The Bored and the Restless

Sometimes you need to return to your roots in order to move on

At PASS 2000 in San Francisco, I gave presentations and classes for SQL Server users. It was a good conference, and the best part was that I finally got to meet people that I had known previously only through emails and newsgroups. The second best part of the show was the vendors' area. Yes, many products were themselves worth examining (as much as I hate to say nice things about Microsoft, its product is looking better and better as it moves away from the old Sybase "code museum"), but the important point was that so many third-party vendors were at the show.

Let's be honest, a database is just a database. You need applications that work with it, you need to take care of the data inside it, and you need to tune it. It is much like buying a house: The real work begins after you sign the contract. Applications that you do yourself are just the furniture.

Carrying the house analogy further, would you buy a house that only the original builder could maintain, modify, or extend? Imagine that your McGillacuddy house can only use McGillacuddy siding, a McGillacuddy roof, and so forth, but Mr. McGillacuddy tells you that you can pick your own furniture. Big, fat, hairy deal. If Mr. McGillacuddy doesn't make toilets, you're out of luck. Third-party support for additions and tools is vital.

On another note, I am sitting in a room in Palo Alto, Calif. as I write this column, waiting to interview college students from Stanford University for the company for which I now work. Before I did a turn-around for this trip, the recruiters and I met to brief me on my mission. I want to talk about why I -- the SQL "guru" -- decided to take a permanent job after being independent for so many years.

I could say that I wanted revenge on young people -- I am about twice the average age at my company. Now they will have to pay for my bypass surgery and kidney machine via the company health plan, which will cost them more than all that auto insurance of theirs that I've had to cover these past decades. Or I could also mention stock options, salary, location, working conditions, and all that jazz.

But the real reason is that when I started in this trade, I worked on projects that were interesting. I was the scientific, statistical guy on the team doing something interesting in an area I had never seen before. I was learning new technologies like C, mini-computers, and databases. My idea of hell was being a Cobol programmer in the basement of a bank for the rest of my life, writing the same programs over and over until I died or got a gold watch. Hell is boredom.

So somewhere along the line, I became the SQL guru. I wrote articles, I wrote books, I did the tradeshow lecture circuit, and I got enough consulting work that I did not need to take regular employment.

As a contractor, I enjoyed moving from job to job every few weeks or months. I had some sense of completeness in these projects -- as well as a good pay rate.

I then moved up to the status of consultant. This development meant shorter hours with higher pay at the start of a project because clients needed design help or an outside opinion because of office politics. I think that most consultants are simple people who dress nicely, talk differently, and come from more than 50 miles away to tell management the same things that the employees have been saying for years.

But the articles and the books made me a guru. As a guru, I was asked to teach a SQL class or come in for a few days to solve a problem. The pay rate went up faster than the hours went down. All in all, this status should have been a good deal. Say the words, take the money, and go home with no idea as to what your client was doing.

But what I found was that I was in my own hell. I was doing the same things over and over, just as isolated as the Cobol programmer in the basement of the bank. I had not seen the completion of a project in more than a decade. I had not learned a totally different technology during that time either. Oh, I had a much nicer pit in hell than my Cobol programmer, but the torment was the same.