{"id":75,"date":"2014-08-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/blog\/you-must-just-have-the-touch"},"modified":"2026-03-18T21:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:51:07","slug":"you-must-just-have-the-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/04\/you-must-just-have-the-touch\/","title":{"rendered":"You must just have the touch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I\u2019ve found my professional\u00a0maturity<\/em>\u00a0to be a growing entity. One piece of evidence of this is how I react to being the most knowledgeable\u00a0person in the room. Now, understand I\u2019m not being\u00a0arrogant, I mean, \u201cthe room,\u201d literally. I might be in the room with someone who\u2019s technical knowledge is minimal and they are asking me a question about my specialty.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Early in my life the prospect that I might know more than everyone is was exciting. It was a feeling of power and pride. This was the phase of my life where I truly enjoyed it when others would be incorrect about something or failed to understand what I was trying to tell them. This sounds terribly immature, and it was.\u00a0It didn\u2019t take long to begin to see the consequences of this attitude. I should have noticed that people didn\u2019t like it first but, to be honest, the first thing I noticed was an overflow of requests to fix this or show me how to do that. It was a humbling experience because my withholding of knowledge made it so that no one really knew what I was good at so I began to fail to complete\u00a0the tasks put in front of me. On a couple of occasions I actually made things worse. This is when I began denying requests entirely or abiding by the rule, \u201cif you\u2019re good at something, never do it for free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, I realize that I\u2019ve moved on to a much more positive stage of professional\u00a0maturity<\/em>. I actively admit my ignorance but keep my\u00a0sense of pride in the things that I do know. The most valuable lesson I\u2019ve learned is how rewarding it is to pass on what I know to others. Empowering them is so much more beneficial than hording knowledge and then you don\u2019t get people saying, \u201cyou must just have the touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

I enjoyed that phrase years ago but now it really bothers me. I\u2019ve stopped thinking about it as a compliment and have begun to see it as a cop-out. When someone says, \u201cyou must just have the touch,\u201d instead of, \u201chow did you do that,\u201d all they are really saying is, \u201cI don\u2019t care to learn and I\u2019m happy to make you the permanent owner of this from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Written by Derik Hammer of SQL Hammer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Derik is a data professional focusing on Microsoft SQL Server. His passion focuses around high-availability<\/a>, disaster recovery<\/a>, continuous integration, and automated maintenance. his experience has spanned long-term database administration, consulting, and\u00a0entrepreneurial ventures.<\/p>\n

Derik gives the SQL community credit for plugging the gaps in his knowledge when he was a junior DBA and, now that his skills have matured, started SQLHammer.com<\/a> as one small way to give back and continue the cycle of shared learning.<\/p>\n

Derik is the owner and lead author of SQL Hammer, a Microsoft SQL Server resource<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com<\/a>. Follow Derik on Twitter<\/a> for SQL tips and chat<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I\u2019ve found my professional\u00a0maturity\u00a0to be a growing entity. One piece of evidence of this is how I react to being the most knowledgeable\u00a0person in the room. Now, understand I\u2019m not being\u00a0arrogant, I mean, \u201cthe room,\u201d literally. I might be in the room with someone who\u2019s technical knowledge is minimal and they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}