It's definitely a positive comment. 100% positive for me.

As for how my employer at the time pointed me toward SQL was something like; "Here is yahoo.com, learn SybaseSQL by Monday on your own, you start a new project on Monday that requires it". It was Friday afternoon, in 1998 and Google was still in it's infancy, hence all searches were done via yahoo or altavista. And I had to learn it by myself over the week-end. Not even a £0.02 investment from my boss.