“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton
Why do I want to be mentored?
Eight years of professional experience and I’ve had a handful of impactful mentors.The mentoring I’ve taken part of has made me a better technical worker along with a more well rounded person. It’s invaluable to see how a professional approaches a problem.
- How do they pick apart a task?
- What balance is taken between thoughful planning vs. action?
- What technical best practices with nuanced knowledge are they applying at the lowest level?
Take these smaller details and roll them up into a larger professional plan. This is where I need help.
What things do I want help with?
One word fits like a glove when describing the challenge I’m up against. That word being: unfocused. The phrase, “jack of all trades but a master of none” comes to mind. My skillset has breadth that I am proud of but I fear is short sided.
Another battle I’m fighting is finding the right job. The position in which I thrived the most had variety baked into it. I was a one man reporting team, responsible for all things Power BI and SSRS. This satisified my need for workspace ownership. Technically, I was a SQL Server DBA so I had administrative tasks as well as the permissions to peform the ETL related duties. I truly felt like a full stack Micrsoft Business Intelligence Developer.
You might be wondering why I’d leave that position. The short of it is that I was offered significantly more money elsewhere. According to Brent Ozar’s Salary Survey, my unicorn job’s salary was awfully low. I’ve since worked at larger more bureaucratic organizations. Here I fight with red tape to get things done and at times feel pigeon holed to a set of tasks. The upside to changing jobs is that I’ve been more exposed to Microsft’s cloud tools.
My goals as a mentee
- Identify a skillset to build upon & become a SME in that area
- In any job, have influence and ownership in projects outcome
- I want to reach the point that I will competently be the mentor.
As a member of my current employer’s Data Engineering team my aim is to be a Azure Data Engineer. As an initial step to fulfill this goal I recently passed the DP-203 exam. In general, I’m interested to see where this mentoring project could go and how what I’ve initially set out to do may change.
Professional Background
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrotrejo1/
- Title(s) Held:
- Business Intelligence Developer
- SQL Server DBA
Certifications Held
- SQLskills IEAzure v2 - SQL Server 2019 😤
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst