Slashdot Mirror
What You Should Know When Taking a University Job?
FyreWyr asks: "I've been working professionally for more than 10 years, and recently returned to school to refine my skills, and potentially, to change careers. In the meantime I'm seeking income from my University in the most practical fields, i.e., my old technical career (programming, networking, etc). So, a programming job has become available, and with it, questions. While I've done my share of business consulting, I've never worked within a University pay system, and further, project interviews have not revealed a clear project scope. Wanting to accept the project, I'm now working on a basic project overview WITHOUT compensation so that I can (get it reviewed, and) kick out an appropriate time estimate and salary. Can anyone provide 'wish-I-would-have-known' issues regarding the politics, expectations, and monetary realities of working for a major department within a large University?"
Imagine, as a Linux Administrator with over 7 years professional experience, you are put under the technical guidance of a physicist with 0 years professional experience as a system admin. Yeah, the University scene can truly suck.
They feel good paying alot of money, whether or not the end result works well or is anywhere near worth it...
If you really want to get the most bang for your buck, get a research position. It will help immensely if you apply to graduate school.
Err, I mean Parking Services.
You will be working with Management that does not know anything, and will have student help that does not know anything yet you will be required to bring the project in on time and on budget. You will be required to make sure the "students" come first and then the professors and then the administration and then maybe your project when scheduling test time before deployment which means you'll get some test time about 1AM Christmas morning. On the other hand if you are even reasonably competent, don't molest the students, be nice to the profs, suck up to the Administration you have some very good job security but the pay will suck.
Don't let them claim everything you've ever produced in or out of the University...
In my experience, the highest order bit in deciding to work for a University is understanding that they sell degrees. That implies that there's a pecking order that is fundamentally related to degrees because they are pretty much honorbound to make what they sell seem important.
I recall an interview at Stanford when I was just starting out in my career. I'd only ever worked at MIT as research staff since graduating with my Bachelor's, and I was interviewing with a PostDoc there. He was very arrogant and said to me, "I can't tell you what you'll be making, but I can tell you what you won't be making, which is $39K." (This is a long time ago, and the absolute magnitudes will likely have changed, but the numbers are important relatively speaking within this story.) It immediately alerted me to the fact that (a) salaries are dictated by degree, and (b) presumably since he had a PhD and I did not, he was saying that my salary would peak just below his. After this arrogant treatment, you can imagine I was pleased as punch to get an offer of $38K, even though I got better offers from the commercial world and decided to go with one of those. An unanswered question is whether my salary would have peaked at the entry level or if the PostDoc was just confused. But surely equity is going to suggest that your salary won't easily exceed professorial salaries, and such salaries may be publicly findable, so it's worth finding out what your upper salary bound is.
Incidentally, related to that, Stanford had a thing (at least then, perhaps now) where they had a four day work week and the last day you were allowed to consult to augment your salary. Someone I talked to there claimed to me that often people could double their salary in that one extra day on the commercial world by leveraging the prestige of being a Stanford employee in getting the consulting work. Whether that's true or not again will vary with university and circumstance, but certainly knowing whether outside work is encouraged or discouraged is worth knowing up front, since clearly it can make a serious dent in your pay.
Knowing, too, what your publication rights are is something you should know at any job, university or not, in case research you're doing wants to be written up in a book, not just a lab paper.
But back to the University and Politics, the other thing is that if you're not a PhD, then you probably won't get to be Principal Investigator on grant proposals, and that means you'll be constantly in the shadow of someone else no matter how good the work you do is. There may be exceptions to this, but it's worth assuming this is true unless strong promises are made to the contrary. Usually there's the subtle cue that the position is titled "Scientist" and not either "Engineer" or "Associate" that says "we actually respect you rather than merely tolerating you because you can do cool things we need".
As to salary, the rule I learned is to expect half of an industry salary for a very prestigious University, but to expect it to inch up to larger amounts as the University is less well-known and/or more focused on teaching than research. That is, if you work for Harvard or MIT you're expected to sacrifice half of your salary to just having the coolness of the name, but if you work for Foobar City University, they know you aren't there because of the prestige so they'd better come much closer to industry wages even though you're still expected to cut them a break. And yet, on top of this, if you don't have that all-important PhD, expect them to treat you less well even after you've made this financial sacrifice.
Note: In fact, MIT treated me quite well as a staff employee. This note might sound like I'm dissing them for a bad experience, which is not so one either account--neither was my experience bad nor am I dissing them. But I am saying that I believe there are limitations to how good it can get in a place like that. Much of the information I've gleaned in here is info I've picked up along the way later in my career from here and there, and I'm just using these names as examples and offering this info in the strongest possible terms not to get back at anyone but on the theory of "better safe than sorry".
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Expect the most beauracratic administration you'll ever see. With University systems, the administration ppl are the ones who stay forever and gain more power/control everytime a faculty person leaves and they fill the power void. And the new person to fill the faculty position just accepts that that's the way things work.
Likely you'll have good job security, but the pay will suck.
If you are competent and they find you indespensible, then tell them you are doing contract work for other companies and that you need to move to a contract position.
The contractors generally don't have to follow the crappy pay-scale of other positions. And if you settle for a pre-defined position, then it will have to fit in a heirarchy that the admins will make certain that you are as low on the rung as possible. Be a contractor, and they will think they are blessed to have you spending time there.
Trust me, I was a full-timer getting paid crap and no voice. They made a royal stink when I wanted a minor promotion. Now I contract w/ University and make the same amount but work 1/4 the hours, and they feel lucky for having me. lol, cause i'm basically doing the same job.
2: If you're a conservative, keep it to yourself ALWAYS! If you're a liberal (somewhere to the left of Howard Dean) then it's okay to speak carefully and discreetly -- and after everyone else has had their say first.
3: You are in the absolute bastion of Political Correctness. A lot of it will be abysmally stupid. Don't ever point that out to ANYONE! Just nod silently and move along. There's nothing you can do about it anyway.
4: You are in the breeding ground for sexually harassed females in training. Be as respectful to any female -- especially any unattractive female -- as you are to the cop who just pulled you over for doing 50mph in the school zone just as the last points were about to drop off your license.
5: Diversity good! Affirmative Action good! Repeat this loud and often. And never forget that "Diversity" doesn't really mean true diversity. It means their one and only single definition of diversity.
6: Try not to have a job that anyone in the university with power will want to take away from you and give to their best friend/drinking buddy/lazy son who needs a job.
7: If someone tells you that you should be part of the Union, just say yes and hand over your money.
8: Understand that your lower pay should be offset by better medical coverage, retirement (if you stay that long) benefits, and low cost or free educational benefits (which you should take maximum advantage of).
9: If there's a probation period, be ESPECIALLY CAREFUL until you've passed it.
That should get you through the first week.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
One problem that I had working at the university was that the faculty's budgets came from various sources with strings attaches, creating a nightmare for IT projects because each professor spent directly on their IT needs, and never on the overall IT "framework" -- worse, since each paid for the service "directly", they expected the service to be tailored to them.
Imagine having 10 different networks, each with its own server and a different way of running backups, and having no way to share resources because they won't let you!
Argh.
I left after a year.
Since he's returning to school and has some experience in the private sector, I beg to differ... This probably isn't a student-employee-type job, but more likely a salaried position. I've done both, and while I agree with you about student employment, there is most certainly more credibility associated with a salaried position, especially of a technical nature. As a programmer, he will [hopefully] have a chance to work some fairly groundbreaking or research-associated projects, although he did state whether or not this is a major research university he is courting.
I've had my salaried university position for 6 months (just had my performance review today, and it went quite well), and although my department is pretty laid-back, I think it's safe to say that it's not too bad. You actually have to work hard at sucking if you want to be fired. However, if you feel 'stuck' or want your job to provide more value than a paycheck, don't be afraid to network with faculty and staff to broaden your horizons or to find the position that most closely matches your interests or field of study.
Another thing -- beware faculty. My position involves development of course content, advertising material, etc (We are a video-production-oriented dept.) so I deal with all sorts, and I must say that many (not all) professors walk in with an ego so large it becomes the biggest setback to reaching a deadline or goal. Be accommodating in situations like these because they WILL NOT. Just leave your ego at home when you come to work in these sorts of scenarios.
May the threads progress competently.
you forgot to mention one of the biggest pros:
all of the young eye-candy walking around campus.
you won't find that working for IBM or Dell.