YOU DON'T NEED TRAINING

[ray.wurlod]

Seeing that I have almost zero chance of getting formal training, please forgive me if I ask these types of questions.

If you are an employee of a company, I don't sweat helping you out. What irritates me are posts from "consultants" for "CRM/ERP/DataWarehousing" agencies.

I'll get a call from a firm saying we need a senior data warehouse technical person with DS experience, as well as modeling and architecture experience on TB+ size warehouses. Rate is $45-$65/hour.

Are you s'ing me? But the story isn't over, this actually happened to me. I got a call for a project from a headhunter and I told them my rate, then they said they'll get back to me. About 3 weeks later I get a email sent directly to me. It's from a guy starting on a TB+ size warehouse in the same city, same project specs for that call I took from the headhunter. He want's to know how to about best practices and such using DS. He also wanted clarification on some modeling questions, like WHAT'S A STAR SCHEMA.

Shoot me, shoot me now. This is part of the frustration some of us feel. We are being undercut by 1/2 by newbies blowing smoke to clients to get in, then they appear on this forum or others asking questions to help keep them from being thrown out on their arse.

There's an education program needed for the headhunters. I've had a quiet word with a couple of the major players in my region, who agree with me (but are constrained by their clients' short arms and long pockets).

Provide words like how much extra it costs to do it again, rather than getting it right first time, and how much more quickly an experienced consultant can be than an inexperienced one (the total cost of the project might even be less!).

Sure I've been rejected on price on a couple of occasions, but that's business. I'm still being offered more work than I can handle, fortunately, because there are some out there who appreciate the extra that I can bring to a DW project.

Unfortunately for the younger ones, the luxury that we used to have of tagging along with a more experienced consultant while "learning the trade" seems to be a luxury that no-one can afford these days. That was, imho, the soundest part of the the learning experience. All we can do nowadays, as Teej suggested, is to try to effect some degree of knowledge transfer during the projects that we do undertake.

(Walter, can we get a "rant" emoticon?)

[Editor]

I see this from two perspectives.

One, as System Integrator with folks with 5 years of experience or better, it's very difficult to watch rates drop and our resumes be blended in with newcomers as if they are the same. My team goes into an account and watch "wannabes" come and go. And some even make the second cut because they are heads down. Problem is, most folks don't know how to evaluate a good job from a bad job. I don't believe clients know how to differentiate between the learners, the wannabes, the good and the guru.

Which brings me to my second point. We want to continue to offer solid advice to those in need. This forum still creates comfort to those that are in Glenn's situation. But to address Tom's point, maybe we need to seriously rank skills and convince employers of DS talent to "check the stats" of the consultants you are hiring. I have floated this idea before. Are we at a point that we can create some kind of certification. Can it be done from the forum.

I welcome your feedback and ideas. I am trying to keep away from a model where quality advice is chargable at our site. The problem is that we have no way to rank the questions, the uniqueness of the problems or the answers. We don't have a good model how to collect or distribute the charges for the assistance. So, I am happy for all the solid responses given by a growing number of experts.

If you favor a certification system, and think we can collective make it happen I will post a survey on this topic soon.

Always thankful for everyone's posts

Editor....
Dennis

[Teej]

Unfortunately for the younger ones, the luxury that we used to have of tagging along with a more experienced consultant while "learning the trade" seems to be a luxury that no-one can afford these days. That was, imho, the soundest part of the the learning experience.

This is exactly.... EXACTLY what I need right now. Bar none. My eyes are being open to such a vast magntude of this type of job, and ... I know that I need to get my feet wet, but ... wow... definitely do not want to let a company burn cash waiting for me to figure it out.

But I have faith. And I have this forum. Thank you, everyone.

-T.J.

[Teej]

I don't believe clients know how to differentiate between the learners, the wannabes, the good and the guru.

It is all intuition, really. My company was so lucky to nab a guy who is a C/C++ guru. There is a level of intelligence that he carries that is just extult pure experience. He had so much to share, and I was so happy to soak in all in. He hated PX with a passion, and he was not hestitant to tell me why. He provides a highly critical perspective on PX that I valued so much.

That is why I do not mind egotic workers as long as they have been around the block a few times. If they have been around, they have learned a thing or two that I haven't. Just listening to them teaches me far more than anyone could realize. A lot of other people chose to ignore Jim. They also continue to languish in their own careers. And they may wonders why...

Which brings me to my second point. We want to continue to offer solid advice to those in need. This forum still creates comfort to those that are in Glenn's situation.

The forum brings comforts for me too. Even though I know a lot about PX, I learned far more from this forum, the problems others experienced. Heck, I spent the last couple days posting like mad, because I had some free time to run some tests, and verify about some issues with PX that others experienced. Not only that, I learned Server through this forum. I am starting to understand the magnitude of the Data Warehouse Lifecycle through this forum. I read it all, just to learn. I treasures the experience I have with this. Thank you all.

But to address Tom's point, maybe we need to seriously rank skills and convince employers of DS talent to "check the stats" of the consultants you are hiring. I have floated this idea before. Are we at a point that we can create some kind of certification. Can it be done from the forum.

Yes, it can. But those clients must know and understand the true cost. We need to put together a presentation package for them to review, and understand the benefits of getting a GOOD consultant compared to what their 'budget' tells them to do. You just need the best you can find. If they are GOOD at what they do, and will provide solution for you that works, then they are worth the price which usually is higher than the going rates.

The only problem is figuring out who is GOOD at what they are for. If you ask me to do pure raw Orchestrate, I would not do as good of a job compared to several folks I know. But PX issues are my current forte as you can see on here. But how do you know that I am good at it?

To add to this problem, we have consultants out there who are probably way better than I am at this, but they're just simply too busy and chose to not get involved with this forums, or maybe they can not speak the language (noting the vast absence of Japan folks, despite Ascential's huge presence there). How can we be fair to those people?

As with a Data Warehouse job, the answers are never simple. Too bad we don't have a bible to follow for this field... yet.



-T.J.

[vmcburney]

Ascential are aware that poor implementation of the tools reflects badly on them and they have made efforts to combat it. The advanced training courses, the templates in version 7.0, the fast start services, on-line training. They have good technical support.

I look on the bright side, if the tools were easy to use and there was a large pool of people out there who know how to use them what would that do to my salary?

[pdutson]

My Two cents. Since I liked this discussion.

Yes, the industry has changed through the years. Yes, new people are coming in asking stupid questions. So what! Be happy that people are asking questions. The saddest thing is reviewing the code of the people that aren't asking questions. To paraphrase the movie sixth sense. 'I see dumb people and they are everywhere."

This is a very cool tool. I am new to the tool and I am starting to do some things that written in C would have taken a long time to write. But like any other tool whether it be a hammer or a software package. It is still just a tool.

Keep up the good work and please answer my other post.

[ray.wurlod]

We are not running on HAL 9000's here, where the software can guess your intent and rewrite the model and ETL code so that inspite of the architect the best solution is arrived at.

Why not?!!!

[chulett]

Errr... what other post? All I could find was one from April that Ray took a whack at. If you need more help you need to come back and continue the discussion!