(via @jilldyche) Art Petty's blog, Management Excellence, has done a much more convincing job of explaining why social networks and social media should be important parts of your career management strategy.

It was difficult for me not just cut and paste his whole entry here, but some of my favourite points:

Do You Tweet?

If I had $100 for every conversation that included something like (with a tone of disdain), “Twitter sounds ridiculous. Why do I want to know that someone is taking a shower or what they ate for breakfast,” I would be well on my way to recovering a few losses in my 401K.

I’m two months new to Twitter and amazed at the quality of the conversations and the number of great professional that I’ve met.  I’m also flabbergasted to think about the conversations, resources and talented professionals that I was missing out on prior to joining.

and

There are no silver bullets in life or business, but there are sure-fire ways to fail. One of the best is to start acting like some of our parents and avoid what we don’t understand.

Take 30 seconds and read his entry on Twitter, Linked in and even Facebook.

Mind Your Knowledge Gap: Why Social Media is Essential to Your Career | Management Excellence

This blog post is by Rob Drysdale, Sr. Program Manager at InfoAdvisors.

It's been a while since we've posted a blog entry so I thought I would do one that was a bit off topic from our normal stream and focus on how people feel about the company they work for.  This started out because Chris Shaw posted a question on his blog:

Do you feel like you are being treated fairly at your current or past employers? The question stems from the fact that very few people today stay at a company 20 to 30 years like they did when I was growing up. Do you feel like the company feels a loyalty toward the employee or do you think that they look at you just as head count? No reason to get yourself in trouble, so you can refer back to past employers. The one that I will talk about is by far a past employer, about two years ago.

In the original post, Chris tagged Brent Ozar and so Brent answered on his own blog.  Both blog posts show interesting points of view about employees and employers and I thought I would put my own two cents in on this.

In Chris' post, he talks about an employee/employer relationship where there is a great employee that is working far above his current position and the company won't or can't recognize it.  This is an all too familiar scenario where it is tough for a company to see beyond the "numbers" and truly recognize the contribution you are making, but it isn't always that simple.  In some organizations there are limits to how much you can reward an individual without upsetting the balance in the organization.  This is especially true when it comes to monetary raises unless you can somehow justify a higher level position for the person.  I think the real problem here is the old saying "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" and by that time it's too late.

Career advancement can be very difficult in some organizations where it can take a long time for a higher level position to open up and then you have to get them to put you in that spot.  While waiting for the position to open up, the company sticks with their policies and payscales and won't vary from it so the person who is doing a great job is stuck getting only a bit more (maybe) than the guy he sits next to that is doing a mediocre job.

The payscales and "ranges" are difficult in some organizations as well because they can't always take market forces and prices into account properly.  These organizations look at everything based on the number of points each job description gets and don't look at the market price difference in an IT role versus a "line of business" role.  In these situations it is almost always better for the employee to leave and find a more fulfilling and rewarding position that better matches their capabilities.  It's sad that it has to come to this and the organization suffers because they lose a quality employee, but you have to remember that your career and your career advancement are up to you.  No one, including the company you work for, will look after your interests as well as you can.

The flip side of this value equation is where the employee's perception is not the same as the company's.  I have seen and managed people that tend to believe they are great and deserve so much more from the organization when in fact they are really only mediocre.  These people will never be happy where they work because they want more than they can ever achieve because the organization does not and will not promote them.  This can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy where the employee becomes less and less engaged in their work and the organization sees less and less value.  The key here can be a good manager or mentor that can help you build yourself up and work on your weaknesses.  I had a mentor like that before so I know that it works.  I was starting to get a little frustrated in one position and someone a couple of levels up came to see me one day and straightened me out a bit.  I was able to recognize that he was just trying to help me and turn it around.

I think Brent's post hits it right on the head.  There has to be value on both sides or else something has to change.  Think about your own position in your organization and how your company views you and your work.  Can you make it better?  What are you doing to upgrade your skills and broaden yourself?  Are you relying only on the company and their "training plans" or are you actively pursuing knowledge?  Remember my point earlier that YOU are responsible for your career and advancement.  Get out there and find some professional organizations that interest you, subscribe to user groups and forums where you can exchange ideas, read some of the many books in your field or even about business in general.

I regret that I didn't "get religion" about this earlier in my career.  But hey, all of us can change and improve.

Ellen Messmer writes in a recent itbusiness.ca article that 59% of laid off workers admitted to stealing company data on their way out the door.

I never would have guessed that number would be so high.  First, I'm thinking that many people who had actually done this would not admit to it.  So the actual number must be much higher.

I've also worked at companies that waited weeks, months, or even years before turning off accounts for laid off employees. So who knows how many former employees are still "data mining" after they are gone.

That's according to the "Jobs at Risk - Data at Risk" survey published Monday by Ponemon Institute.

The research firm found that 61per cent of respondents who felt negatively about the company took data while only 26 per cent of those with a favorable view did. Only 31 per cent of those surveyed said they had "trust" in their former employer to "act with integrity and fairness," 25 per cent were "unsure" and 44per cent did not have trust.

Of the 945 individuals in the survey, which was sponsored by Symantec, 37 per cent said they were asked to leave, 38 per cent said they had found a new job and 21 per cent moved on because they anticipated lay-offs.

I've also had to fight to protect my clients when new hires show up with CDs and thumbdrives full of data models they are offering to "share" with their new employer.  While I have worked at companies where this corporate stealing was allowed and rewarded, I can't think of a more stupid sign to send to your new boss than the fact that you are willing to steal from your employers.

Nearly 60 per cent of fired workers "steal company data" before quitting

Found this article while perusing @Michael_Corey's blog.  A wickedly scary horror story based on having the wrong data model, the wrong database, the wrong technical environment, the wrong skills and the wrong decider.  Another penny-wise and pound foolishness that I hope makes you think about the small, cumulative errors that add up to a catastrophe.

Alex Papadimoulis writes in Redmond Developer News about the the series of un-professional mistakes that ran a small retail chain out of business.

Further investigation found that 98 percent of all the company's requests came from one set of IP addresses, which turned out to be its stores and home offices. Rick guessed that MegaPetCo had kiosks for something and perhaps ran some of its sales traffic through the database. How little he really knew. The shared database for this Web site -- a 10MB file which was meant to power nothing more than a couple of blogs and small-traffic forums -- was the database for the entire company. The Web site itself accounted for less than 5 percent of the total data in MegaPetCo's database. The rest was home-office stuff, including POP sales registers, payroll, HR, inventory, tax records, and a kind of dynamic storage for invoices and maintenance tickets. The database was incredibly simple: a single table with hundreds of columns. It probably had humble beginnings as a spreadsheet and organically grew into a vast monolith over the seven or so years that MegaPetCo was in business. If MegaPetCo wanted to find out what insurance it gave a truck driver five years ago, it was in the same table as the one serving up pictures of bird seeds for sale. All told, the database had millions and millions of rows -- had being the operative word.

I think I need a drink after reading this.  I'm off to check on my most recent backups....

Redmond Developer News | Dev Disaster: Death by Delete

I used to post some fun facts most Friday's to our discussion groups, but got too busy with paying work to keep up.  But I'm thinking that an occasional Friday blog post with some interesting data-related resources, trivia, and whatnot would be doable.

So let's start with a recommendation that came from my mother, Senora Datachick.

http://www.fun-with-words.com/index.html

This site is full of funny stuff, all word-related.  I especially liked the Funny Signs Gallery, such as this example:

I have a feeling that some of these are testaments to Photoshop skills rather than sign faux pas collections, but the really are funny either way.

The site has information and links on palindromes, word games, puzzles, anagrams, and more.

I liked this palindrome:

may a moody baby doom a yam

and this anagram:

To be or not to be: that is the question; whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them?

==>

I wrote all of Shakespeare's plays, and the wife and I got together, did most of his sonnets for our entertainment. But tormentors oft attribute that our brash quotes as being bogus. O! no! no! no!

Check it out.