How Does a DBA Build Confidence After Making Mistakes? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 40)
Ever had a database change go horribly wrong? It can feel awful in the moment, then eat away at your confidence for days afterward. In this 20 minute episode Kendra gives you practical steps that help you cope with change over the course of your DBA career.
Option 1: Listen to or download the audio podcast episode
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7 Comments. Leave new
You become smarter when you learn from mistakes, or become arrogant when you disregard them
You shouldn’t look so happy (picture above) when you break things. 🙂
😀
A great video on my favourite topic!
As someone who’s been playing this game for nearly 30 years (and have made some mega mistakes), the secret is to learn from your mistakes and also to encourage openness and honesty, so people will share their mistakes and we can learn from them too.
Change control, practice, peer review, practice, testing and practice all add to your confidence and help you to be happy and ready to expect the unexpected.
I’ve learnt, not only to test the change but also to fully test the ‘what if this goes wrong’ fixes, including the roll back.
When I test and practice, I create a work sheet with as much info as possible, including scripts used, screen shots of messages and timings, which all adds to confidence and reduces the chances of panic/fear during the changes… and if things do go wrong, the boss will be impressed that you are fully prepared for it :0)
I also find that before the technical peer review, it helps to just talk it through (out load) to yourself, or to your wife/kids/ducks etc as this helps you spot any obvious flaws and avoids your looking dumb in front of your peer. It also helps you anticipate any questions they may ask and you can then be prepared and appear confident!
Many thanks as always for all your hard work…. and for making it fun :0)
LOL… ducks 🙂
Dear Kendra,
Thanks a lot for replaying to my question with video !!! It’s means a lot for me. I got to learn many points to cope up with confidence and also found tips which will absolutely work for me. This video will be really required and helpful for every Junior DBA like me who is learning from their own mistakes and changing their approaches for future tasks and responsibility.
On this video i would like add one quote written by Dr. A. P. J Abdul Kalam i.e. , ” Good Decisions comes from Experience, But Experience comes from Bad Decisions. This is life …So don’t worry for any mistakes. Go Ahead & Learn from them !!! ”
Thanks once again for your time and efforts. Keep making videos, I am learning lot of from them. !!!
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