Voice of the DBA

Recently, I got a bill from Azure. That's not an unusual thing for many of you, but for me it was a surprise because it said I was late paying. I've had a number of services running, and I thought at first that I had left something running too long, like a VM. As I checked, most of the things were paused, even the expensive ones like a Synapse workspace. Instead, I found that my free credits were not being applied. Fortunately, I had changed credit cards or I might have been billed for a few months before I noticed. This was a change in how Microsoft managed benefits, which is fine. I opened a support call and someone helped me, but it took several days to get a response. I was slightly worried about the bills, so I decided to audit the things I had running. Read the rest of Cleaning Up the Cloud

I've spent quite a bit of my career as a DBA/sysadmin/Operations person. However, I've had my share of development positions as well. As I work with customers who look to mature their database development to be more like other software development, I've noticed that PRs sometimes don't get handled as smoothly as we might like. In some sense, they are like help desk trouble tickets that never get closed. One of the first things I caution people about is specifying specific reviewers, especially DBAs. There are often DBAs who are the gatekeepers for code, but if we require them to be the only ones to review code before a CI or test process, we really slow things down. This often happens in smaller environments where one DBA wants to avoid anything impacting their job. They want to review everything before it commits. Read the rest of PRs Are Like Trouble Tickets

Some of you out there are positive about AI and looking to use them. Some of you aren't too thrilled with the tools and might avoid using them. I think that not learning to harness the power of an AI is a mistake. This technology is going to change the world in many ways and you need to learn how it can help you. You also should learn where the sharp edges are as there are some very, very sharp edges. Read the rest of Choosing an AI in Sept 2025

I get a regular email from Quora, with questions that I might be able to answer or might be of interest to me. There are some database questions, some Tesla ones, and others, but recently I caught an interesting one that asked: why are most people broke? To be fair, there are a lot of questions that appear to be trolling, not people seeking answers, but this one caught my eye. This isn't very data-related, but it is a bit of advice from someone who is getting older. As I look towards retirement in the next decade or two, part of my planning is ensuring that finances are in order. Once I stop working or slow down, the economics of my family change, and we need to be thinking forward to ensure that we have enough funds for our daily living. This can vary in different parts of the world, but I'm surprised at how many people don't really think about covering their daily expenses without a salary. Read the rest of Don't Forget About Financial Skills

As I get older, I find that time is the most valuable commodity I have. It's the one thing that I need more of, but I can't get it. Even if I find more efficient ways of doing things, it seems there's an endless list of things at work and on the ranch that need to be done. It seems to be the same for most of my friends in other jobs, whether in medicine, law, or any other position; they're often overloaded with more work than they can get done in a week. Arguably, it's not all important work, as sometimes we might tackle a task, only to have our boss throw the work away or delay the project. That's annoying, but I also understand priorities change. Read the rest of Getting More Time from AI

I studied economics in university, which isn't that close to database work, though I did have to work through linear regression problems by hand. I always enjoyed mathematics, so this wasn't a hardship. Until I purchased a PC that was capable of letting me do graphs and calculations in PASCAL and BASIC. Then I realized that my enjoyment wasn't that efficient or useful, and a computer could help me get things done way more efficiently. Many of us work on systems that process tremendous amounts of data, something our organizations couldn't complete without computer hardware, efficiently or not. We just wouldn't be able to get the work done by hand. That's the main reason why downtime is such a problem in the modern world; we can't fall back to manual systems in many cases. Read the rest of All the Costs of Downtime

One of the most prolific and popular authors at Simple Talk has been Phil Factor. He wrote many pieces on all aspects of database work and has probably written more articles on the Redgate Product Learning site than anyone else. He has entertained, informed, and inspired many database professionals in his many years as an author. Phil, aka Andrew, passed away recently. This was a shock to many of us and a sad day. Tony Davis introduced me to Phil, whom I always thought of as Andrew, many years ago when I first traveled to Redgate. Tony published a tribute to Andrew on Simple Talk and has many more fond memories of Andrew. If you ever get the chance to meet Tony, ask him for a few. Read the rest of Remembering Phil Factor

Many of you reading this likely have an Availability Group (AG) set up on at least one database in your organization. Maybe not most, but many of you as this has proven to be a technology that many people like for HA/DR, upgrades, and probably other uses. As the technology has evolved from it's SQL Server 2012 debut, it has improved in many ways. This might be one of the few features that has received regular attention from the developers in Redmond across multiple versions. That's not to imply this is a foolproof or bug-free feature. Numerous people have had issues with the various types of AGs. From setup to performance to scale, I've seen many people post questions and search for answers on how to get their system running smoothly and reduce any late-night calls. Read the rest of Pushing the Limits of AGs

Take a moment and think about how much work you do each day. If you write code, how much time do you actually spend writing code around meetings, admin work, and other tasks. If you manage systems and develop scripts, how often do you get to work on a script, change it, upgrade it, or add a new feature? I bet it's a minority of time for most of you. Studies show that many developers spend only an hour or two writing code each day. I would guess it's lower for sysadmins or DBAs who incorporate coding into their jobs. Now think about how much you enjoy each thing you do. I assume meetings aren't the most exciting thing you work on, nor is updating a document for others to read. When I wrote code as the main part of my job, solving the problem, trying different algorithms, experimenting with enhancements, those were the fun times. Read the rest of AI Steals Joy

There has been a lot of news about air traffic problems in the US in 2025. I haven't had any delays due to this, though I've gotten a few messages in my travels that I might want to reschedule. There was an article that some of the technology still used in various facilities is old and needs upgrading. Old as in Windows 95 and floppy disks. That's old, but obviously it still works. Even with the various accounts of problems, almost every day thousands of flights are managed successfully by the people who run these systems. They're not alone, as the article also points out that some other transit systems make do with technology that most of us would never think of using for any system. Read the rest of The Security of Old Tech

I remember working at a large organization with a team of other IT Operations staffers. We rotated this one job every month amongst a few people, each taking turns, where we'd lose a day to update all the privileged passwords for our servers. This was before Managed Service Accounts and the cloud, when we were required to change these every 30 days and then store the new ones in an encrypted store. What struck me when I got stuck with this wasn't the requirement to change every 30 days; that seemed normal. The thing that bothered me was how manual this was. As a former developer, I wrote some scripts to automated this, pre-PowerShell, and make the task easier on my fellow sys admins. I had scripts to generate a password, change it in AD, then print the pwd to be copied into our secure storage (no API there). This ran in a loop so I didn't lose a whole day to changing password. Read the rest of Password Guidance

I was working with a customer recently that is trying to improve their processes. This was a large company, over 100,000 employees, though most of them aren't in the technology area. However, across many divisions and groups, there are a lot of developers and operations personnel who have tended to work in silos, managing their own applications and systems in disparate ways. In other words, doing software development the way most companies do it. Read the rest of Requiring Technical Debt Payments

I saw a post from Brent that Microsoft had changed the default memory guidance. At first glance I read this as they'd changed the default values, which would be interesting. However, this is a guideline, set to 75%. I also saw a few thoughts from Randolph West on LinkedIn, and quite a few comments. The comments were interesting in a few ways. It is easy to look at 75% and say that won't work for this server that's on my mind right now because I keep getting woken up. That might be true. However, the 75% number isn't a hard requirement. It's a guideline, a recommendation to ensure you have enough memory for the OS, but you're trying to use most for SQL Server. Feel free to adjust it if you feel the need. Read the rest of Guidelines and Requirements

One of the major concerns for using GenAI tools is who is reading the data you submit as a prompt, and will this data be used in future training of the model? In other words, could someone using a future model access the data I put in a GenAI chat? It's a valid concern, and not just because of the vendors. There is a lawsuit over the use of data by OpenAI, and a court has ordered all chats to be retained, including deleted ones. Since this is a lawsuit, there is always a chance that some of the data retained gets entered into a court document or even that it might be read aloud in court and captured in a transcript. Read the rest of Concerns over AI Chat Privacy

I remember the court case years ago when the US government wanted to access data in Azure that was physically stored in Ireland. I wrote lightly about this and linked to the article back in 2020. This has typically been more of a concern for the EU (and other countries) than the US, but I'm sure there are organizations in the US that use the cloud and don't want their data accessed by other countries' governments. Recently, a Microsoft executive was asked about this in the French Senate. The Microsoft response was that they  (Microsoft) cannot guarantee data sovereignty for French customers. If the US government served a warrant under the Cloud Act, a US corporation would have to turn over the data. Read the rest of Data Sovereignty in the Cloud

Ghostworking is pretending to be busy at work. According to this article, it's on the rise with a number of people looking for other remote opportunities at other organizations. Some employees might be just wasting time at the office, though I suspect there is a minority that are actually working at another (second) job. Maybe they are growing a side hustle or maybe they've even accepted another job, and they're spending part of there day on those tasks. This might be part of the reason that many managers want to get people back into the office. I think that's flawed as a)  most managers aren't great at their jobs and b) people still ghost work in the office. I've had numerous "clipboard carriers" alongside me in my career who spend an inordinate amount of time at the water cooler, coffee machine, or walking from place to place and are happy to engage in hallway chats. I've seen plenty of managers also not know how to hold people accountable for their work (or lack thereof). Especially technical people who find many reasons why problems are hard to solve. Read the rest of Ghostworkers

SQL Server 2025 is out in preview form. CTP 2.0 is available for you to test, and there are quite a few changes that have been added to the platform. Some of these are already in the cloud, but this is your chance to test them in your environment. This is version 17.x, though I don't know we've really had 17 versions to work with. In any case, there have been a lot of versions in my career. I've connected to and worked on all of these: 4.2, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022. No 2025 yet (other than install and a few basic queries), but that's coming. Read the rest of Your Favorite Improvement

I mean, you can ask for a raise. It's always an option, but is now the time to ask for a raise in this economic climate, where businesses can be unsettled and there are a lot of tech workers looking for jobs. I even saw a piece that noted many computer science graduates are struggling to get hired at the top tech firms. While that's not where most people work, it seems that often other CIOs/CTOs look to the big tech firms for guidance, and they may choose to hire fewer new staffers as well. This is on my mind at work after reading an article on asking for a raise that I added to the newsletter. It's a response in the advice column where a reader asks how to go about asking for a raise when they think they deserve one. It is unclear in which industry or level this person works, so I am not sure if I think the advice is good. Read the rest of Can You Ask for a Raise?

At SQL Bits, I was chatting with Brent about a few things, including AI, which we think is changing the world. I've got my set of AI experiments going, and I do believe we will fundamentally alter work and how we use computers in the future. Not sure if it's for the better or worse, but things are changing and will change more. Read the rest of The Next Great Thing

For many years, most of the SQL Server installations I managed or deployed to were Standard Edition. Even in large companies that had agreements with Microsoft, since each instance had a cost (even at a discount), we were careful about where we installed Enterprise Edition. These days with Microsoft wanting to charge everyone for every core, it makes sense to use Standard Edition wherever you can. Read the rest of Who is Using Standard Edition?

Often,  we work on projects that might span a significant amount of time. Weeks, months, even years can be devoted to working on one system, or the same system. We may find that our motivation rises and wanes at different times. We get excited and motivated to get things done, and also become discouraged or distracted when challenges arise. Not all of us, or not all the time, but it is hard to maintain a high level of productivity and motivation over time. For managers, it can be a challenge to keep a team moving over time and focused on achieving goals. Life gets in the way, people take vacations, staff changes, and other things are all issues that can distract a team. Keeping a team focused and productive can be a challenge for many managers. Perhaps especially challenging when someone hasn't received enough training on how to manage and motivate others. Read the rest of Carrots and Sticks

There was a time when I knew a lot about the various storage technologies available for a database. It was important when designing a server around the various requirements for size and performance balanced against the limitations of hardware. The rapid growth of solid state storage and the adoption of storage area networks have changed the game for many of us. We no longer care or think about storage. It's just a service that we consume in our databases, and while we might demand more IOPS capacity, we often don't worry too much about how that's provided to our systems. Read the rest of Storage Enhancements

This is my last day of work. Not forever, just for six weeks. I'm off on my sabbatical after today and won't be back until August 11. However, everything should run smoothly with Grant and Kellyn holding things down until I return. Have a little patience with them as this site can be a bit of a hectic whirlwind at times, and they still have other jobs to do. It's been a wild first half of the year. After very little travel in Jan/Feb, the rest of the year has been a bunch of travel, including most of May and June being on the road. With coaching responsibilities for two teams from Jan-Apr, I am ready for a break. No big plans, but I am looking forward to being at home, playing some guitar, working on a few projects while trying to be very unwired for six weeks. Read the rest of A Well Deserved Break

I ran across an article on the 7 types of tech debt that can cripple your business, which is a great title. It certainly is one that might scare a lot of CTOs/CIOs/tech management. I am sure that much of the IT management gets concerned on a regular basis with how quickly their staff can evolve their software to meet new business needs. The first two items have to do with data, which is understandable. Data is the core of how many organizations operate and move forward, and if you don't have the ability to easily work with data in a flexible way, you can struggle. Many of us technical people know this, but I find many non-data-professional staffers don't get this and are often unwilling to work at improving the situation. They things to just be magically better without changing how they do their jobs. Read the rest of The Technical Debt Anchor

Each time I compile and curate the Database Weekly newsletter, I find lots of Fabric content from the various sources I watch to compose the newsletter. Since I primarily deal with the Microsoft Data Platform stack, this makes sense. Most of the things I am interested in are related to Microsoft, and as a result, I tend to use sources that also use SQL Server, Power BI, Fabric, and related technologies. I do look for other related data items, but I am heavily MSSQL focused. Recently, I stumbled on a piece that contains Fabric Alternatives in AWS, GCP, and OCI. It covers some of the options on these cloud platforms at a very high level. A product name and short description, but it shows there are other choices. I found it interesting that Databricks is mentioned, but not Snowflake. I'm not sure why that is, as Databricks is on Azure (and other platforms) as is Snowflake, but perhaps the author doesn't consider Snowflake a peer? That seems strange. Read the rest of The Data Warehousing Choice

Part of my Redgate work is with customers who need to monitor their database servers. With estates growing quickly, both in scale and types of database platforms used, keeping an eye on everything can be challenging. Add in the lack of staff growing as quickly are the number of servers, and I find many companies seeking out monitoring tools to better help them manage the entire estate.. When someone evaluates a tool, one of the first questions from many people is about load. They are concerned about the load a tool puts on the system, which is always some amount. Most tools say they use less than 2% of total resources, some might hedge at 5%. Hopefully, there's no more impact than 5%, though that might seem to high, especially if you have a busy database server already. Read the rest of Multiple Monitoring Tools

Are you looking forward to SQL Server 2025? Or perhaps you think this is just another release, or perhaps you are not looking for new features or capabilities in your environment. Maybe you don't care about new things, but are looking for enhancements to features introduced in 2017/2019/2022. There is certainly no shortage of things that can be improved from previous versions (cough graph *cough). I ran across an article on the five things that one person is looking forward to in SQL Server 2025. It's a good list, and the things included make me consider an upgrade. Certainly, any improvements in the performance area, especially with all the investments made in Intelligent Query Processing over the last few versions, are worth evaluating. They might help your workload, or they might not, but if they do, then upgrade. Read the rest of SQL Server 2025 Excitement

I had to make a few changes to a SQL Saturday event recently. The repo is public, and some of the organizers submit PRs for their changes, and others send me an email/message/text/etc. for a change. In this case, an organizer just asked for a couple of image updates to their site. I opened VS Code, created a branch, added a URL for the images, and submitted my own PR. After the build, I deployed it. And it didn't work. Read the rest of Patching the Patch

When talking about DevOps, the goal is to produce better software over time. Both better quality as well as a smoother process of getting bits to your clients. There are a number of metrics typically used to measure how well a software team is performing, and one of the things is Change fail percentage. This is the percentage of deployments that causes a failure in production, which means a hotfix or rollback is needed. Essentially we need to fail forward or roll back to get things working. For most people, a failed deployment means downtime. I've caused a service to be down (or a page or an app) because of a code change I made. This includes the database, as a schema change could cause the application to fail. Maybe we've renamed something (always a bad idea) and the app hasn't updated. Maybe we added a new column to a table and some other code has an insert statement without a column list that won't run. There are any number of database changes that might require a hotfix or rollback and could be considered a failure. Read the rest of What is a Failed Deployment?

Many of us are faced with choices and decisions constantly in our jobs. How do we approach a problem? What should we do as a team to get the work done? How do we code or manage or test or do something else with a database? Maybe more importantly, how long do we spend deciding? Read the rest of Shorten the Debate

At an event recently, I had a chat with someone after one of my sessions. I had been speaking on DevOps and ways to better structure your team and build software. After the session, one person asked me if I'd read The Mythical Man Month and if I felt we'd gotten a lot better at building software since that book was published. I do think we have gotten better, way better, in fact. I caught another review of the book a while back from the Pragmatic Engineer. That view looked at what's changed in 50 years since the first edition, as well as contrasting the world today. You have to subscribe to read that one, but I'll give you a few thoughts from me on the book itself and the review. Read the rest of Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month

I've been reading an interesting book that looks at some of the ways that we can better build software in enterprises. One of the side notes in the book is that the tech companies have the funding and the ability to disrupt many other types of businesses, not just technology. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have delved into other types of industries, potentially pushing others out. We see Amazon becoming as much a shipping and logistics company as they are a retailer. There was a unionization vote, which passed in 2022. Recently, another one failed. Amazon continues to fight these efforts, trying to prevent workers from collectively negotiating the terms of their employment. Read the rest of IT Unionization

At a recent event, I had a student ask about how to get started as a data professional. What types of things should they do? What platform should they work on or learn? Where should they focus time? What tools are available? Those are all good questions and many of you likely have your own advice. I'll give a few things to think about today, which are good for anyone that might want to get into the data field. I think this is still one of the better technical careers. I've suggested this to my kids, though only one of them went into a technical area. One is a therapist for autistic children and one helps run the ranch while pursuing a graduate degree in literature. Read the rest of Helping Students with a Data Professional Career

I saw an article on AI usage that is based on an upcoming book that suggests redesigning the world around new tech, not adding it to existing things. The first example is how electricity was introduced to existing factories, but it only provided some incremental gains until new factories were redesigned around electric motors. There's also an example given about reworking hotels to remove the front desk since that feature isn't needed. Instead, people could walk in, and an employee with a tablet could find them to check them in. I'm all for rethinking and redesigning processes. I do think we have a huge glut of software in many organizations that exists because processes have evolved across time, but not everything and we keep our old software. When we have a new need or want a new capability, we add new software (or add features), but we don't necessarily throw out all the old software, processes, or habits. That wouldn't be practical, often because when we implement something new, it might not meet all our needs. Or at least we don't know it meets our needs at first. Read the rest of Changing the Paradigm of Work

As a part of my job, I often work with customers on how they can get database code into a version control system. That's Git for the most part today, which is the most popular system in the world. I'm comfortable using Git for many basic tasks, but I am not an expert by any means. I've used version control for years, and quite a few systems, and I like Git as a way of managing code. I have been surprised how many people aren't comfortable with version control or Git. Many don't have the habit, but are amenable to it. What I'm amazed by in 2025 is how many people don't use it, given that so many tools we use to work with databases, and even other systems, will store items in Git. This isn't just for development code, but also for infrastructure code. Lots of data tools and servers can store data in Git and use it to deploy changes to all kinds of systems. I'd have expected more people to know Git. Read the rest of Does Version Control Scare You

It likely isn't a surprise to many of you that executives like AI. A survey shows that 74% of executives surveyed have greater confidence in AI-generated insights than advice from colleagues or friends. At the board level, even more (85%) favor AI-driven advice. That's amazing to me, and while I might think this is a bit too much trust being placed in these GenAI LLMs, perhaps it's also partially because they work with too many people who aren't great at their jobs. Plenty of people skim through data or focus on certain things and might miss the details. While an AI can read and summarize a lot, it might not have the context we expect. I tend to be a bit skeptical of AI summaries, often because they don't necessarily weigh the different parts of an article the same way that I do. Read the rest of The AI View From Above

I read a piece recently that got me thinking that data breaches might be inevitable. Disclosure: This was written by Redgate, for whom I work, titled "Data breaches May Be Inevitable—Compliance Failures Don't Have to Be". It's based on our research with the State of Database Landscape survey as well as feedback and conversations with customers. The thing that caught my eye was the first part: data breaches may be inevitable. Do you think that's true? Are we doomed to lose data in our organizations, not as a possibility, but something that will happen at some unknown time in the future? Those of you who have suffered breaches might agree with this, but for those of you who haven't had to deal with that situation, are you resigned to it happening at some point? Read the rest of Are Data Breaches Inevitable?

Who among us has deleted a production database? I'd hope it's very few of you that have done this in your career. I'm sure a few of you have deleted (or truncated or updated all rows for) a table in production. I've done that a few times, but fortunately, I've been able to recover the data quickly. I had this happen in SQL 6.5 and was grateful I could start a single-table restore before my phone rang. Read the rest of Deleting a Database

The DORA organization is constantly researching how to better produce software at any organization. This is similar to work done by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute many years ago. Both groups are trying to determine what things help engineers work better and produce high-quality software. On the DORA site, there is a database change management page, where they recommend approaches to managing database schemas. The main thing they talk about is treating all schema changes as migrations, which is something some people do. However, many teams also like a desired-state-configuration approach, where they just deploy all the changes from dev (or QA) to prod in a state-based flow. Both can work, but I do think as software matures (and becomes legacy), migrations are preferred. The article lists lots of frameworks in different languages. Flyway is among them, which is the product on which I work and sell at Redgate. If you haven't looked at a migrations framework, I'd recommend you do so. They do really give you a tremendous amount of control and flexibility. There are trade-offs, so I'm not blindly recommending this approach, but it's worth educating yourself on how migrations frameworks work. Read the rest of Database DevOps Recommendations

I'm sure many of you have tried a GenAI LLM to do something. Maybe write some code, maybe get some sort of recommendation or suggestion, maybe to rewrite something or summarize text. I'm sure you have had some feelings about whether the tool made you more or less productive. There was a trial conducted by the Australia Department of the Treasury on Microsoft's 365 Copilot, asking for volunteers to participate and use the tool in their daily work. They used it and then completed a survey, which are summarized in this piece. Only 218 people went through the trial, and the results are interesting. Read the rest of How Helpful is a GenAI Copilot

Certifications can pay off, at least in some areas. There's a piece that talks about pay rising for some tech professionals when they have some credentials. Networking, architecture, and project management are mentioned in the report, as are database and data management. I haven't seen the source report, and I'm not sure which certifications are getting higher pay rises, but I'd guess that newer data technologies, things related to cloud databases, and even anything related to AI is likely to get you a raise. Read the rest of Rising Pay for Certifications

I thought this story about a programmer and a GenAI to be rather humorous. The individual was a game programmer and used the Cursor AI assistant to help them generate some code for a game. After a few hundred lines of code, the AI delivered this: "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly." That response makes me actually smile to myself and chuckle out loud. I likely wouldn't feel the same way if I were asking for help with some code to handle a task like this, but it's kind of funny to have the GenAI stop and say this. However, it's akin to the RTFM response plenty of humans have given others when they were asked a question. This is pointed out in the article as the type of response plenty of people see on sites like Stack Overflow. Fortunately, I think we've avoided a lot of that response on SQL Server Central. Read the rest of Learn to Code

When is the last time you interviewed for a new position? It could have been at a new company, or maybe you had an interview was for a different position inside your existing company. Perhaps you needed to talk to a manager internally for a new project. I've tried to treat all my one-on-one meetings or reviews as interviews since I'm usually trying to impress someone enough to get a raise or promotion. Preparing for something you do rarely is hard. Most of us have interviews very infrequently, and we often aren't prepared to impress others. If your partner or a close friend is also a business person, perhaps they can help you get ready, but I've found that most people struggle to help others prepare as they don't know how themselves. Read the rest of Interview Tips

I heard Brent Ozar recently talked a bit about the SQL Server platform and its future. He also mentioned that Fabric has distracted the data platform team and it isn't a great product. I tend to agree, and I see too many bugs, holes, and problems. However at the end of this short snippet, he talks about SQL Server with an interesting comment. Is SQL Server feature complete? Read the rest of Is SQL Server Feature Complete?

I get the Gates Notes email periodically and I always find it interesting to read. Like Bill Gates or not, he is a very smart individual and has thoughtful things to say. Even when I don't always agree with him, I enjoy hearing his view and have enjoyed seeing him deliver presentations. In fact, one of my career highlights was at SQL Saturday #175 - Fargo, held at the MS campus. Bill Gates was speaking to employees that day and we were allowed to watch the Q&A from the balcony. Later, I saw him start to leave and stop by a sign. He asked someone about SQL Saturday. When they explained the idea for free conferences, he said "that's cool." One of the recent emails talked about the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, with the original source code available for a BASIC interpreter. It's an interesting read to me, since I learned BASIC first (and a little assembler) on an Apple II and a TRS-80. I didn't start a company, but I certainly appreciate the excitement of tackling a programming challenge back then when memory and disk were in short supply. Most of my early programming tasks had me worried about how much memory and disk I was using, trying desperately to minimize both. Read the rest of 50 Years of Microsoft

At the end of last year, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a long time. We were chatting and this person mentioned that they were looking for a new job. They had been laid off and needed something. This is someone with a lot of experience and skill, so I wasn't worried for their career or future. At the time, they mentioned they had gotten an introduction and interest from Amazon, but they weren't interested in a position because of the return-to-the-office (RTO) mandate that Amazon was implementing. I was recently chatting with another friend at a different company. This person manages a tech team, and was looking to hire another data engineer, but was told they could only hire in a certain city (City A)  in the US. In this case, it was the city with their main office. They have offices in a few cities, and a large one in City B, but the organization has been thinking of their own RTO plans and has limited hiring. My friend is now wondering if they need to consider moving to City A (not likely) or find a new job. They don't want to have to go to the office every day in City B. Read the rest of The Return to the Office Debate