The most recent content from our members.
When asked which skills would best help IT practitioners uplevel their careers, Keith Townsend's answer was simple and direct: "Learn how to 'people' better." In this session, Keith expands on this advice - offering valuable context, specific skills and techniques, and measurable methods for gauging success. Additional…
Start talking about "soft" skills, and some IT pros will roll their eyes. Maybe because the term "soft" skills can seem insulting. When what we're really talking about is ESSENTIAL skills. Nobody wants to work with someone who's brilliant but a jerk. You might be thinking, "I was hired to do a job—and I do it darn well—so…
How does the ability and interest in monitoring affect the career trajectory of the typical IT professional? In this session, we'll talk to two people who found success in SNMP and stability amongst the syslog messages. Along the way we'll hear advice they have for people who are now at the beginning (or even in the…
The SolarWinds community, THWACK, has a new community manager. Ben Keen (@the_ben_keen) has been an active voice in the community for years as a THWACK MVP and has now decided to join SolarWinds’ efforts to continue having the greatest community out there. Ben will be joining as a regular voice here on TechPod and bringing…
A good DBA is hard to find. This is because a good DBA wears many hats, often equating to 3 – 4 full time jobs. How can this be achieved or sustained? The secret is automation, and automation is also the reason the DBA is disappearing. In this final episode of our three-part series exploring the disappearing DBA, Head…
The DBA role is complex. Pitfalls exist everywhere you turn, and it can be difficult to survive and thrive. On this episode of TechPod, we’ll help accidental DBAs become a DBA survivors with career advice from SolarWinds Head Geeks Thomas LaRock and Kevin Kline as well as Denny Cherry, CEO and founder, Denny Cherry &…
Automation has been a disaster for the traditional database administration (DBA) role. As more systems and processes are automated away with code, the need for DBAs decreases. In time, the role of a DBA may disappear altogether. This ongoing series will examine who DBAs are, what they do, and where they’ll go once their…
I will be retiring soon and need my position filled. I work for a Fortune 500 that provides complete solutions to businesses. Currently I serve as a contractor to a large state agency with my primary role to be configuring, designing, managing, updating - all the SolarWinds "things." The customer wants someone with strong…
Perhaps the best part of being an IT pro—of being a technology professional in general—is that you don’t really have a choice. It’s an irrepressible self-nomination to a task force of incredibles, who prefer to wield their powers out of sight, but hope the results change the world for the better. And when you rise to the…
The other day, as is often the case when an engineer is deep in a troubleshooting task that requires a restart if interrupted, I got a request for advice. “Hey, if you have a second I wanted to ask a question about standardizing DevOps tools. Should my friend use Chef, Puppet, or something else to get DevOps going?” He…
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