DBAs Don’t Poop

I’m often curious what drives the new standards of professionalism. It seems like we’ve swung to the other side from a few decades ago, and I’m waiting for it to even out.

Here’s what I mean. It’s really gotten so that you can’t say anything to anybody that they don’t like without being branded as unprofessional. It’s the new insult. It’s something you say to put someone in their place when you want to skirt around the issues that brought up the topic to begin with.

You shouldn’t have used a cursor here. It won’t perform well.

Well, I already had it written in another procedure, and I didn’t feel like re-writing it here, so I just pasted it in.

Laziness is never an excuse for poor code.

Well, that was unprofessional. You could’ve just said that it won’t work as well and ask me to change it. You don’t have to insult me to get your point across.

This kind of crap goes on all the time in IT. Since when did telling the truth become unprofessional? And since when are DBAs paid by the word? Somewhere along the way, it’s become a standard of professionalism to say things in as many words as possible to keep from making the other person feel inadequate. I mean, why say in 10 words what you can oversay in 75.

The same goes with getting fed up with situations. You keep having to support this bad system that could be fixed fairly easily. The directors put you under the gun all the time, and you have to drop whatever you’re doing to get it going again. This is the most important system they own, yet they refuse to do anything about it. You get frustrated and start to get angry sometimes because you’re spending all your time on this issue time and time again, and you’ve talked ’till you’re blue in the face and nothing ever gets done. Yet they continue to claim that this is the most important system they own. So why is it unprofessional to get sick of that? Since when do pros have to put up with idiocy time and time again… not to mention apathy, laziness, and closed mindedness. Why is it less professional to want things to improve and get upset when they refuse to do anything?

Cursing. This is one of my favorite arguments. Who says professionals don’t curse? Every professional I know curses from time to time. I’ve worked in professional kitchens for years with some of the world’s best chefs. They all curse up a storm. I’ve been in board meetings with all the company’s officers before. Many of them cursed throughout the meeting. I’ve been with PMs, and sales execs, and VPs with other companies. They all curse. Sometimes it’s the only way to say what you really want to say. I always think back to the movie ‘From the Hip’ with Judd Nelson. He played an off the hook lawyer. Anyway, he was defending this president of a bank who had slapped one of his subordinates in the face and the guy was suing him. He had the guy on the stand, and he asked him, ‘So why did you slap him?’ To which the guy replied… ‘Because he was an asshole.’ Immediately the opposing counsel jumped up and objected the use of profanity in the courtroom. Judd said fine, give me another word… any other word that captures the exact meaning of that one, and I’ll have him substitute it. The judge (Ray Walston I believe) couldn’t come up with anything.

My point is simply that sometimes there’s no other way to express exactly what you’re trying to say because cursing is such a well understood medium. Some of the words have such well-established meanings that nothing else has managed to really capture them exactly. That’s because most of the adjectives we use are sterile. They lack emotion. Curse words convey such exact meanings because they convey exact emotions that we all go through. Think about the word ‘bullshit’. There are words that can come close to the meaning, or even phrases, but nothing quite captures the exact meaning and the exact emotions you feel when faced with a clear case of it. Calling something troublesome, or a nuisance, or ridiculous, just doesn’t seem to cut it, now does it? So why is it so unprofessional to use such language when it’s appropriate? I thought that part of being a professional was being able to communicate effectively, and if something is truly bullshit, shouldn’t you be able to just say so? Wouldn’t that make you more professional because you’re conveying exactly what you mean?

Being a professional simply means that you get paid for something. It doesn’t mean that you exclude everything else you know. And this bullshit of having no child left behind in business has got to go. You know what… I’m not going to be rude, but if you’ve done a bad job I’m going to say it. If it makes you feel inadequate, then maybe you can use that to improve your code instead of crying to HR that your feelings have been hurt. I agree that there’s no reason to insult anybody, but there’s also no reason to not call bad code, bad code. The system didn’t grow all of these cursors while you were at lunch. Somebody wrote them. Now, did they write them out of ignorance or apathy? It doesn’t matter. I’m saying it’s not good and it needs to change. Now what are you going to do with that information?

It’s like people are so focused on everyone being professionals they’ve forgotten they’re people too. Yes, we still date, and get tired, and frustrated, and mad, and sick to death, and elated, and yes, we DO go to the bathroom. And none of those things makes us unprofessional.