Top 5 Toxic Flavors of Tech Execs

I’ve been an employee at small, medium, and large companies, and I’ve also been a short-term consultant working with a new company in any given week. I’ve worked with hundreds of tech companies remotely and have visited companies onsite on multiple continents.

Air-dropping into company cultures to work through problems with teams and present recommendations to their leadership reveals common anti-patterns in leadership – plus some patterns that make teams raving fans of their management.

Here’s the top 5 Toxic Flavors of Tech Execs I’ve encountered over 20 years, plus the Top 5 Team Building Tech Execs I’ve found, too.

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Dear SQL DBA - Advice for Technical Leaders with Alex Robson

Ever wondered what it’s like to be a VP or Director of Engineering? I chatted with Alex Robson about leadership in technology, what you can get out of coaching or an MBA program (should you be interested), and what makes a high performing team.

Alex’s site and blog: https://robsonconsulting.services

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What To Do When They Are Sure It Was The Database... All The Time

It can be tiring to have the database constantly be the Prime Suspect for performance problems.

I’ve had many variations of this conversation over the years:

“Something happened, and we’re pretty sure it was the database. Again.”

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Career Navigation in the Time of Tech Layoffs

Reorganizations and layoffs are now commonplace in the tech industry: a daily occurrence. It’s increasingly necessary for tech workers mentally prepare for potential job loss and uncertainties that arise. It’s a common antipattern to believe that it’s “too late” to prepare for a layoff or unexpected reorganization if a layoff has already occurred in your organization.

It’s never too late, and it’s always the right time these days to start mentally preparing yourself for change– because there’s reliably another change around the corner.

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How to Persuade Your Company to Change

Like a lot of developers and database administrators, I do a fair amount of short-term problem solving during the course of my normal work week.

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Watch: Getting Executive Buy-In for DevOps: 3 Top Tips (video)

High DevOps performers report greater workplace satisfaction than their peers. But implementing DevOps isn’t a matter of being great at writing code: to become a high DevOps performer, you need the powerful catalyst of executive support.

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Next Door to Derpton - When Your Fellow DBA is a Danger to Databases (Dear SQL DBA)

What do you do when your fellow DBA is a ticking time-bomb of bad decisions, waiting to explode your production environment?

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