Howard Rogers has an interesting post on his blog at the moment that is particularly timely from my perspective and that I agree with whole-heartedly. Companies seem increasingly loathe to commit adequate funds and, probably more significantly, staff time to training (although that could be my imagination).
Having said that, a couple of weeks ago my boss asked if I’d be prepared to create and deliver some Oracle 9i and 10g New Features training for our Application Support and Development teams. We wanted something which offers a quick overview but, bearing in mind that the equivalent Oracle University course lasts for 3 days, you might be stunned that I’m going to attempt 9i and 10g in half a day.
Normally I’m extremely resistant to this type of on-the-cheap, shallow training for all of the reasons Howard states in his blog but I’ve made an exception in this case because :-
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There was no way that I was going to be able to ask for more than half a day’s absence for the attendees. There will be upwards of fifteen attendees, all coming from the same few teams.
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I’ve made it clear up front that the intention is to throw a bunch of features at them extremely quickly so that they can pick out the ones that might be useful to them and then they can research them themselves properly after the event.
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All of the attendees should have sufficient Oracle experience but might not have found the time to notice these new features are available.
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If the alternative was no training at all, so people remain unaware of the various new features, I’m convinced there’ll be some benefit. Not as much as a full course, but better than nothing in other words.
I would definitely prefer to deliver two or three days worth of in-depth training (although that takes a lot of time and effort to put together) but, accepting that the event is compromised at the outset, it’s important to make the right compromises. Here’s the approach I’ve taken.
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Drop everything but the ‘highlight’ features. It’s pointless trying to do justice to the XML advancements, but external tables, the MERGE statement and so on can be delivered quickly.
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No exercises and only the most basic of code examples. If I can explain how the thing works, the real heavy-weight examples will be ‘an exercise for the student’ when they’re back on the job.
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Better than average notes to go with the slides. If I’m going to have to skip a lot of the detailed explanations, I might be able to incorporate some of that for later reading.
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Remember that what I’ll be doing is informing the attendees that the new features exist and what they’re supposed to be used for, not teaching them how to use them.
Make no mistake, I’ll be reminding the attendees up-front of this phrase from Howard’s blog
Don’t expect a $2 bottle of wine to taste the same as a $15 bottle.
In fact, it will really be a seminar rather than a course, but there’s room for those too.
I find it useful in such seminars to add references to the documentation in my presentation, as it encourages the listeners to RTFM later.
Something like:
Application Developer’s Guide – Fundamentals – chapter 4 – Using Regular Expressions in Oracle Database
and even add a link
http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14251/adfns_regexp.htm
You can put it in the notes, per feature.
I *knew* there was something I meant to include in that blog! Thanks for reminding me 😉
That’s what I was planning on doing – pointing the attendees to accurate information.
Cheers
If I may chime in. It has been my experience that the value-for-money of formal training competes poorly against other methods of attaining the skills and competencies required.
Mentoring, meaning actually working towards a real deliverable but with the support of a larger team that can help you avoid pitfalls and timesinks, is in my experience by far the most effective and cost-effective way for helping any individual on your payroll acquire a new skill.
Formal training even tends to lose out against that approach with the worst reputation, learning while doing plain and simple, for most employees with a professional’s skillset and a track record of getting things done. There are some people who learn better in a classroom setting than when presented with a real deliverable and a generous deadline, but they are in the minority.
That being said, I wouldn’t ever equate a half-day’s seminar with a three or five day course, regardless. However, at least with a half-day’s seminar it’s going to be an accelerated crash course which will frustrate the fast learners less than those interminable everyone must keep up week-long affairs.
Paul
Paul,
If I may chime in.
Oh, go on then 😉 But I warn you – a long comment deserves a long reply!
It has been my experience that the value-for-money of formal training competes poorly against other methods of attaining the skills and competencies required.
I think it depends on your perspective. As a business owner, you are most likely to be driven by Return on Investment even though you might also care about your staff’s personal development. If people are away for 5 days I reckon the cost must be around the 5,000 pounds sterling mark, including expenses, course fee and lost productivity. If people haven’t learnt much as a result, I would be concerned too. Given that businesses are a training company’s customers, what people like you think is clearly significant.
However, maybe that last 5% of unknown information is going to be truly valuable one day?
Mentoring, meaning actually working towards a real deliverable but with the support of a larger team that can help you avoid pitfalls and timesinks, is in my experience by far the most effective and cost-effective way for helping any individual on your payroll acquire a new skill.
Surely that depends on the quality of both the mentors and the recipients? If you have a team of top-notch DBAs, it’s a fast-track to becoming a good one yourself. In fact, I always used to suggest to beginner DBAs that the best way to become good was to work with good people.
However, I’ve worked at plenty of companies where none of the DBAs were *particularly* good, so they just all share the same flawed knowledge and bad habits. Sure, the job might get done, but it takes longer, there are more screw-ups etc.
Formal training even tends to lose out against that approach with the worst reputation, learning while doing plain and simple, for most employees with a professional’s skillset and a track record of getting things done.
Here comes the biggest support to your argument. I don’t learn too well from courses myself and haven’t enjoyed a majority of them! I read a lot, play a lot and muddle my way through, so I know where you’re coming from.
However (and it’s an elephant-sized however), that’s also the way you get to be a DBA for 12 months before you realise you can’t just backup an open database. Because you hadn’t ‘got to’ that bit yet. No structure to the mistakes so you’re just flailing around. A business somewhere is going to pay in those circumstances! If you accept that we perform technical roles, we’d better understand all of the technicalities.
There are some people who learn better in a classroom setting than when presented with a real deliverable and a generous deadline, but they are in the minority.
I’m not too sure about that and I think it depends on pre-existing skills and personality. Are you really suggesting that the best way to get someone who’s never been a DBA to become one is to just let them loose? Wouldn’t some initial formal training be a good idea? In fact I’m utterly convinced it is a good idea and I’ve seen it in action.
I think I have evidence of the value of training. A significant minority of the people I’ve taught thought they were pretty good DBAs already and had a solid 2-3-4 years experience on the job, in a team of other DBAs. Imagine their surprise when it turned out that there were many areas they didn’t really understand, mistakes they’d been repeating and features they had no idea existed. I’m going to be not so humble here and suggest that the quality of the course material and the instructor vary widely and that a good course can be a valuable, rewarding experience for all concerned. What better mentor than a truly experienced DBA?
If it’s an easier example for people to accept, don’t you think someone will learn more from five days of listening to Tom Kyte or Cary Millsap than perhaps weeks and months of mentoring from people who don’t have the same depth of knowledge?
However, I know (from personal experience and student testimonials) that there are many bad courses and bad instructors out there and they give the rest of us a bad name.
That being said, I wouldn’t ever equate a half-day’s seminar with a three or five day course, regardless. However, at least with a half-day’s seminar it’s going to be an accelerated crash course which will frustrate the fast learners less than those interminable everyone must keep up week-long affairs.
There are a few courses where I didn’t make it past day 3.5 😉
Recently I was reading a blog by someone who’s clearly very experienced but didn’t know something I would have thought was basic. I’m convinced a little more formal training (including for myself!) would fill in some blanks and make everyone better at their jobs. Whether it’s ‘value for money’ is more debatable, for sure.
Maybe if you’d sat in one of my classes, you’d feel different 😉
Cheers,
Doug
Hi Doug!
I expected you might have a post once I saw Howard’s 😄. I have one quibble:
If people are away for 5 days I reckon the cost must be around the 5,000 pounds sterling mark, including expenses, course fee and lost productivity.
You could potentially wind up with much more lost productivity if said people have to spend a week or more of …erm, “person” hours chasing down issues with work they’ve done but didn’t understand how to do right. IMHO, the productivity issue is pretty much a wash.
I’m one of those people who’d rather spend a week in a classroom, with others of varying skill, than a week with my nose in a manual trying to puzzle it all out. The classroom HOPEFULLY gives me the salient points, and I can work out the rest on my own once I’m back to the job.
Nice write-up. I tend to agree with much of what you’ve said, and pretty much all of Howard’s entry. Then again, I’ve yet to catch him with his knickers twisted ;-D.
Bill S.
I expected you might have a post once I saw Howard’s
It was weird. I’d been sitting wondering how I was going to fare delivering such a shortened course, when up pops Howard’s blog.
No one training method is going to suit everyone, indeed no person is going to find any training method (if that is the only method used) will suffice. Some people find training courses a great way to learn, others do not. Some people find courses fine if they’re one or two days but can’t handle a full week of training. Some people find books easy to learn from, others don’t. Some topics lend themselves to certain methods of learning, other topics to other methods.
There are lots of different methods of learning, to write off or evangelise any one of them is very dagerous and possibly more than a little parochial.
Training courses are good, in my experience, for a broad swathe overview where the goal is to provide a lot of facts in a fairly short period so that the students will have ‘hooks’ on which to hang their own research.
CBTs are similar but require a different mindset from the student and suffer from the fact that there isn’t a tutor to ask questions of or argue with. When I went on the 9i Tuning course in 2004 the tutor and I had a long arguement about LGWR, the result of which was that we both realised we didn’t really understand certain fine details and resolved to go away and find out. I know that I got real benefit out of the discussion, and other discussions I had with the tutor over the week, I hope he did as well.
Reading the manuals and other books is good for getting the fine detail but can result in being swamped with detail and not being able to see the wood for the trees.
Mentoring is good for process oriented learning (e.g. “This is how we do hot backups”). It does rely on the mentor having the knowledge and the ability (and time) to pass on that knowledge. It can also result in the passing on of myths and incorrect information. In my experience the biggest barrier to sucessful mentoring is the lack of availability of a suitable mentor. I’ve been working with Oracle for about 10 years now, could probably legitimately claim to be a DBA for about 8 of those years. Out of that time I have been the only DBA in the organisation for all but a total of about 16 months. At the first company I worked for the DBA left about 3 months after I joined and wasn’t replaced. I had to step up and cover for him. I learned Oracle out of books, web sites and a lot of trial and error (mostly error). Then I worked for an FM company in a team of DBAs, finally got a training course, and dicovered why things worked the way they did. After about a year there I moved to my current employer (supposed to be the first of many DBAs to be hired) and was once again the sole DBA (still pretty much am). Even when I was part of a team of DBAs there wasn’t really time for any real mentoring, a cry for help followed up by an explanation of what to do then hitting the books to find out why was all we could really manage.
Presentations and talks at seminars, conferences, SIGs, panel sessions &c are good for a quick overview or to elucidate details of a very narrow area. Like training courses they provide the hooks on which the attendees can hang future research.
Stephen
The magic word here is “expectations”. I mentioned it in passing in my blog: ‘the students want me to say more’. I also implied it: people go on these two-day things because they can afford it, but secretly still harbour the desire to get the full-blown information download. My problem with the crash course, therefore, is not the fact that it’s a crash course but that it’s a crash course that the attendees expect to nevertheless deliver the full bill of goods.
I try my hardest to manage such expectations: My opening statements on the course conclude with the line “I’m just trying to set expectations sufficiently low from the outset so you won’t be disappointed”. But by then, once the salesmen have had their way, it’s really too late. But provided expectations are set and managed appropriately, there is nothing wrong with a crash course at all.
Managing content is also important, and filtering the gems from the ho-hum as you propose to do is an important part of that… though I question the total excision of practical worked exercises (words tend to flow in one ear and out the other without something to nail them in place).
Naturally, I disagree with a lot of what Paul wrote above 🙂 It is absolutely true that different folk need different learning strokes, but I’d question the assertion that “most people” find the formal classroom unhelpful. I think whether someone likes the classroom or not can also be heavily dependent on the teacher.
And whilst I’m all in favour of ‘learn on the job’, I’ve seen a lot of “learn lots of mistakes on the job”, and good quality formal education can help tackle that problem.
Ultimately, I believe that people only really learn well what they teach themselves, in the quiet of their own studies, practising and experimenting and trying, breaking and fixing. All I can do in the classrooom is give them a ‘vocabulary’ to base that self-learning experience on. To know what words to use, and what they broadly mean (concepts), and what to look up and research in other documentation. I’m also there to demonstrate things, so they know what they can expect of themselves and their own efforts (how would you know you could backup a database with two words if you’d never seen it done. Now knowing that, what other words or bits of syntax are available to refine the process?)
You could achieve much the same with ‘on the job mentoring’, I suppose: but I do it better(!), and (more to the point) a trainer in a formal setting will cover lots more such possibilities than any one business looking for ‘real practical outcomes’ is ever going to be in a position to do.
But it’s a rich subject of debate whichever way you look at it. I just despair when people look at it from the bottom of a wallet first, last and always!
It can be just as useless to throw a newbie into a class as into the deep end. More than just expectations, the knowledge, experience and motivation of students all provide for varying results in either enviroment.
Teaching and learning a complex subject as Oracle administration is an iterative process. People aren’t computers, they only absorb a fraction of what they are told or shown, and even that may be corrupted. This is magnified in a crash course, and even more so if some have an attitude problem arising from a cheap-ass company finally deigning to dribble out a few training pennies.
A well-motivated student who has some familiarity with the subject matter and the ability to apply it immediately after the course (and repeatedly and with variants) is about the only one who will benefit from such a course. The others, it is a waste of time. For some, even a full-boat course is a waste of time.
For much of my career I’ve had to pay my own way, and nothing makes one more tight-fisted and motivated than that. It also brings its own set of attitude issues, mainly a high expectation set and perhaps too much (or really, too strict) cost/benefit analysis.
So instructors need to be cognizant of where the students are in their iterative process. The Two-Day DBA class may indeed be appropriate for absolute newbies. But I think it is a really bad idea in general, as the power the GUI bestows is out of proportion to the knowledge of concepts that a DBA position requires. On the other hand, giving XE, jdeveloper, APEX or whatever to experienced developers is a bit less bad, as they may have the background to get productive immediately (of course, that may be bad too if they have skewed ideas from other mindsets…). The point being, of course, that despite people’s like Larry’s assertions to the contrary, some aspects of Oracle operations are fundamentally critical. A combination of the various methods of learning will be better than any one method.
Your mission, Doug, should you decide to accept it, is to relate the New Features to site-specific examples to give all the attendees something to mentally latch on to.
Two-Buck-Chuck was famous for beating out much more expensive wines in blind competition.
So instructors need to be cognizant of where the students are in their iterative process.
No, they don’t. And as a practical matter, they can’t be. By the middle of a five day course, I can be pretty clued up about the talents (or lack of them) of students, true enough. But that information cannot be there on day 1, and develops only slowly during the give-and-take of questions and exercises. (So forget it on a 2-dayer).
Instructors can and should know their subjects well, teach entertainingly and with insight, and try and keep people interested and motivated -and there is certainly an element of being able to ‘pitch it right’, and hence a dynamic assessment of what is working and what isn’t. But trying to second-guess where students are “at”, having never seen them before they walk in the door, is an absolute non-starter.
Having taught gardners how to use a relational database, I’d disagree with the comment about “familiarity with the subject matter” being necessary in order to benefit from training. I won’t say it doesn’t make the trainer’s job easier, but a decent trainer should be able to motivate anyone, whatever their prior knowledge levels.
I won’t disagree, though, with the “combination of the various methods of learning will be better than any one method”. I just wonder why the “will” was emphasised, as though I (or Doug) had said otherwise. Learning Oracle starts for my students in the classroom. It then moves to reading documentation, visiting websites, doing home experiments in virtual machines and so on. And learning on the job certainly has a role there too.
But trying to second-guess where students are “at”, having never seen them before they walk in the door, is an absolute non-starter.
True in general, not necessarily true in the case of staff training other staff (Doug’s case, I gather). Some companies have staff pass along knowledge gleaned from training or conventions, too.
What you “need to be” and what is realistic are in conflict for the general case. “Dynamic assesment” is one of the things that separates good from bad instructors. I’m sure we’ve all been in courses where some drone reads from notes. I’m just wondering whether an absolute rejection of any pre-course assessment is necessary, or is just a matter of logistics.
I just wonder why the “will” was emphasised
Paul’s reply implied that. Doug’s reply to Paul was excellent. Except: Although I’ve ocassionally seen the “last 5% of unknown information” help down the road, that is rare in my experience. Then again, rare things may have large consequences.
Sorry for the delay on the replies, folks, but I was rather busy. There’ll be a mildly amusing blog about that later. Back to the subject at hand …
“I’m just wondering whether an absolute rejection of any pre-course assessment is necessary, or is just a matter of logistics.”
I think there are subtle differences between Howard’s views on this and mine or perhaps even just in our expression of them. Whilst I can’t possibly tell the skills or experience of someone straight away (not least because people often can’t measure *themselves* effectively), I would hope to get a pretty early feel for this in the first day or so. However, even when I *can* do this, there’s a problem *particularly* with a publicly scheduled course from a large training company. Let’s say that I have a class of 16 top-notch techies with a good few years worth of Oracle experience and and 3 or 4 people who are coming to the subject for the first time. Now imagine that it’s an ‘Introduction to Oracle’ course. Should I appeal to the majority and pace it accordingly? Or should I appeal to the people who are appropriate to the course as advertised. My feeling is towards the latter and I fully admit that this is a problem with formal, group training. I also suspect there aren’t enough advanced courses around (I’m reliably informed they don’t sell so well), so the more advanced you already are, the less likely you are to find suitable training.
I hope I don’t come across as someone who believes that formal training has no role in any workplace. This is a nuanced issue and believe me I have a nuanced view of it. To illustrate, I recently hired a career SQL Server DBA and have put him through a month’s Oracle DBA training, top-to-bottom, as a leg up so that further mentorship-oriented training can have a scaffolding on which to climb and build. I have also in the last few months sent three employees to the MySQL advanced performance tuning course.
My point is that if the business goal of formal training is skills acquisition, then that business goal may be achieved in more than one manner. On that much, we can all agree I hope. My further point is that in every case, it is responsible in the world of business to select the most cost-effective manner of addressing each business need. Finally, it has been my experience than when evaluated on this basis, formal training does not usually compete well with mentorship with an actual business deliverable at hand. I fully recognize and acknowledge the point that you must have excellent mentor around for that part to work. I am extraordinarily fortunate on that point, and please be sure to take than into account when I make statements such as these; if they were not here, I could not proceed this way.
But I think anonymous makes a useful point and I would like to know more about what Doug and Howard react to it. When independent contractors must pay their own way, meaning, they pay the tuition for the course and accept that the time spent in the course will not result in direct income in any way, how do they choose to spend their dollars? Why is it that so many of the attendees of this classroom training have their way paid by their employers, whereas the self-employed tend (please, please note my nuance… this is a tendency not an absolute) to prefer to spend their money on, for instance, conferences rather than formal training?
Paul
“My point is that if the business goal of formal training is skills acquisition, then that business goal may be achieved in more than one manner. On that much, we can all agree I hope.”
I absolutely agree and, as Howard was saying above, I think we both realised that learning is multi-faceted. I happen to think classroom training is part of the picture.
“My further point is that in every case, it is responsible in the world of business to select the most cost-effective manner of addressing each business need. Finally, it has been my experience than when evaluated on this basis, formal training does not usually compete well with mentorship with an actual business deliverable at hand.”
I might even agree with that but have a remaining argument. Even if class-room training is not as cost-effective in terms of time spent and in meeting the needs of your particular business, it could still be that classroom training can be more complete and the student could learn more but not *enough* more to justify the cost. In other words, I accept the importance of value for money but whilst a Porsche 911 might not be precisely 8.5 times as good as a Vauxhall Astra (they both travel down the road and get you from A to B), the Porsche is tangibly better. At least I think so. In fact, now that I think back to Howard’s blog – the $2 bottle of wine will get you sloshed, but it doesn’t make it as good as the $15. Or does it? I suppose it depends what you’re looking for.
Just as you wouldn’t apologise for seeking value for money, I won’t apologise for being a training purist because I’ve seen the positive results.
“When independent contractors must pay their own way, meaning, they pay the tuition for the course and accept that the time spent in the course will not result in direct income in any way, how do they choose to spend their dollars? Why is it that so many of the attendees of this classroom training have their way paid by their employers, whereas the self-employed tend (please, please note my nuance… this is a tendency not an absolute) to prefer to spend their money on, for instance, conferences rather than formal training?”
What you say is true (as I know, because I am self-employed) so here are just a couple of reasons (I promise you’ll understand why I’m not taking great time over these comments when you see my later blog!)
1) Because there aren’t enough advanced courses around and big organisations want to send their staff on ‘some training’ so they take what’s going. I do not *have* to attend some training, but will if I think there’s something good on offer. Frankly, I think my RMAN skills would be a whole lot better if I attended a proper course on the subject and might do so at some point in the future.
2) Because I am a cheap-skate and do not have the money that big organisations have. I *know* they need to look for value for money, but they *do* have more resources and more lee-way than I do. I don’t attend many training courses and I also don’t have nice desks in my house, a coffee machine, hand-dryers in the toilets or security guards. i.e. Maybe we *would* attend more training if we had more money. In a way, this backs up your argument about value for money.
So my point is that I might not attend courses because the finances aren’t available, really. As far as I’m concerned an employer/employee relationship is a two-way street and the employer isn’t merely looking for value for money, but what makes their staff feel fulfilled. I don’t have to worry about whether I feel fulfilled or not, so I won’t spend any money on it 😉
Paul, I have a bit of a feel for how you treat your staff and know that that isn’t the issue here. All I mean is that just because I learn from a book to save myself money (oh, okay, I actually like it to an extent too) doesn’t mean that it’s the best way of learning – just the cheapest.
One more thing (I *do* go on, don’t I?) I’ve met many DBAs who know a company’s systems inside out because they’ve worked there for so long. I turn up and they wonder why a highly-paid contractor seems to know nothing – relative to them. I soon pick things up, though. Then, when something happens that they’ve never seen before, they’re stumped, because they learnt all they know by being mentored on the job, geared towards the specific goals of that company and their systems. Surely there has to be space to learn more than serves an immediate business need?
It strikes me there’s more agreement than disagreement here and you are in the fairly unique position of having chosen great employees so your approach works for you. However, I would defend to the end the value of five days spent in the company of an expert who will show you how things work, why, and why you should care. I’m not teaching any more, but I’m fairly confident I did a lot of good when I was.
I might be wrong, though 😉
I’ve met a fair few contractors on courses. Typically they’ve tended to fall into two groups. The first group are already contractors for something different but related (e.g. another RDBMS, UNIX, SAP, Windows) but now need to know about Oracle (or whatever the course is on) so they’ve booked themselves on a few courses to get a solid grounding. The second group tend to be younger (often straight out of university) or to have recently been made redundant in an unrelated field, they’ve heard that if they get OCP certification (or equivalent for other technologies) they’ll be able to make megabucks as a contractor.
As to why contractors already working in the field don’t tend to go on courses, my gut says reason 1. I’ve noticed a dearth of courses beyond the basic intro level. Looking at the Oracle University UK schedule for July through October the only courses relevant to my work are ones I’ve already been on, one’s I’ve already been on an earlier incarnation of or New Features (i.e. “You’ve already been on an earlier incarnation of the basic intro courses, this is the new stuff”). If someone knows enough to be contracting (a lot more than me) then they would probably be in a similar situation.
I recently wrote a blog entry on a related matter. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t covered in the courses I’ve seen, or is just touched on, where I think it would be useful to be able to go on a short course that gives you the information you need to get you started and a chance to practice and try out what you’ve just learned in a safe environment.
I do note that Oracle apparently now offer some focused courses such as a 5 day course on Grid control, a 3 day courses on Dataguard, a 3 day course on Security, a 5 day course on Streams and a 5 day course on Spatial. The main thing I get from that is that Grid Control, Streams and Spatial are obviously a lot more complex than I thought.
Stephen
The sentence which stands out for me in all this is in Doug’s reply to Paul, when he says “However, I’ve worked at plenty of companies where none of the DBAs were *particularly* good, so they just all share the same flawed knowledge and bad habits”.
This is the trouble when nobody gets formal training, and you end up with the blind leading the blind. It’s all well and good if you have someone good to teach someone, but when the pupil turns tutor, and a few “generations” on, you can be sure that the quality of the information is substantially lower.
Agreed and also see my comments above about knowing a *specific* company’s *specific* systems. That’s not true in Paul’s/Pythian’s case because he runs a Database Services company, but it can be true in non-IT businesses.
Right on, Paul (and sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the defensive, just needed to maintain precision for Howard). But I’ve seen the cost-effective argument misused so often in terms of employee development, I have to point out that good management knows when not to put all weight on a quarterly dollar return. Yes, that means I don’t always manage myself as I would have others manage me 🙂
I second Simon’s comment, too. It’s tough balancing “good enough” with “really good enough,” especially given the management need to reign in the perceived obsessive disorders the best DBA’s tend to have.
“I have to point out that good management knows when not to put all weight on a quarterly dollar return. Yes, that means I don’t always manage myself as I would have others manage me :-)”
😉
That’s what I was saying – just because I deprive myself of training on financial grounds, doesn’t mean I think that’s the best approach!
“It’s tough balancing “good enough” with “really good enough,” especially given the management need to reign in the perceived obsessive disorders the best DBA’s tend to have.”
It might be my imagination, but this is even more worrying because ‘good enough’ seems to have become a lot worse over time than I remember.
You know, reading back these comments it strikes me, and not for the first time, what a clever and eloquent readership I have.
Cool.