New job!

Roughly two and a half years ago, I ended up being laid off by my employer, as part of a massive cutback. We at the time had just bought our house, and Lykke had also been laid off, so I basically grabbed the first thing that came along, despite it not being exactly what I wanted. It was a job as a Business Objects developer, whee part of my job would be acting as a team lead for the BO team, and part would be doing data warehousing architecture.

As it turns out, shortly after I joined one of the people I was supposed to lead ended up quitting for financial reasons, the exciting projects that they wanted to put me on went to other bidders, and I basically was stuck building reports. While initially I did not mind that that much, it quickly got to a point where I learnt about everything there was to learn, and where the severe limitations of the Business Objects reporting framework, combined with the severe limitations of the "Data warehouse" we were working against (it was more a transactional database system, because the client, when the environment was built, never grasped the idea of the dimensional model traditionally designed for data warehousing), and the annoying fact that I was writing more documentation than actual code.

I tried looking around for other opportunities within the company, but none came around, and I ended up reaching an agreement with my manager to terminate my contract. I was back to being unemployed and looking. Within a month of my severance package drying up, I was invited to join another company, where I'd be employed as a developer, doing C and JAVA development. I never worked in either of those languages, nor did I have extensive Linux experience (they use Linux and AIX), nor did I know too much about DB2 (their database platform).

Lacking sufficient mentoring, I decided this was not going to work out in the long run (though I have to admit I was quite pleased doing Java development), and I started looking for something closer to my true IT roots and passion, Microsoft SQL Server. I had my first interview round in late December, and quickly became passionate about one job in particular. Two others also definitly had my interest, but this one stood out. I was invited to take a psychological test the weekend before last weekend, and went back in for two more rounds of interviews last week.

And today I got the call that the job is mine :) We have yet to sign contracts, but I'm so happy. I am not longer forced to go to work just to ensure the bills get paid, doing a job that doesn't really have my name all over it, but I'm back to actually working with what I love, at a place where my years of knowledge and experience are actually quickly put to use, using technology that is familiar to me. I know it's a weekday, but I just might pop me a small Laphroaig.

Oh, and seeing we have a tradition to go and eat at our favourite Italian restaurant whenever either of us lands a new job, there's something else to look forward to as well :D

 

Sure is :) One of my first IT projects ever was standardizing, optimizing and maintaining a full MS SQL serverpark, and later on upgrading it to a clustered environment using a NAS as a back-end. I've later on more or less specialized on doing architecture for high-level environments that need optimal availability on MSSQL, and started doing database design and scripting to compliment that, later on also doing full-time development and BI solutions.

However, MSSQL administration was something I've always highly enjoyed, and I've always thought it was a shame that the last few years were not spent working with it. Hence I specifically went searching for MSSQL jobs, and this one was one of the first ones to come along. I'm truly looking forward to it, and at the same time it will give me a nice way to get quickly up to speed with everything that has been added to the database engine since I last worked with it.

 

Thanks :)

The beauty of SQL Server is that literally anyone can install it. Out of the box, it will run (and calibrate) just peachy for most. But yeah, there's a bucketload of different available tweakings and configurations so you can be sure to squeeze the maximum out of it, and keep it up and running with as little downtime as possible. I always compare it to Formula 1 racing. Every installation is like a different track. There's different conditions, that require specific tweakings on the car if you want a shot at the podium, and every setting (member of the crew) has to work perfectly together to get the job done.