This month’s rendition of T-SQL Tuesday - #42, is hosted

by  SQL MVP, Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter) ,  who maintains her blog about Life, The Universe

and SQLServer.  The WendyVerse blog is a collection of

her musings on “anything that comes to mind today” and is the world according

to Wendy (you can use that, Wendy 🙂   Today, she invites us all to share what I

guess is our own “Long and Winding Road”, on how we got from point A to B on

our career path.

More accurately, Wendy tells us that “we all experience

change in our work lives. Maybe you have a new job or a new role at your

company. Maybe you're just getting started and you have a road map to success

in mind. Whatever it is, please share it….” 

This invitation to introspection is quite interesting, so I will briefly

share my rocky road to where I am today, as my adventure still continues....

So, according to my LinkedIN profile, I

started out with a Political Science degree, on my way to law school, or so I

thought.  I worked early on in a law

firm, Arbitration, US Court of International Trade, and then as a techie in legal

software company.  In the US Court, I

worked in the data dinosaur department, where federal standards were way

behind, and paper was still the order of the day.  Well, I couldn’t stand that, so I automated

much of it, and also created some automated Excel spreadsheets (via VBA) for

the finance department.

I then ended up in a start-up software company, a subsidiary

of a document management firm, for legal case tracking software.  Here I created and built up an entire help

desk operation from scratch.  Such

software ran on backend platforms of Sybase, Oracle and of course, SQL Server (v.6.5). 

The software engineers grew tired of having to explain how to deploy it

to the client management folks, so the young absorbent sponge that was me,

became the intermediary here.  I was able

to help the clientele, as well as the folks who were supposed to know it front

and backwards.  That was my first real

immersion into the RDMS world, and exposure to SQL Server.

I guess at the dawn of the client-server world, I thought

there was more creative and entrepreneurial opportunity in the technology

world.  Plus, by then, I had my share of

interaction with lawyers, and well, let’s just say my opinion changed about

pursuing a career in law.

I was recruited by a vendor of accounting software that only

deployed on SQL Server.  It was a

consulting firm, where I learned the ins and outs of consulting; only I was a

F/T employee, and basically a billable bobby for the powers that be.  However, I learned my craft here, and was a

valuable learning experience.  After

that, I navigated the corporate world of banking & finance, working as a

team DBA and finally lead DBA.  Citing my

political science background, it doesn’t really prepare you for corporate

politics. 

Technology folks like us want to know what we need to do,

when it’s needed, and then go and do it. 

But, as many of you know, it’s not that simple.  As part of your trade and integration in such

a corporate structure, you must learn this “game” in order to survive as DBA.

The good news is, if you realize the power that you have as the

chosen one who is the guardian of the company’s data, protector and

administrator of the database domain, you can do quite well in that environment. 

Here’s a little history about the world’s first purveyor of

data collection.  Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin

was a very shrewd manipulator. Lenin had entrusted him with several posts that

were seemingly of little importance; General Secretary of the Party for

example.

Stalin used this post to control who was in - or out of the Party. Stalin then

ensured that 'his' people were loyal to him because they wanted to keep their

jobs - he did this by collecting information and data about everyone in the

Party. 

Doesn’t that sound like path of a DBA?  Ok, I know that’s a stretch, but I’m making a

point.  DBA’s have come a long way from

the closet/cubicle to the valued front facing employee whose input the company

cannot do without.  In addition, if you

can turn your technology into a billable bucket, where your DBA services are

charged back to the business unit requesting them, your time, value and

appreciation will go up immensely! 

Anyway, I digress. So, during my corporate travels, the DBA

team seemed always the last to know when an issue occurred, and we were at the

mercy of an unorganized network operations team and their preferred monitoring

tools.  That’s when I started rolling my

own, and came up with the first web-based SQL Server monitoring and alert

tool.  It was light, sleek, and dba-friendly,

and often identified an issue, before the NOC team even knew about it.  This little invention of mine, later became

known as,  pause, SQLCentric,

the award-winning monitoring and alert system. 

By coming up with this simple tool, I made my foray into the business side

of SQL Server, with my new software.

I have a lot of people to thank for their time, advice,

advertising and awesome expertise when I first started out.  Among those are Brian Knight, Steve Jones,

Andy Warren (SQLServerCentral.com),

Brad McGehee (then owner of SQL-Server-Performance.com,

and Stephen Wynkoop of SSWUG.org, who of

course were the early pioneers in SQL Server community web-sites, and at the

advent of early social media marketing.

So fast forward in time, and I get myself involved in a

growing community of like-minded SQL Server Database professionals and

association of geeks :-), which we all know comprises of #sqlfamily.  On my quest to sell software licenses and

services, I started getting active in SQL Community, blogging, helping out with

local SQL Server events and SQLSaturdays. 

I thank Melissa Demsak, who let me get involved with the NJ SQL Server User Group, and that was an

opening I took off and ran with. (That was actually my early presentation of Who

Did it and Ran, a talk on database forensics.:-) 

A few years back, I started moving away from working for THE MAN, and started consulting.  I kept up with SQL Community, honed my skills

and expertise, started presenting, and well, the rest is history.  Of course, this is a story that still is in

progress, fraught with challenges, ups and downs, and hard-work.

Having become an independent consulting, as well as a technopreneur,

there is no way back to the days of 9-5 climbing the corporate ladder.  In fact, some of the most insightful and

enjoyable articles on consulting on SQL Server that I’ve read, are those by

Brent Ozar.   So, if you’re considering

becoming a consultant, then you definitely need to follow Brent’s blog.  One I recently read is “Every

Consultant Needs Three Things” If you GOOGLE “Brent Ozar consulting”, all

his consultant related blogs will come up. 

Indeed, it’s been a long and winding road, but one that still is laden

with opportunity and meeting SQLFamily on the way.  That is why I continue on this journey.   I hope my story inspires those who are starting out...

Thanks, Wendy for hosting!

And now the obligatory oratory for those who would like to

participate in this TSQL Tuesday blog party, as you know, started by Adam Machanic (@AdamMachanic), royalties included

🙂

Rules of the Road (not the Long Winding One 🙂

• Your post

  must be published between 00:00 GMT Tuesday May 14, 2013 and 00:00 GMT

  Wednesday May 15, 2013.

• Your post

  must contain the T-SQL Tuesday logo at the top (see above) and the image

  must link back to this blog post.

• Trackbacks

  should work, but if not please put a link to your post in the comments

  section so everyone can see your contribution!

Don't forget

 to tweet your #tsql2sday hashtag on

Twitter, too.

You can follow me on twitter @Pearlknows and check out my website at http://www.pearlknows.com