Experts in Postgres and Open Source Infrastructure

In the 2017 article we referenced to /r/postgresql which at the time had 5,100 members. It now has 25.5k. In the same time period as pgsql-general, it generated 175 messages among community members (20 posts, 155 responses). Similarly, we mentioned the Slack channel which at the time had 1100+ members. It now hosts 18.3k subscribers with similar activity of the subreddit. The People, Postgres, Data Discord, which did not exist in 2017, has 3,579 members and is quite active over its 28 channels. The listed collaboration venues don’t take into account the thousands of members among the international or associated (Brazil, Russia, TimescaleDB, Yugabyte, NeonDB, etc…) Postgres communities.

On Thursday and Friday of this week we will be enjoying 90 degree weather and sunshine in San Jose, California. It will be quite the change from the dark and damp of NW Washington. This is also the first time I will have been on an airplane in almost 3 years. Yes, it really has been that long since the world decided to begin a pandemic. That said, I am …

Over the last 25 years we have interviewed hundreds of people to be a part of our team. As with any good interview, you allow candidates to ask questions about the business, how you operate, what your philosophy looks like, and hopefully what your plan for the future is. My favorite is, “What is something you tell every employee?” Our answer is always the same, “We are never afraid to fire a client” and the response is almost universally “that’s refreshing.”

Recently I received a kind email from a client and friend in the Postgres Community. It struck a chord because she had listened to my podcast, hosted by Beautiful Strength, which was about having chronic illnesses while traveling in a bus and working full time.

Within the podcast, I reveal parts of myself that I don’t normally share with my team members, let alone with my clients. Until …

At Command Prompt, we rely heavily on peer review for the success of our clients. We believe that the best quality work is provided when there is no silo and when team work, no matter how much or how little, is a part of the day-to-day. When a group of individuals is encouraged to work together in an effort to provide high quality work and learn from each other, you’re …

Command Prompt has been providing infrastructure support to enterprises for over 20 years. As we are the only Postgres company still operating since the 90s, how is it that we’ve stayed standing? The answer is simple; we as a company and as a community firmly believe in the power of professional development. We frequently encourage everyone in our team, from interns to owners, to continue to learn and grow, both …

Now that it’s been over a year, we thought it would be good to revisit the How to Achieve Success When Working From Home blog from March 2020. The idea of the original post was to help those who were challenged by the new work-from-home environment by sharing the knowledge that we’ve gathered over 15 years of working from home ourselves. Much has changed since that post was published, and …

I had an opportunity to sit down with Mark Porter, the CTO of MongoDB to discuss PostgreSQL, Aurora PostgreSQL and MongoDB. Mark is one of the creators of Aurora PostgreSQL and now enjoys a leadership role at MongoDB. There are two episodes:

• Engineering Culture
• The aha moment

It is important to reach out to leaders in communities to understand how they succeed. Mark has over 30 years of experience in …

The purpose of professional development is to strive to be better, to perform more effectively, to reach a higher professional level, and to know more in a world full of knowledge. While there are many continuing education classes, training, research, and reading opportunities, often these don’t fit our specific needs. Understanding how one learns may also impact how they should go about professional development. Sometimes thinking outside of the box …

In many industries, professional development has grown from a nice to have on the side of the employer to a must have for workers. In this blog, we’ll use teachers as a case study to explore how mandated professional development isn’t the answer, and how individuals need to be investing in themselves and the skill of adaptation, written from the perspective of a student in a remote learning setting.

In …