How to keep up with technology
(Side note: There is a “subscribe” button on the right side of my home page if you wish to receive my blogs updates via email as soon as they are published). I have been asked a number of times on … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Career
A new WordPress theme and a new job
As you can tell, I have switched to a new WordPress theme for this blog site. I have now been blogging for ten years! It seemed like a good time to finally make a change 🙂 Speaking of which, I … Continue reading →
IT books that should be on your shelf
I have a lot of books on my shelves dealing with business intelligence, data warehousing, master data management, and consulting. Below are my favorites: Data Warehouse Books: Ralph Kimball Books Building the Data Warehouse Corporate Information Factory DW 2.0 Mastering … Continue reading →
Presentation slides for Houston SQLSaturday
Thanks to everyone who attended my two sessions at SQLSaturday in Houston (more info). Here are the abstracts and PowerPoint links: Best Practices to Deliver BI Solutions If your company is planning to build a data warehouse or BI solution, you … Continue reading →
Why I just became a Microsoft Employee
I have been an independent consultant (IC) for quite a while now. In an amazing number of coincidences, or just plain fate, in a matter of 17 days I went from hearing about a job opening at Microsoft to accepting … Continue reading →
Consulting company: Perm/Salaried vs 1099/W2
One of my pet peeves is seeing a top-notch BI architect/developer working as a salaried/perm employee of a consulting company where they are making a good salary but are being billed out to the client at a rate that is … Continue reading →
Should placement companies use a markup %?
To expand on what I talked about in Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?: If you are a consultant working through a placement firm, should the markup percentage (client bill rate divided by consultant … Continue reading →
Billing rates – other side of the fence, part 2
Here is another response to my blog “Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?” (the first response was Billing rates – other side of the fence). My purpose of these blogs is to give more understanding … Continue reading →
Enhance your career by blogging!
When I started my blog two years ago, I never would have thought how much it would help my career. I can’t stress enough the importance of blogging to enhance your career. I went from Blogging, to SEO, to paid … Continue reading →
Consultants – Why pay more?
As an independent consultant who has a higher bill rate than average, I would hope it is obvious to clients that the extra money spent would be well worth it. But that is not always the case, and sometimes who have to … Continue reading →
PASS Business Analytics Conference: the ultimate networking
I went to the PASS Business Analytics Conference last week, and had an absolute blast. I presented two sessions, and attended many more, and was also part of the live blogging panel at both keynotes. I learned a lot, but … Continue reading →
Billing rates – other side of the fence
The following is a guest post by Tim Morgan from Sullexis in response to a resent blog of mine: Thanks for letting me reply to your last post, “Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?”. This … Continue reading →
Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?
As a 1099 consultant, I usually use a placement firm to find a contract job. I always ask the placement firm what rate they are billing the client. They usually tell me. When they don’t, it’s a sure sign that … Continue reading →
Syncing your contacts
In the same vein as my blog post about Syncing your calendars, I wanted to post how to sync your contacts in Outlook, Gmail (Google Contacts), and iPhone: – Transfer your Outlook contacts to Gmail via Transfer contacts between Outlook and … Continue reading →
How to use LinkedIn to enhance your career
LinkedIn is a great resource to improve your career. It has definitely worked for me as the last 5-6 jobs I have been hired for was because a recruiter found me through LinkedIn or I noticed a job posting on LinkedIn. And … Continue reading →
Blueprint for consulting riches
As a business intelligence architect consultant, I have met many people out there who are as good or better than me in building business intelligence solutions, yet earn much less than I do. Why you ask? In the past 18 … Continue reading →
Syncing your calendars
I have a desktop computer, a laptop, and a iPhone. I frequently add meetings to my Outlook calender on my desktop computer, but sometimes enter them on my laptop. And I frequently use my iPhone to alert me about upcoming … Continue reading →
Consultants: Corp-to-Corp vs 1099
I blogged previously that when you are a consultant or contractor, you can sometimes be faced with the decision when taking a new contract of whether to go 1099 or W-2 (Consultants: 1099 or W-2?). However, some staffing firms or clients … Continue reading →
Houston Area SQL Server User Group Presentation
Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation “Scaling SQL Server to HUNDREDS of Terabytes” at HASSUG. Here is the PowerPoint presentation: Scaling SQL Server to HUNDREDS of Terabytes As a followup to a question from the presentation about clustering the appliances, I … Continue reading →
Want to recruit me? Please follow these rules
I get 15-30 calls/emails a week from recruiters (not counting the dozens of auto-generated emails I get). Being a contractor I’m always trying to build relationships with recruiters so when my contract nears an end, I have plenty of job … Continue reading →