2017 turned out to be a year of transitions for me, both personal and professional. Looking back on it, I'm left in a state of wonder that it all happened.
I'm heavily involved with my son's Cub Scout Pack and in late 2016, I took on the role of Committee Chairperson. Long (very long) story short, we (Pack leadership) found ourselves in a tumultuous situation which dragged on for about 8 weeks, resulting in a lot of hurt feelings, and the near-dissolution of the Pack. I was such a wreck that at one point, I ate maybe 1 1/2 meals over the course of two days and what little sleep I was getting wasn't restful. I am eternally grateful for the many long hours both the professional and other volunteer Scouters spent helping with the situation itself and speaking with me personally, either on the phone or in person. I was ready to throw in the towel, give up, and walk away on more than one occasion. I believe that the unit is stronger for having gone through it but it was a very challenging path to get there. We have more parents volunteering to help, a more clear chain of succession for key leadership roles, and I feel confident that my successor will do a better job than I have done.
Why am I telling you this? For two reasons. First, I've found that there are a lot of people in the SQL Server community who are or have been active in Scouting over the years and while I don't want anyone to have to go through that again, I think they'll relate. Second, at the moment things hit their worst, I was interviewing for a new job and I was working on a very high-profile, high-pressure project at work. I do not know how I escaped February and March 2017 with any shred of sanity left.
In February & March, I was neck-deep in a reporting project at work. My teammates & I locked ourselves away for about seven weeks working on a package of a half-dozen reports with ever-changing requirements and definitions of terms. Probably the most complex logic I've ever written purely for a report with more PIVOT statements in 6 weeks than I've written in my career and a few abuses of tempdb. Never in my life have I been more confused about the definition of “last week.”
While this was going on, I had interviews for a combination sysadmin/DBA at a mid-sized communications company, and a full-time DBA at a small software company. I’d been with my employer for over a decade and leaving someplace after so long can be a difficult decision. In this case, however, it was becoming clear that my personal goals were not well-aligned with the direction of the company, so it was the right change to make and the timing was nearly perfect.
Despite the chaos swirling around me, the interviews at the software company went smoothly in no small part because I already knew one of my interviewers through the SQL Server community. Networking works, folks! I got through the interviews, discussions were had, and I started my first job as an official, full-time production DBA at the end of March.
In late May, I was presented with the opportunity to attend PASS Summit. After working out a few details, I was registered and was bouncing off the walls all summer in anticipation (I've written a number of posts about Summit so I won't rehash that here).
Later in the summer, I found myself getting involved with the dbatools project. I had been aware of the project for quite a while and used it some, but finally found a way to make contributions to the code itself. Being a part of this team is incredible. Chrissy, Rob, Shawn and CK have fostered a welcoming, open community that really invites people to jump in and contirbute code & documentation back to the project. Which is how I got involved - documentation. I spotted a typo in the help for one of the functions and the next thing I knew, I was (and still am) grinding through the whole codebase cleaning up the comment-based help. I've even found some real code contributions to make and done some blogging about pieces of dbatools. In the span of less than 6 months, I moved from "yeah, I've heard of dbatools" to partying with the team at Summit and organizing a group photo.
Shortly after I returned from Summit, more news and another transition. My company was acquired by a larger company. This sort of thing seems to follow me around - every company I've worked for has been acquired during my tenure. As is normal for this sort of event, there were some immediate changes and I forsee more changes as the integration progresses.