Note: You can listen to the blog post on the video or read the blog post.
Hello and Welcome.
I am Esther.
I am Peters A I Assistant to create voice overs.
I will simply read Peters blog posts, so that you have a choice of reading the blog post, or listening to my voice.
Hello Gentlemen.
This week I became aware that these data boot camps that are being offered on the internet have prices ranging from 10,000 dollars to 20,000 dollars.
At least those are the prices I became aware of. If anyone has any other information I would be happy to hear.
I had thought they were being offered for around 500 dollars, and even that I would argue is too much.
Having thought on this a few days I thought I would put up an Article on this matter.
Firstly, please allow me to say that these sort of “boot camps” are not how you become great at your job.
And they are most certainly not going to give you what you need to break into a profession and get a job.
This is why I thought they were being offered for around 500 dollars.
I would warn anyone considering buying a boot camp to very seriously consider whether that is the best investment for their money.
So that you know what good education looks like.
On the link below you can go and review the Digital Altitude RISE course to start a business.
This, along with the more basic start up course, and membership of the groups, plus a reselling license for 25% commission, cost two thousand dollars in 2017.
That is what two thousand dollars of training looks like.
One of the most important aspects being that if you resell it you can get your money back.
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So please allow me to share with you the most reliable path to become great at your profession by using myself as a good example.
I will go back to my grand mothers who, when I was a very small boy, would tell me.
“Your mummy works very hard for you making you nice food to eat, keeping your clothes clean, making your bed for you, washing your sheets for you. So you must always find a way to make your self useful for your mummy.”
This made sense to me.
So, by the time I was four I was able to iron the handkerchiefs and tea towels.
I would follow mum around the house reading the newspaper to her while she was doing her chores.
Of course, I had a very limited vocabulary, so every time I came to a word I did not know I would spell it out and mum would tell me how to say the word, and then what it meant.
This is how I first started gaining my vocabulary. Reading the newspaper to my mum to save her time in her busy day.
But, of course, being a little boy, I wanted to be helpful to men.
My uncle was a builder and his son was the same age as me. So one day, when I was 5, I asked him if I could go to work with him and please help him at his job. He said no because I did not know enough to be helpful. He told me I needed to be finished kindergarten before he would let me onto a building lot.
My first day on a building lot I was so excited I was bouncing around like a jumping bean.
I was with my cousin, his son, and we were told to stand a good distance away from the building site and the men went to work. My uncle would yell out the name of the tool he was using and the other men, when they changed tools, would yell out the name of the tool they were using.
This was so we could learn what the tools were. Soon I knew the difference between a claw hammer and a ball hammer. Soon I knew the difference between a fixed set square and an adjustable set square. And so on.
After a few months of this we were given our very first “jobs”. When one of the men needed a tool that was in his truck, he would call out to us to fetch the tool from his truck and bring it to the edge of the building site. We were not allowed on the site itself when we were 6.
In this way we learned the names of all the tools and what they looked like. We learned where each builder kept his tools in his own truck.
Later on, my uncle worked in a transportable home production company and there were lots more tools and lots more men. We ran around getting their tools for them and watching what they were doing.
At the factory there was a big wall where hundreds of tools hung for ready access. And there was also a big “tool room” with rows and rows of shelves and hanging space for tools. When the men finished work they would have a few beers and a few cigarettes to wind down. And my cousin and I would clean the tools and put them into their correct positions for the next days work.
All through this time we would be taught valuable lessons by the men.
I recall one time, when I was six, my uncles power drill either broke or stopped working for some reason. So we went to the hardware store to buy a new power drill. I saw that the power drill he bought was much more expensive than another power drill just next to it. So, being a curious child, I asked him why. His response stuck with me for my lifetime.
“A tradesman is only as good as his tools. You are always better off to buy the best tools.”
I am 6, he is ancient and can build houses. So, I am going to believe him.
Across my childhood I worked for my uncle on building sites. At one stage he built seven homes in seven years and I laboured on the homes as much as I could, to learn as much as I could. I would have a home one day and these lessons may well come in handy. It turned out that happened.
Now, I have put these comments here to make a point.
There is an experiment called “The Five Monkeys Experiment”.
This short video shows you an animation of the theme. It’s worth watching.
We have the saying “Monkey see Monkey Do” for a reason. Even among monkeys the basis of all learning is “monkey see monkey do”. We are no different. Since we were primates we learned by “monkey see, monkey do”.
Even when mankind was hunter gatherers we can be certain that lessons were passed down by “monkey see, monkey do”.
In the trades we have a name for this, it is called Master and Apprentice. For at least the last ten thousand years, the primary way of passing along knowledge has been by the mechanism of Master and Apprentice. And that is what I was doing when I was helping my uncle. I was acting as an apprentice, though, of course, a very basic apprentice.
Both his sons apprenticed to him with the plan to get their builders licenses. Sadly, his son who was my age died in a car accident at the age of 19.
The relationship of Master and Apprentice has been how knowledge has been passed along for millennia. Sure, you can read books. We call this being “book smart”. But reading books is no substitute for the Master Apprentice relationship.
This is why, when I was graduating high school, I applied for more than 100 apprenticeships. I turned down the offer of the most prestigious scholarship in Physics in the country. I knew that doing an apprenticeship would stand me in much better stead to break into a good profession than would doing the most prestigious Physics course in Australia.
In the area of programming an apprenticeship is actually called a traineeship to differentiate it from the labour style of master apprentice relationship. There is no physical labour for trainees as there is with apprentices.
I started my traineeship on January 18th 1982 and I had the opportunity to learn from some very smart men. I took that opportunity and listened and learned as actively as I had when I was a six year old finding out the difference between a claw hammer and a ball hammer for the first time.
For example? What is the difference in passing a pointer by reference, versus passing a pointer by value?
The work I did in my traineeship was light years ahead of what we were being taught in University. In my final year at university our team were the only team to be awarded High Distinctions because our software project, an enrolment system for the university, was so far superior to anything else any of the other graduates did.
I felt sorry for the graduates who had just done university because after three years their level of knowledge compared to mine was pitiful. I had made the right decision going for the traineeship over a full time university position on a scholarship.
My next move was to IBM Australia’s international development lab. Here I understudied to a man named Brian Kent who was recognised as the number one System Architect in the country. Brian did not want me to be on the project as a trainee. He wanted me gone. But I worked very hard and proved that I could make a decent contribution even as a trainee.
As much as Brian did not like me? The lessons he taught me were invaluable in my career. I have been for ever grateful to have been able to work with him.
Next, I went to IBM Marketing. I did my very first data warehousing project in 1991 implementing metaphors data interpretation system. The data interpretation system is now simply called Meta five and I will use that name for the remainder of this article.
I built a third normal form database which was a terrible mistake. I independently invented the idea of multi-level summary tables and that worked to get the sale made and to help my customer make more money.
The meta five software had so many features that we really didn’t know how to use it. So we invited Steve Gordon to come to Australia and help teach us. Steve was a master and a couple of us were his apprentices.
Once we had figured out how to actually use Meta five we found out that dimensional models were a good idea. However, the skills to develop and deploy dimensional models were considered IBM Confidential and I was not allowed to be trained on these things.
In 1992 it was a terrible year in IBM Australia in terms of revenues. At the beginning of 1993 I asked if there could be a budget made available for me to attend the Metaphor Global Users Conference in San Francisco scheduled for September. My manager told me absolutely not. She said that if I wanted to go to the conference then I had two choices. One, I could pay for it out of my own pocket and take annual leave to attend. Or I could bill other IBM Countries during my annual leave allocation, and money earned from those billings could be put aside in an account to go to the conference.
So that year I had to do with no annual leave, and I had to work outside Australia to earn the billings. And I had to meet all my targets inside Australia as well. That’s how I got to go to the Metaphor Users Conference in 1993.
When I was there I heard all sorts of amazing presentations by massive companies like Coca Cola, Wallgreens, Better Homes and Gardens, Proctor and Gamble. NYNEX, a New York Telephone company won the award for most verifiable profit made from Meta five. The manager of the project told the audience that his team were being offered budget they could not spend, and were turning down budget offered by the senior management team.
He said, “Metaphor is such a printing press for money that our management are throwing money at us and telling us to make more money to such an extent we can’t even spend it effectively. We have turned down millions of dollars of budget offers”.
Of course, this is the exact opposite of what most of us are doing. Most of us are presenting proposals to senior management teams or boards and begging for the budget to be allocated. The idea a senior management team would be offering me millions of dollars in budget that I can’t even possibly use over and above the budget I have? Now THAT was a situation I would like to be in.
And, as the story goes, there was this guy who spoke really fast and drew pictures really fast who was the key note speaker that year. The day before I was invited to sit at the table with the Global Head of Coca Cola Business Intelligence. He told us all to make sure we got front row seats for the guest speaker whom he had personally invited.
Who was that guest speaker? That was one Bill Inmon. We remain friends to this day.
I had taken my IBM Customer to the conference, one Colin Stewart. He too was amazed at what he saw. When we went back to Australia we developed a joint proposal to do pure research into building dimensional data models. All these big companies had dimensional data models and we wanted to go in that direction. However, Metaphor would not allow me to be trained in this area so we had to do our own pure research.
The sponsor of the research asked us if we knew anyone at Metaphor he might be able to hire and bring to Australia to help short cut the research. While I was there I had introduced myself to the man Ralph Kimball trained and left in charge in 1989 when he left. We will call him Fred here. So I told the project sponsor about Fred and he agreed to pay the bill to bring Fred to come out and design our base models. I can assure you that was an eye watering bill.
Fred and I remain good friends to this day. He brought me up to speed on the basics of dimensional modelling. And because he was pals with Ralph he introduced me to Ralph via email. That is how I came to be pals with Ralph Kimball. Ralphs apprentice introduced him to me.
I later went to work for Price Waterhouse Coopers where Fred was running the global data warehouse practice from the point of view of models. Fred wrote the Price Waterhouse Coopers data warehousing methodology. And between us we worked out the standards for Price Waterhouse Coopers models.
In 2000 a pal of mine from Price Waterhouse Coopers told me that I just HAD to come and work for Sean Kelly selling the Sybase Industry Warehouse Studio data models. By this time Sean Kelly was known as “The Bill Inmon of Europe”. I could not make it until February 2001.
My whole team and I were made redundant from Informix at the end of 2000 as part of their cost reductions. So I was able to relocate to Dublin Ireland in February 2001, to start my time working for Sean Kelly. I went to the training class and in walked this old guy, quite a short and well rounded guy, looking rather like one of the seven dwarves in fact. He introduced himself and I had never heard his name. No one had mentioned his name in the lead up to my move to Ireland. We will also call him Fred here because the reason I didn’t know his name is that he does not like the limelight.
So the class starts and Fred teaches us the Sybase IWS data models. He teaches profiles and I am stunned because I just spent five years trying to solve the problems profiles solve. So I ask Fred “who invented profiles” and he says “I did”.
So I said, “I thought Sean designed the IWS Models”. And he says “No, I did.”
And just like that, I realised I was in the room with the number one data modeler in the world. We became fast friends. He and his family lived just around the corner from us in Dublin. Even though he was an older gentlemen his wife and children were the same age as Jennifer and our children. So they became fast friends while Fred and I were out on the road working.
I actually had the absolute honour of working with Fred on a project in the US for a couple of weeks in 2002. He was bored and asked if he could come over and help me out. Of course I said yes. As he was drawing diagrams on the white board for how we could solve problems I knew I was seeing the mind of God in action. Fred is the smartest man I have ever met and ever worked with. It was a truly humbling experience. I can never be Fred. I can only do my best.
So Fred and I still remain in touch, though he likes to keep to himself nowadays.
In that class for the Sybase Industry Warehouse Studio models I knew my friend was right. I literally HAD to come and work for Sean Kelly to gain access to those models and implement them.
I did a whole string of installations. Lindorf Financial in Norway. New Jersey Media Group in the USA where I designed the new Media Models in a joint development project. Next was Saudi Telecom, Mobily Telecom Saudi Arabia and Orange Telecom in Romania. A part of my job was to train the local Sybase resellers staff so they could sell and implement the second and later projects in their country.
SAP bought Sybase in 2006. Sean Kelly discussed this with Sybase. He was given permission to create new models as long as we did not compete with SAP. So Sean Kelly and I decided to build new telco models and sell them in the marketplace. We sold Carphone Warehouse in 2008 and Sky Talk in 2010 in the UK. This was before I was doxed and slandered in late 2010. Sean was diagnosed with cancer not long after and retired from working. He passed away in 2012 may he rest in peace.
All that story and all that writing is to say this.
If you want to be great in your profession, no matter what that profession is?
You find the masters of your profession and you go and work for them.
Whether that be as a 6 year old boy working for your uncle on a building site fetching different tools?
Or whether that be implementing the data models developed by the worlds number one data model developer.
You find the masters of your profession and you go and you work for them in a master apprentice relationship.
Early on you do it for very little money because you will make your real money later on.
In my first year working in 1982 I was on 7,696 Australian dollars. I made over 400,000 Australian dollars in 2006. In US dollars my 2006 income was just over three hundred and thirty thousands dollars.
In my 4 years at BHP and my 8 and a half years at IBM, I never once asked for a pay rise. At BHP your salary was set. At IBM I asked my managers to please pay me what they think I am worth. I was consistently paid significantly more than my peers at IBM.
If I can go from 7,696 Australian dollars in 1982, all the way up to 330,000 US dollars by 2006, it’s probably worth listening to my advice.
The only reason I was not able to translate the success of Sean Kelly and I in the 2008 to 2010 period was because I decided to defend the rights of men and boys in keeping a promise I made to my grand father when I was a lad. I did not have to keep that promise. I chose to keep that promise because when I see my grand father again he is going to tell me how proud he is of me that I kept my promise.
You could offer me a trillion dollars. I would not take it if it meant my grand father would not be proud of me when we meet again.
Well, gentlemen, that is my two cents worth on how to be great at your job.
Find a master and go and work for him.
Don’t go to boot camps.
Don’t try and learn to be a master by reading “my top 5 tips for x y z”.
Find a master and go and work for him if you can.
Failing that? Read the books the masters produce.
And gentlemen?
Sadly, right now, I don’t have any jobs on offer because it’s very hard to make sales when you are the second most slandered man in the world. In 2016 I was the most slandered man in the world. When Donald Trump came down the escalator he overtook me!
And with that gentlemen?
I hope you found this blog post funny and interesting.
Thank you very much for your time and attention.
I really appreciate that.
Best Regards.
Esther.
Peters A I Assistant.
