's Data Community Summit 2022, I am a part of the day 2 keynote. I'm excited to deliver some thoughts and memories of the event. I'm mostly excited the Summit still exists, and I am looking forward to seeing many of you in Seattle in person again. If you haven't registered, think about it. This is the best place to meet other data professionals, network, and not only get knowledge from the experts, but ask them your question in person.

Someone brought to my attention the original event from PASS wasn't the Summit, but was the Compass '99 conference. I saw a recap of the event on the ITProToday site, which brought back memories. I had attended the event early in my career, convincing my boss that this data specific event would be good for both them and me. It was, and it led me to unfathomable success throughout my time working with databases, along with great personal joy.

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Today is Halloween, a holiday of costumes, candy, and scary movies. My family has enjoyed scary movies over the years, though not necessarily on this date. However, the theme has me thinking about the scary situations that you've encountered, or maybe those that worry you in your job.

I don't worry about too many scary things in my job. I do get some anxiety before some presentations, and there are times I've been nervous before recordings, but it's helpful for me to remember that none of these things are likely to be remembered for long if I do make a mistake. There's just so much content produced every week.

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As I get older, I realize more and more the value of time. I also realize this is a very limited quantity for me, it is getting more precious each day, and it is one of the more valuable assets I have. Time with my wife, time with my kids and my extended family is precious. Time for hobbies, work, and more is difficult to come by. Well, not work. I have to work, but it gets in the way of things at times.

I've been learning to take time off from a busy life and enjoy the lack of trying to use that time. I find myself looking at email or checking some work item less and less on weekends and holidays. At least, I avoid working if I've had a productive week. Quite a bit of my work is independent and can be asynchronous with others. I might spend time during the week on something personal and then make-up that time on weekends. Often that's the case when I am called to be the emergency ranch worker if someone else isn't available.

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I find that many of us that work in technology want a solution to be great. Often perfect. Computers are so good at following instructions that we expect them to work as we intend all the time. We aim for being perfect in our code and we find “good enough” to be a low bar.

I think this is because many times something barely works and gets deployed because it’s good enough. Maybe the code can’t handle a load or corner cases and that’s caused us some sort of stress or pain. So we don’t want good enough. because we've been burned in the past, either by our code or someone else's.

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A few years ago, one of my co-workers wanted to work remotely for the winter. They received permission and spent 3 or 4 months in France, waking up early to work for an hour or two, skiing in the late morning and early afternoon, and then coming back to work more at night.

I was quite jealous. Mostly because with family, this wasn't an option for me. Don't feel too bad for me as I get the chance to slide down mountains plenty during the winter.

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I saw a short post on meetings, which made me chuckle. The post said that meetings are work, and sometimes they get in the way of other work. I think that's a sentiment that many people have, especially when they are pressured to write code or manage systems and their daily calendar gets cluttered with meetings.

I find meetings to be very hit-and-miss for my job. Some are valuable and helpful, with plenty of others being unnecessary and an impediment to getting things done. It is hard to know when a meeting will be helpful or a waste of time, but often I find status meetings to be not worth the time required to attend. They very often are not worth the amount of attention they require, which has me wishing that I could just update status in a system or email rather than listening to others and presenting my own report.

Read the rest of The Work of Work