T-SQL Tuesday #204 - Are Blogs Still Relevant?

The topic for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday #204 hosted by Jeff Iannucci (Blog) is “Are Blogs Still Relevant?”. Most of the responses will say yes. I’m going to take the unpopular side: mostly, no. At least not the way they used to be.

And yes, I see the irony of writing a blog post to argue that blogs don’t matter much. Stick with me. I’ll get to why I’m still here at the end.

The Audience Moved On

Think about how you solved a SQL Server problem ten years ago. You Googled the error message, landed on a blog post or a Stack Overflow thread, cross-checked Books Online, and eventually stitched together an answer.

Now? You paste the error into an AI and get an answer in seconds, tailored to your version, your query, and your particular mess. No ads. No scrolling past someone’s life story to find the script.

Books Online, KB articles, Stack Overflow, Reddit, other people’s blogs: I don’t visit any of them the way I used to, and I doubt I’m alone. Even Google now answers with Gemini at the top of the page before you see a single link. The search engine that used to send readers to our blogs is quietly replacing the click.

If readers aren’t coming through the front door anymore, it’s fair to ask who the blog is for.

The Math Never Really Worked

Let’s be honest about the numbers. Outside a handful of big names (yes, BrentO, I’m looking at you), most SQL Server blogs have very small audiences. Comments are rare. A post can eat an evening or a whole weekend of writing, testing, and screenshots, and the reward is a few dozen views and a spam comment offering SEO services.

Nobody in this niche is retiring on ad revenue. There’s no breakout SQL Server podcast either. Much of the time it’s the same small circle of people reading and promoting each other’s work.

The one exception that makes complete sense is consultants. If you sell expertise by the hour, blogging is marketing, and every post is a business card. I’d do the same in their shoes. For the rest of us with a W-2 job, the return on investment is a lot thinner.

The Career Artifact Is Fading

I’ll give the pro-blog crowd this one, partly. A blog has been a career artifact. Jeff’s own story about that 2009 interview question proves it once mattered.

But when was the last time a hiring manager pulled up your blog and read three posts to vet you? They’re busy. They skim your resume, maybe your LinkedIn, and decide whether you’re worth a phone screen.

If anything reads your blog these days, I expect it’ll be an AI tool HR uses to scrape your online footprint and decide whether you’re a “fit.” Your carefully crafted post on parameter sniffing becomes one data point in a profile you’ll never see.

So yes, it’s still a career artifact. It’s just a less relevant one every year.

The Elephant in the Server Room

Then there’s the platform itself. SQL Server faces real headwinds. Postgres keeps gaining ground, and Microsoft hasn’t always done right by its beloved RDBMS. I won’t belabor it, but the writing is on the wall.

Between that and the shift to AI, those of us still writing SQL Server deep dives are getting nudged into the same box as the COBOL folks and the AI curmudgeons. Not a box I’m eager to climb into.

Community, Not Family

You’ll often hear the SQL community described as a “family.” I get the sentiment, and I’ve met plenty of good people through it. But I don’t buy the framing.

Corporations love that word too. Every company is “a family” right up until the reorg. Scroll LinkedIn lately and count the green #OpenToWork circles on your friends’ profile pictures; it’s a bloodbath out there. I’ve been on the wrong end of one myself. In business, there’s no such thing as family, no matter how kitschy the culture deck gets.

The community is better than that, but it’s still a professional network. These are colleagues and peers: great for sharing knowledge, swapping war stories, and pointing you to the right trace flag at 2 AM. When my time comes, the people I hope I mattered to are my wife and my son. That’s not a knock on anyone here. It’s just where the things that matter most to me live.

So Why Am I Still Here?

Fair question. If blogs matter less every year, why keep one?

Because the reasons that are left aren’t about the audience. They’re about me.

I own it. LinkedIn, X, and whatever comes next can change the rules overnight. This corner of the internet is mine.
It’s a career diary. Writing something down forces me to actually understand it, and it leaves a record of what I was working on and thinking about at the time.
It shows I’m still learning. It might help in a future job hunt, even if nobody reads it closely. It’s proof I’m doing things above and beyond the W-2 job.

So, are blogs still relevant? For readers, less and less. For writers, maybe, as long as you’re honest that you’re mostly writing for yourself.

Thanks to Jeff for hosting and for a question that made me think harder than I expected. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments. Statistically, nobody will.

Thanks for reading!