Skip to main content

Finding the next job was easier because...

I am an active participant in PASSSQL Saturday, and Twitter.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to look for a job after nine years at my previous employer.  
The management decided to relocate the IT department to North Carolina. I live in Florida. Neither myself nor my wife were interested in moving to colder climes. 

I posted my updated resume in January 2015. I really started looking seriously at the end of March.

Because of my participation in the Florida PASS user groups, SQL Saturdays, and Twitter, most of my job leads came from people I know. The one job that I did a phone interview for via a recruiter ended up being with someone who had attended the most recent Tampa SQL Saturday and one of his co-workers had attended my session. They wanted to do an in-person interview but couldn't wait until June for me to start. The conditions of my severance package dictated a June start date for the next job.

I had leads from my user group leader, a former co-worker via Twitter, and an MCM who I met via SQL Saturday. I joined Twitter because of a Tampa SQL user group presentation in 2009 given by Jorge Segarra AKA @sqlchicken. Speaking at SQL Saturdays and user groups made interviews a breeze.

I ended up taking the job with the MCM. He is now my manager.  :-D

I start my new job after two weeks vacation.

The point of this post is the transition was MUCH easier than I could have ever imagined because of the participation I've described above.

If you have to find another job, this is the way to do it. Be social. Contribute.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Modifying Endpoint URLs on Availability Group Replicas

I recently had to modify the Endpoint URLs on our SQL Server Availability Group replicas.  The reason for this blog post is that I could not answer the following questions: Do I need to suspend data movement prior to making this change?  Would this change require a restart of the database instance? I spent enough time searching on my own to no avail that I tossed the question to the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter and Slack but didn't get an answer prior to executing the change request. After reading the relevant documentation, I think it's probably a good idea to suspend data movement for this change. The T-SQL is straightforward.  USE MASTER GO ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP [AG1]  MODIFY REPLICA ON 'SQL2012-1' WITH (ENDPOINT_URL = 'TCP://10.10.10.1:5022'); ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP [AG1]  MODIFY REPLICA ON 'SQL2012-2' WITH (ENDPOINT_URL = 'TCP://10.10.10.2:5022'); ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP [AG2]  MODIFY REPLICA ON 'SQL2012-1

Set Azure App Service Platform Configuration to 64 bit.

If you need to update several Azure App Services' Configuration to change the Platform setting from 32 bit to 64 bit under Configuration | General settings, this script will save you about six clicks per service and you won't forget to press the SAVE button. Ask me I know. 🙄 Login-AzureRmAccount Set-AzureRmContext  -SubscriptionName  "Your Subscription" $ResourceGroupName  =  'RG1' ,  'RG2', 'RG3' foreach  ( $g   in   $ResourceGroupName ) {       # Set PROD slot to use 64 bit Platform Setting      Get-AzureRmWebApp  -ResourceGroupName  $g  | Select Name |  %  {  Set-AzureRmWebApp  -ResourceGroupName  $g  -Name  $_ .Name  -Use32BitWorkerProcess  $false  }       # Set staging slot to use 64 bit Platform setting      Get-AzureRmWebApp  -ResourceGroupName  $g  | Select Name |  %  {  Set-AzureRmWebAppSlot  -ResourceGroupName  $g  -Name  $_ .Name  -Slot  "staging"  -Use32BitWorkerProcess  $false  }  }

Rediscovering SQL Server Agent Alerts...

Having moved from a Fortune 50 company using BMC Patrol for SQL Server Monitoring to a small software company of less than 200 people, I'm rediscovering SQL Server Agent Alerts. Why might you ask? Because small companies can't afford expensive tools and need to use the out-of-the-box features as much as possible. This past week, I rediscovered that you can alert on SQL Server performance conditions using SQL Server Agent. I needed to alert on database transaction log usage.  How to create SQL Server Agent alerts can be found at the link below. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180982.aspx Under Options, I suggest you set a delay of 10 minutes. Unless you like to be spammed every minute when bad things happen. I'm hoping it will provide enough notice to prevent an undesirable event from complicating my life. Do this before your storage runs out of space on a holiday. ;-)