Welcome Tara Kizer!

So you probably saw the announcement from our friend Brent Ozar last week. He’s going to be focusing on his really cool training and tools and a bit less on consulting. When that announcement came, it didn’t take very long for a couple people on the team to nudge me about it. I was sort of thinking about it anyway – Erik and Tara are amazing. They are well-known quantities, and it would be a blessing to have one of them join our growing team…

To Make a Long-Story Short…

After a lot of conversations (and a marathon session of calls where Tara got to talk to each member of the team and make sure there is a mutual fit (we operate differently than Brent Ozar Unlimited, we love long term relationships and our FlexDBA managed services make us the Senior, or sometimes only, DBA team at a company, doing long term help of all levels and often coaching up a team in an ongoing way) neither side got scared. After a lot of thought, chats, looking at the forecast, the budget, the bank, and all the stuff you do when making a previously unexpected hire – we made an offer. And she said yes!!!

I can’t tell you how humbling, exciting, and awesome it is to watch this team strengthen at Straight Path with each hire. We have real A-Players here. And we’re still growing. We’re still trying to find the right balance. To see folks like Bruce, Sheila, Jack, Joe, and Mike all willing to say, “Yeah, sure. We’ll come along on this ride with you!” – and most of them (all but Bruce!) jumped into the car only in 2018 – makes me shake my head in disbelief and amazement. I truly am the weakest link here at Straight Path, and that doesn’t change with this announcement, it just becomes more obvious!!

Our next hire was actually supposed to become a Jr. DBA/Support Analyst (or two) in later Q1.  But when someone like Tara Kizer (She was an MVP for ten years, you’ know you’ve found her answers on SQLTeam’s forums if you’ve been doing this SQL Server thing for any length of time, maybe you’ve seen her present, or read her chapter in TribalSQL, maybe you’ve seen her answers on stack exchange) becomes available, and she is interested in at least exploring an opportunity? You change your plans a little. We may still make that hire towards the end of Q1 or maybe now push to early Q2.

So.. I could keep posting. But I’m going to save my word count for the blog posts and webinars we are readying for February about SQL Server upgrades. Tara starts with us the week of 1/21. We’re really happy (and dumbfounded!) she picked us. Drop her a line in the comments and say welcome aboard!

P.S – I decided to break with the stock photo of the team rowing together for the featured image – and we used her picture from our about us page, see – she’s not a cartoon character, she’s a human being!

P.P.S –  There’s nothing wrong with Erik Darling (well…) we had a great chat. He’s excited and trying his own thing out. I have a strong suspicion that we’ll be able to bring him into some “fun ones” for our clients as we seem to keep getting busier and busier. I’m enjoying finally seeing him on Twitter and watching his rapid-fire blog abilities being used for his own good. Check him out!

P.P.P.S – Watch this spot for a couple chats coming up. I’d like to get the techies here at Straight Path (Tara, Mike, Joe, Jack, Bruce, and myself) on a couple web chats where we can hang out, talk about what’s going on, talk about challenges we bumped into, listen to your questions, help you out, etc. We may try and drag Erik away from his own youtube Livestream to take part in ours once or twice, too. If it works? Maybe we’ll keep doing it monthly or so. We’ll have a webinar series out in February with me talking about SQL Server upgrades and we’ll have some blog content and possibly some downloadable checklists/docs/etc around that topic also.

Enjoy your day! This post will be going live automagically. I’ll be skiing with the family most of Monday if this cold/flu doesn’t beat me up too bad. But I’ll get back to your comments this week, I promise 🙂