[Courses] [Careers] Maria finds academia

[Maria Mckinley]

On Feb 27, 2005, at 3:32 AM, Mary wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 24, 2005, Maria McKinley wrote:
>> So, I started following that annoying advice, and networking.  Asked
>> around to see if anyone knew anyone that was hiring.
>
> Did you have any particular goal in mind when you started networking, 
> or
> just "here's my skill set... help me out?" Where did you get the
> contacts to network with?
>
At the end, there was no particular goal other than a job, and before 
that I wasn't doing much networking.  I asked everyone I met if they 
knew anyone hiring, and if they showed the least bit of interest, I 
told them what I could do, and what my interests were.  I went to all 
functions related to my department (social hours, talks, etc),  went to 
parties my friends were having, went to talks in other departments that 
seemed related, went to job fairs, talked to professors that I knew and 
felt comfortable talking to, kept bugging my friends, basically 
anything I could think of to talk to as many people as possible who may 
know of a job I'd be qualified for (I'd settle for someone who knew 
someone who might know of a job as a lead and follow it).  It was 
definitely harder to find out about jobs in industry than at my 
University (which is fortunately large, so getting hired here was 
actually a possibility), and I'm not sure what the best way to overcome 
that is.

>> Originally, I was hired to do mostly programming, but after a while
>> one of my bosses hired my boyfriend as a consultant to set up a
>> network for him, and pretty soon most of my duties in that lab were
>> sysadmin.  I learned everything on the job.  I really didn't know the
>> first thing about linux, or command lines, when I started.  I have now
>> worked in the labs for going on 5 years, and I have learned tons.
>
> Would you prefer pure programming work, pure sysadmin work, or a
> mixture?
>
I like that I have learned to do the sysadmin work, but it isn't 
something I'd be interested in doing full-time.  I guess if I could get 
a variety of programming work that would be my preference.  I like 
working in two labs, because I am dealing with different problems, but 
it doesn't have to be both sysadmin and programming to get the variety, 
the programming is varied as well.  I think the thing I prefer about 
programming is that the problems are more contained.  Troubleshooting 
system problems can include so many problems (hardware, software, 
configurations, communication, etc) that it can be difficult isolating 
the problem to a system, much less the exact  problem.  Generally with 
programming if something doesn't work, you can be pretty sure the 
problem is with something you typed.

>> Academia is a great place to get started.  Since they usually can't
>> pay terribly well, they are willing (forced!) to hire people with
>> little experience, and then train them, so it is one of the few places
>> you can get hired without very much experience.  It still definitely
>> helps to know people though.  Asking around about hiring before
>> graduating is definitely useful.
>
> Are there many/any IT staff in that you know of in academia who don't
> have at least a Bachelor's degree?

I have fairly limited exposure to other IT staff at my university, so I 
really don't know.   Certainly there are undergrads working on campus 
in IT, but these are usually work-study sorts of jobs, and probably not 
what you are talking about.   I'm sure it depends on who hired you and 
for what.  I work at a large university (~40,000 students and 24,000 
faculty/staff), so there are almost certainly some IT people who don't 
have a Bachelor's degree!

cheers,
maria

>
> -Mary
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