Interview with Dean Ellis

Dean Ellis is a Senior Support Engineer and Support Group Manager at MySQL AB. We first spotted Dean in the #mysql channel on the Freenode IRC network (irc://irc.freenode.net/#mysql), assisting many other users with his expertise.

What tasks are you responsible for now?

Dean: As a Support Engineer in the MySQL Support team, I am responsible for providing support to our customers, consultants, sales representatives and of course to the community at large. I also manage one of our internal support teams.

Aside from support, I also do some development work and am responsible for our Veritas Cluster Server agent.

Within your work, what item that you were involved with are you most proud of?

Honestly, I really am most proud of our high quality customer support. There really is no comparison.

And what has been your biggest challenge?

Adapting to a "support" role (albeit one which is more "remote consulting" than "tech support") from a DBA/developer background. Of course, that does help me "relate" to what people who actually use our products in the real world need, since I've been there, myself.

What are you currently working on?

Solving customer problems takes up almost all of my time; what is left over I use to passionately advocate the needs of individuals and small/medium organizations. :)

If you are willing to tell, how old are you?

Assuming I make it to my birthday this year, I will be 34.

What's your background in terms of education?

Nothing relevant; I am almost wholly self-taught so far as anything computer-related is concerned.

I started programming in assembler in the early 80s on Commodore Vic 20s, Commodore 64s, Commodore Amigas. I taught myself C when I had to start developing on x86 computers because I dislike the architecture. I taught myself SQL and all that goes along with it in the mid/late 90s because it was finally becoming less useful to write your own data engines for general cases.

Almost everything I've ever done was for business (whether my own, my family's or my employers and their clients), which has no doubt colored my views on a whole host of things.

Describe your work environment for us?

Comfy chair; desk; wall of computers. I work from a home office near Nashville, Tennessee in the USA.

I had actually spent several years telecommuting prior to joining MySQL, and have been "online" since 1982, so it is not so very much different than "normal" to me. The primary advantage [of working in a virtual organization] is reduced distractions, and being able to shape my environment in whatever way I find most comfortable.

I guess the main disadvantage is that some people get lonely. For me, though, it is simply the time zone differences, which can sometimes make it difficult to reach someone.

The biggest challenge is the sheer volume of email involved, which has made me more aware than I had ever been just how useless nearly all email clients are for serious work.

And what do you do outside working hours?

I spend time with my wife and our daughter, but aside from the obvious I also usually do some programming or writing or play guitar, or play World of Warcraft. Chess and poker if I can find a game. I almost always have a book or 10 within reach that I am reading, as well.

How long have you been with the company now, and describe how we got hold of you from the IRC channel?

Not so long! I joined MySQL in October 2003.

I started hanging out in the #mysql channel on the Freenode IRC network in May 2002, helping people with MySQL (and other databases) for free, mostly as a way of contributing something (other than the occasional bug report) to MySQL. During the course of that, I suppose I caught the attention of a number of people from MySQL AB. A position eventually opened up in Support, so I submitted my resume, went through the interview process and here I am.

(I can still be found on Freenode sometimes.)

Cool! Yes, we've found many excellent people through the public IRC channels (take note, wannabees!) Why specifically you wanted to work for MySQL?

Two words: Monty and David :) Beyond that, it gets complicated. I probably cannot answer that completely without sounding like a recruiter.

The short version is: because MySQL delivers what I wanted as a "consumer", and I wanted to be a part of helping to deliver the same:

• Small and medium businesses/organizations have as critical a need for relational databases as anyone, but they simply cannot afford the prices charged by other commercial vendors.
• Extending #1, however, they need the comfort of knowing that this is a commercial company with an open source product, not just an open source project and not some "abandonware" from a company that could not figure out what to do with it. They need to know that there is a vision and a plan for long-term viability; that there are professional services available if needed; that their concerns are important and will be heard and addressed.
• Open source. In a previous job, we burned over 3 "man months" trying to fix what appeared to be bizarre problems in our code that turned out to be faults in proprietary, closed source software we were using, that the upstream vendor eventually got around to patching. And, of course, the complete inability to add features (that we we really could have used) to those proprietary layers was also frustrating.

So, basically, the company is on a course I believe in, and I just wanted to be a part of it. I didn't even realize how great the "culture" is until after I was hired.

For how long and from what version have you used MySQL?

The details are sketchy, but I think I started with 3.22 and 3.23 in 1999; nothing serious initially.

In 2000 and 2001, we began using MySQL 3.23 and 4.0 to both offload some of our MSSQL/Oracle systems on cheaper hardware, and to deliver some more cost-effective datamart/warehouse solutions to our customers.

By 2002 we were using MySQL exclusively (for example, for school information systems by which entire school districts manage every piece of data about all of their staff and students and so forth). It is probably safe to say that we were using every feature available at the time, from the storage engine concept to particular MySQL extensions to SQL to adding our own features to the server and so on.

You mentioned you also submitted some bug reports. Any patches too, since you are a programmer?

No server patches (too busy with our own software), but some occasional suggested patches for things like mysql++, MySQL Control Center and so on.

There were several feature requests, mostly related to InnoDB (multiple tablespaces; some changes to the way auto_increment is handled).

Is there anything else you would like to say or tell?

Hi mom!

I'd like to thank my wife Laurie and our beautiful daughter Kristine, the producers and directors, the writers who do a truly thankless but wonderful job, the camera crew and, most of all, my fans.

Haha. Welcome to the MySQL Oscars! Can you provide me with at least one photo of you, outside of your work environment?

Sure, this is from New Orleans, while my wife and I were on our honeymoon.

Cool, it'll be placed next to the interview. Thanks for a great chat, Dean. It was both entertaining and informative, an excellent combo.