Welcome back to another edition of T-SQL Tuesday. This month’s blog party is hosted by Louis Davidson. His request for us bloggers is to share “What advice do you wish Current You could go back and give past you as you were starting your first data platform job?“

Down Memory Lane

My first “data platform job” would technically be my first job out of college. I was working for a really small dot-com consulting company, wearing many hats as an internet app developer (ASP pre-.NET, Perl, and PHP baby!), and sysadmin for our Linux web servers. And back then, my first database was MySQL. We eventually got a Windows based customer, so I got sent to SQL Server 2000 training.

Back then, I definitely didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was fresh out of college and remember feeling like I learned more in my first 6 months on-the-job than I had in the entirety of my college years. Now in hindsight, that’s not quite true, as the knowledge I acquired in each of those phases of life were very different but both uniquely useful.

The funny thing is… I know what I’d tell Andy 5 years ago… and 10 years ago… even 15 years ago. But 25 years ago, when I first started… I’m not quite sure what I’d tell to myself way back then! At least from a technical perspective. Why? Because I was in the early floundering stages of learning. And that’s okay. It’s no different than when one learns how to ride a bicycle for the VERY first time. Some might pick it up quickly, but most of the rest of us will struggle with it at first.

My Advice

My advice to someone starting their career, is to understand the learning process.

You will flounder. You will make mistakes. You will not be perfect from the get-go.

And that’s okay.

Keep at it. Be persistent. Be curious. Be resourceful.

While this reminder is valuable to any professional, no matter what stage of their career they may be in, I feel that reinforcing this to someone who is fresh and new is particularly paramount.

Thanks for reading!