Professional Development

#DASH2023: Three Things I Learned

Recently attended the 2023 DataDog DASH conference, and it was a lot of fun. This was the first in-person multi-day conference for me in a while (I did crash the PowerBI SQLSaturday Atlanta conference back in February, but attended no sessions and mostly just went to see friends). I had a blast; the conference space was amazing, and the content was thought-provoking. Here’s my key takeaways.:

Take your team to conferences.

I’ve been a manager for over 10 years now, and I’ve struggled to convince upper management to send multiple key individuals to conferences. Thankfully, my director at Grainger is a big believer in education, and not only did he encourage me to send a team, but he also wanted to come as well. It was awesome to have feedback on topics both upstream and downstream. I had team members with a variety of experiences (junior, mid, and senior), and they raised some insightful questions. We split up often, so I still managed to make some new networking contacts but it was good to come back together and discuss new ideas.

Your fires are no worse than anybody else’s fires.

Sometimes being on the production side of the development pipeline you get the feeling that the world is burning and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to save it. While we were at the conference, my slack channels were screaming about several ongoing issues that my team was having to deal with. At times, it’s overwhelming.

But talking to folks at the conference from companies in all types of verticals from health care to automotive to financial to manufacturing, we’re all dealing with the same issues. Changing enterprise systems is hard, and modern development methods often accelerate faster than production systems can respond. Additionally, systems that have been in place for years have often grown connections to other systems in unexpected ways; things break, and they break fast. Observability systems offer hope, but we shouldn’t feel like we’re the only ones struggling with implementing that vision.

AI, AI, AI,AI, AI, AI

Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models are here. DataDog offers some compelling use cases to accelerate MTTx (Mean Time to Detect, Acknowledge, Respond, Repair, Resolve), but it will take some time to get the plumbing set up for it to provide value. Additionally, users have to be trained on how to do their jobs with a co-pilot. They have to trust the system, and know when to dive deeper than the initial responses. They have to know how to phrase questions in such a way to help the assistant understand them, and they have to understand what the assistant is suggesting. That’s going to take time.

2023-08-05 by Blogging is FUN! Professional Development 0

For the ones who get it done…

Excited to announce that I’m starting a new position as the Senior Manager of Site Reliability Engineering for Grainger. It’s a fantastic opportunity; Grainger is nearly 100 years old, and yet their technology stack is very progressive.

I’m excited to contribute and yet still learn new things every day.

2023-03-24 by Blogging is FUN! 1

Trello Power-Ups and Automation

As I posted last time, I’ve been using Trello as a Kanban board to help with my job search. The default functionality for Trello is effective, but there are some free components you can add to minimize the time managing the workflow (so you can focus on the work itself). In Trello, these are broken up into two broad classes:

  • Power-Ups: add-ins that have been developed either by Atlassian or contributors, and
  • Automation: native functionality to Trello that are triggered by actions or dates.

Power-Ups

Adding a Power-Up to an existing board is easy; just push the menu button near the top right of the board and click on the add power-ups button. As you can see in the screenshot, I have two power-ups that I use in my job search board.

Card Age Badge – this puts a colored icon on each card that shows how old that card is. This allows me to track individual job submissions or leads and follow-up on older cards. At this point, I’m mostly using it to indicate when a job has “ghosted” me, and I no longer consider them active applications.

List Limits – an important component of kanban is WIP, and Trello does not capture that by default. This Power-Up lets you set a limit per column (and tracks the number of work items in each column). I use it as Reverse WIP measurement; I want to keep at least 15 applications in progress. List Limits will color the background of a column when you exceed the limit, so for my Applied column I set a limit of 15, and as long as the background is colored, I can focus on other things.

Automation

To access automation, click the Automation menu item next to the Power-Ups button. Because my needs are simple, I only use the Rules feature for my setup. Trello’s implementation of rules is very nice in that it creates natural language statements to show what is to be done and when. I have the following rules:

when a comment is posted to a card by me, move the card to the top of the list

when the red "Rejected" label is added to a card by me, move the card to the top of list "Dead Lead"

when the dark black "Ghost" label is added to a card by me, move the card to the top of list "Dead Lead"
The interface is very easy to set up; each rule is simply a trigger (something that happens) and an action (something that gets done). The three rules above do two things; they allow me to move a card to the top of the stack by simply adding a comment to the card (this helps me to remember to follow up on it), and to move a card to the Dead Lead list when I either get rejected or I think the posting has ghosted me (no response after 14 days).

Board Final* View

Here’s what my board looks like today; as always, there’s room for improvement, but this allows me to focus on the job of finding a job while minimizing the overhead of managing the job search.

Good luck out there! And as always, if you want to see what kinds of roles I’m interested in, check out my LinkedIn profile! Stuart Ainsworth | LinkedIn

2023-01-25 by Professional Development 0

Using Trello to Manage My Job Search #kanban #opentowork

As I’m working through the process of dealing with my layoff from Salesforce, the biggest focus is on managing the process of applying for a job. I’m casting a wide net, and I figured I should approach this process like I would approach any project; break the work down into reasonable chunks, define a state for the workflow, and work the backlog. In essence, kanban.

I’m using Trello to manage this process. Trello is a very flexible list tracking tool that can be used as a lightweight kanban tool right away (although I plan on describing additional Power-Ups and Automation in another post).

For my job search, I visualized the workflow as 5 basics steps; this may change over time, but a week in, here’s where I am:

  • Prospects: those leads graciously submitted by others (and please keep them coming)
  • Applied: Jobs that I’ve actively applied for. More on this card later.
  • Screen: I’ve heard back from a recruiter, and a conversation is pending (or occurred).
  • Tech Screen\Follow up: Usually the second or third contact.
  • Dead Lead: Investigation didn’t pan out, not a good fit, or I was rejected.

I work the board. In the afternoons or evenings while watching TV, I do my job searches and save prospective opportunities in an email, or bookmark, or whatever. Evey morning, I start pulling those opportunities, double-checking them to see if they’re still interesting, and then go through the mechanics of applying (and BTW, some job sites are PAINFUL to use when applying).

The job opportunity card is simple right now; I don’t want to overcomplicate this, and the goal is to provide minimal information to track what I’ve applied for and provide context when scheduling follow-up calls. I use the following notations:

  • Card Title: Company name followed by Job Title. If I apply to more than 1 position with the company, I create a new card. A card represents a single job.
  • Description: a link to the job posting. If I have any other relevant information (like a reference, etc), I’ll add that to the description as well.
  • Comments: brief notes describing what I did when
  • Labels: Right now I’m using labels to manage Dead Leads, and have it restricted to three:
    • Not a fit: something that I think is not for me; I may revisit later
    • Job filled: the search engines are outdated; the job may not be available by the time I apply
    • Rejected: the company didn’t like me 🙂

So far, it’s been helpful. I’ve only screwed up once in the last week and applied to the same job twice, but that was my fault (I didn’t check the list).

Good luck out there! If you’re hiring, or have a job lead for me, please feel free to reach out to me at Twitter: @codegumbo or on LinkedIn: Stuart Ainsworth

2023-01-12 by Blogging is FUN! 1

Roll With The Punches – #opentowork #sqlfamily #datafam

For a lot of Salesforce employees, January 4, 2023 was not a good day. I was standing in my kitchen, getting my kid ready for school when I got the email at 6:16 AM EST.

Hi Stuart,
As we announced earlier today, we’re reducing our workforce by about 10 percent, mostly over the coming weeks. Unfortunately, as part of this reduction your role is being eliminated.…

Shock. Confusion. Acceptance. Thankfully, the severance package is good, and I have time to find the next opportunity.

I had only recently joined Salesforce (on February 7, 2022) after a lengthy career at Jack Henry. I had big plans. I was going places. I liked my job with Tableau on the CI Infrastructure team, and had been exposed to some great ideas, and had big plans to tackle some interesting challenges this year. In fact, I was already planning on writing a version of this blog post in preparation for the upcoming V2MOM process. One of my values can be summed up with the quote from Mike Tyson:

Plans change. They sometimes shatter like glass. But how do you recover when you’re reeling in pain from something? You go back to the fundamentals.

The fundamentals are those skills you’ve built over the years through practice. They should be automatic in times of crisis. Boxers constantly work on the fundamentals of their craft well before a big fight. They can walk into a ring with big plans, but when the blows start landing and the plans fall apart, what saves them is always going to be how well they can marshal the fundamentals.

As a manager in the technology space looking for my next opportunity, I’m going to sharpen the three following fundamentals:

First, my network of peers is large, and filled with good people. I was frankly overwhelmed by the number of people that reached out to ask how they could help and offered up leads. I am grateful, and it just makes me want to continue to invest more in building relationships.

Second, my technical expertise is T-shaped; I’ve got some in-depth knowledge of database architecture and performance tuning, and I’ve been exposed to a lot of ideas for software deployment across the lifecycle. I’m going to continue to work on some weaker areas (Git, Linux, Powershell) while I search for the right opportunity.

Third, I’m a Work From Home master. I’ve been working from home for the last 17 years of my career. You want a manager who understands how to motivate a remote team and build a remote culture? Boom, I can do it. You need somebody who can set deadlines and expectations around work\life balance? That’s me.

I got this.

If you wanna see what my career looks like, add me on LinkedIn: Stuart Ainsworth | LinkedIn

2023-01-10 by Blogging is FUN! Professional Development 1

Code Complete

19 years, 3 months.

My last day at Jack Henry and Associates will be February 4, 2022. I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. Jack Henry has been very supportive of working from home for the last 14 years, and they’ve fostered me as a learning-center manager. The work-life balance and benefits were extremely tough to beat over the last 19 years. I’ve built and supported some really cool things in the managed security services space. I’ve grown up here.

Here’s a selfie (now) next to a photo of me from 2002 (when I joined JHA).

I’m a dinosaur by IT career standards; honestly, I didn’t think I’d write this blog post anytime soon. However, COVID-19 has changed the way we work, and more companies are creating remote leadership positions.

On February 7th, 2022, I’ll start a new position at Salesforce, working as a Senior Manager of Systems Engineering, supporting the CI/CD infrastructure for Tableau. I’m ecstatic about the opportunity, but I will greatly miss all of my colleagues from JHA (Gladiator), particularly my direct reports.

I still plan on blogging intermittently, and I’ll be active and involved in the community (in fact Salesforce actively encourages volunteerism), so I’m not going anywhere. But yet, I’m moving up, and am looking forward to figuring out the next few challenges in my career.

Let’s build something awesome.

2022-01-27 by Professional Development 4

#WFH – Commute Time

Somewhere over the last year, I’ve let go of a good practice for working from home: commute time. We all need time to make the adjustment from life outside of work to work made and back. I used to take 30 minutes before work started to read a book, do some chores, exercise… anything BUT work. Likewise, at the end of the day, I’d try to wrap up work before my family got home.

I stopped doing that and have realized how long my workdays have become.

This morning, I started up again. This blog is part of my commute time. I’m also prepping my electric smoker for its first use.

What’s your commute time activities?

2021-12-13 by Blogging is FUN! 0

Destroy, Build, Destroy! #DevOps lessons

Currently hanging out on a boy’s weekend with my 8 year old son (while my wife is out of town), and we’ve been spending some quality time watching a classic kids’ engineering show: Destroy, Build, Destroy! If you haven’t seen the show (and I’m pretty sure most of you haven’t given the limited two year run and subsequent horrible reviews), the premise is interesting. It’s a game show that pits two teams of teenagers against each other in an engineering challenge. The general set up is something like the following:

  1. The teams are given an end goal, like build an air-cannon assault vehicle and shoot more targets than the other team in a time-limited window. They’re presented with resources (like an old SUV), which is then destroyed for parts.
  2. Each team is then given time and additional resources to build their project. Halfway through the build, there’s another mini challenge (the setback) which allows for one team to sabotage the other.
  3. Teams continue the build after the setback challenge, and then compete. The winner gets to destroy the losing team’s creation.

It’s a fun watch, and great for kids with both problem-solving and destructive mindset. For adults, there are some additional lessons that come to mind, particularly for those of us in the software industry. Below, in no particular order, are some of my observations and inspirations.

Start with end concept in mind. Concepts are functional, but aren’t perfect. The ultimate goal is to build something that achieves a a specific set of objectives (delivering value) within a certain time frame. Identifying the objective first, and then starting with a simple design, allows for flexibility based on whatever resources you have.

You’re not always going to have ideal resources. In the show, the teams are given the remnants of a previously successful project and a few additional resources; however, they’re always starting with less than ideal circumstances. Designs have to be a minimal viable product (MVP) in order for them to succeed in the competition.

Good communication skills can often compensate for technical limitations. They’re not a complete replacement, but teams that communicate well with each other can often work their way through technical challenges faster than teams that have strong technical skills but poor communication.

Small fixes often add up to big solutions. Usually on each team, there’s at least one person that is slow to contribute. Encouraging them to “do something… anything” often helped lead the team to victory. They may not have contributed as much to the build as other people did, but participating the whole time often gave them the opportunity to perform best when it really counted.

Setbacks happen. Sometimes they’re avoidable, but sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they give you the opportunity to rethink the MVP, and come up with alternative solutions. Sometimes they derail you completely. Figuring out how to handle a setback mentally is just as important as handling it technically.

Have fun. It’s a competition, and there’s money on the line for these kids. However, there’s something unabashedly FUN about both the creation and the destruction of engineering. No matter the outcome, enjoying the moment is a wonderful activity.

You can watch the show on YouTube; hope you enjoy this lost classic. https://youtu.be/77atHNtNcwY

2021-09-25 by Blogging is FUN! 1

Struggle bus

I’ve been struggling recently with feelings of burnout. I’m sure many of you are as well. The world is a scary place right now, and it’s been tough to find purpose and meaning in a my job (which was often the refuge for a scary world).

I don’t have any real advice. I don’t really know what to do, but I’m not giving up hope. The only piece of advice that has ever worked for me is to talk about the issues, and try to get one thing accomplished each day. So today? I’m writing a short blog, which is something I haven’t done for a while. After that, I’m canceling most of my meetings, and going to write some code.

Today is going to be a good day.

See the source image
2021-09-01 by Blogging is FUN! 0