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?"
(1) smile, nod... repeat...
(2) While doing (1), watch out carefully for impossible/stupid features proposed by the middle management
(3) Return to (1).
...know if it was once the set of a "College Girls Gone Wild" movie.
Freshmen hotties, drunk sorority chicks, raging parties that involve underage drinking and streaking.
Holy shit, what the fuck am I talking about? I am getting old :)
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.
Always have a scapegoat it's the motto of universities. Always have a fallguy. Someone you can point the finger at, because realize you will be blamed for something that has absolutely NOTHING to do with you at some point.
"The program doesn't run on windows."
"You asked for a linux platform, it's running flawlessly on linux."
"TOLD YOU GUYS, IT'S JOHNS FAULT IT DOESN'T WORK!"
believe dat!
Could it really be that much different than working for a large, faceless corporation? The same problem seems to crop up wherever one works--dealing with other people.
Personally, I've never had a job that the most challenging part of the position wasn't learning to get things done by 'working the system.' The technical aspects of the job paled in comparison.
Make sure you have a written agreement about policies and what you're job is in explicit details and what they are giving you and have it signed by yourself and a Uni representative. This way if they say "oh we never said we'd do that for you", you can save your ass and whip out your contract, saying, "Yes. You did." :)
Oh yeah and don't forget about the partying ^_^
Please go thru the last week or so of http://userfriendly.org/static/ cartoons. It will prove enlightening.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You will get paid terribly. However, being only moderately competent is enough to hold your job. Since performance and pay are not strongly linked, you can work at a leasurly pace without worrying much.
Adjust to the academic lifestyle. Your principle worries should be:
What parking do you get and how much will it cost you?
Do you get an office? Is it a shared office?
If you are or plan to attend school there, find out what the tuition practices are - some schools significantly cut tuition costs, which will more than compensate for the lower salary (especially since, if I recall correctly, the tuition break is tax free). Also ask about the ability to get in there - when I was looking at a Uni job, they basically said "we can't guarantee it, but we do know a lot of people in the school"
A lower salary, counterbalanced by tuition and other benefits, may be reasonable trade off. Just make sure you will get the benefits before you take the job.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Specifically, make double extra sure that your first paycheck is going to go through. Make sure your appointment paperwork gets from your boss to the department, from the department to the College, from the College to University Payroll, and that you're "in the system" at every step.
Be a very squeaky wheel, but keep in mind that no one likes a pushy newcomer. I've you're too squeaky, you go from "squeaky wheel" to "boy who cried wolf" (for any future encounters with the paperwork gods and goddesses).
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
If you're working for the University, forget all that real world experience. Just do what you feel like, look busy, and program something crappy right before they ask for it. That's what I did. Actually worked out suprizingly well.
I picked a new language for every project I worked on, learning java and perl while getting paid. Not to mention I learned how to raise levels on a mud while looking productive.
Then again, I was young, not taken seriously, and underpaid. YMMV
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
I worked in industry, returned to school and took a position much like you are doing now. I'm now back in industry, but it was fun.
Issues:
1. Scope Creep - like anywhere but with "free"
2. Extreme Personalities - the Academic world thrives on personality clashes.
3. Competence - if you are good at one thing they'll want you to do 100, make sure you draw the boundaries in a nice way.
Benefits:
1. Very amiable atmosphere
2. Softer politics - usually they just want you to look stupid, not get canned.
3. Great intellectual environment - it truly is nice to be surrounded by people with an average IQ above 110.
Go for it, be professional and courteous and they will love you because they are not often privy to true professionals who are good at what they do.
Take things in stride and try not to let the little things get to you because there will be a culture shock.
I work as a helpdesk manager/administrator at a major university.
I have to say I like the variety of people I deal with. We support macs; OS 9, OS X (jaguar,panther, and now forced to support tiger,), win 98, w2000,etc.. and have a pretty heterogeneous computing environment. Our end user base is very eclectic (as opposed to working at a company and being "nick the computer guy", so lots of potential to meet intelligent phd's, etc... Plus a college can foster a good learning environment. Benefits are very good, but needless to say, pay is not so good. Especially if you live in a coastal city where a decent 1 bedroom apartment costs $1100+/mnth. My boss is a network admin, and this helps quite a bit, as opposed to a business manager or a non-techie,. A good job environment also depends on the trust you build with the people around you. If people trust you, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and as long as you can prove yourself you can use open source apps like request tracker, openssh, linux distros, or whatever you like to get'er done. This is my first job after graduation from college, so I can't complain.However, unless you're a director/high level manager type, you can forget about saving money for a house, etc.. (of course depends on your location...).
Bottom line you can shoot for two things: you can shoot to settle and not expect to get any raises but secure your benefits, and a decent retirement package. OR you can be young, out of college, and looking for a good experience, pending you find a good boss that will keep pushing you uphill. If you're looking to make a lot of dough and want to do develop new novel software and products wth 80 hour work weeks, join a startup.
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
You have to know how to ask. Instead of asking for the University to pay for your housing, ask if you can sleep in the lab.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Thus my suggestion go ahead and make use of all those facilities and "extras". If I don't get paid a lot so what at least I don't hate my job and I am not getting laid off any time soon.
I'm in pretty much the same boat you are in. After working for 8 years, I decided to go back to university to finish my Bachelor of Computer Science, which I pissed away (read: failed out of) the first time due to laziness and having too much fun. One difference this time around is that I'm more mature, and so I'm doing much better academically. The other major difference is that tuition here costs about 2.5 times as much now as 10 years ago! So I, too, am working at the university in the summers to earn enough dough to pay myself through school. I'm doing coding and research for a CS prof, and enjoying it. I don't know what you're so hesitant about. Take the job (if they'll give it to you) and have fun with it. Politics? Who cares? Every place of employ has politics. It really shouldn't be too bad for you, because a) you're not very important; and b) it's just a temporary job, not a career. As for salary, don't expect to make anywhere close to what you would in the real world, despite your qualifications. I'm making about half. If you demand too much, you might be passed over for any one of a hundred eager young students. Go into it thinking of it more like a co-op job than some kind of high-paying consulting job. This is still much better than the alternative, which is a low-paying deadend job like McD's. It's also much more interesting work, and it will look good on a resume. Stop talking about it and just do it. You really have nothing to lose. Working for a prof is not too bad. My boss is pretty easy going. He's flexible about what I do; I get to lead as much as follow. The pay is not coming out of his pocket, so he does not put too much pressure on me. Also, he's pretty busy, so I only talk to him 1-2 times per week. The rest of the time I'm doing my own thing, working at my own pace. Oh, one other advantage is that this can give you a taste of what research is like. This will help you decide if you want to go on to post-graduate studies. I know I don't; I'm itching to get back into the workforce. But this has still been a good experience. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any specific questions.
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.
I worked at a large university for a short time about 5 years ago. It was the worst experience of my life. I too had returned to take classes and a job became available. It should have been a great job. The hours were awesome, the pay was ok and school was free. Unfortunately my boss was a complete psycho. I really wanted to work but she didn't want me touching anything! One day she stood in my office door and stamped her foot while yelling about something I did that she didn't like. I finally gave up; I set books (mainframe programming) up on my desk as props and did my homework. When you interview, listen carefully and watch the people you will be working with. Sometimes years of being opressed by the social order in that type of environment drives people nuts....
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."
If you are given a budget, spend all of it, if you spend less, your next year's budget will be based off what you actualy used, not what you were alloted. If you manage to do things more inexpensivly that you had thought, upgrade your plan to use it all. You don't get to keep money left over at the end of the year, and any surplus will be deducted from your budget for the next year.
For example, you have a $5,000 budget based on the cost of a server you need to perchase. Between the time you sent in the request (for $10,000 for redundant servers) and the time it came throug, the cost of the server fell to $4,300. If you buy only that server, saving $700 from your estimate, the next time you send in a request for a $5,000 peice of equiptment, you will only get $4,300. If you upgrade a few options and spend $5,000 you will get the full amount next time you make a request.
Counterintuitive to say the least.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Did you ever happen to think that this person may be a woman and COMPLETELY UNINTERESTED in the prospect of "hot women" as you (and several other insensitive clods) so eloquently put it?
:p
Oh, who the hell am I kidding, this is slashdot. Of course you didn't.
As somebody who actually work for a university, here is my take.
First, remember one important fact: the university exists for education. While I have no idea what kind of position you are really taking, if that is a support department job for teaching/research, remember your job exist so that you can offer the service for researchers/faculties/students so that their educational (or research) experience is more enhanced.
While this seems a logical simple idea, many non-academic departments have no idea on this at my institution (and many other ones). Often, purchasing department have all the sorts of crazy rules that we must comply, and ordering sometimes takes as long as 6 months here. Worse, sometimes, the order we made somehow gets lost in the system that we have to re-do the order (2-3 months after we originally make the order). Those people prevent us from doing our research and teaching sometimes. Coming from an academic department stand point, that is completely screwed up.
Second, don't expect much in pay. When we were interviewing candidates a few months ago for one of our staff position, the top candidate (and he was really good) didn't take the job in the end, as the pay isn't good.
Third, for the most part, staff jobs at a university could be very flexible. Many people work less than 40 hours/week (and getting paid for 40 hours). I swear our secretary works only 25-30 hours/week (she comes in often late, leaves early, takes several breaks throughout the day, takes 1.5 hour lunch at least, etc). Of course, some of us work very long hours, too (I work 60-80 hours/week at work, plus many hours at home). However, in my case, it's not like I have a set hours I need to be in my office and around. I just work that much willingly. Also, during the summer months, some days, I would go home as early as 2 PM.
Fourth, as far as the job goes, it could be very flexible. My job consists of many different things: I am a chemist, network administrator, engineer, programmer, mentor (to students), consultants (to my colleagues), researcher, graphic artist all at in one day. I have learned how to do a lot of things that I doubt if I would have never been able to outside. Of course, I suppose this could change a lot depending upon what exactly is your position is (It appears that in non-academic departments, there are less job flexibility).
Fifth, in many cases, you can dress very casually in academic jobs. I don't think I ever had to wear a tie entire day at my work (although I keep a set of clothes including a tie in my office just in case when I have to). During the summer months, I often go work in shorts and sandals, and nobody question me on that. During the school year, I normally show up work wearing jeans. I don't even own a suit any more (although I have a few jackets).
Sixth, be prepared for some (incredibly) imcompetent and lazy people. I don't mean students. I mean other staff/faculty members. It's relatively hard to get fired in a university (in many places). We have a guy in the accounting who just did not bother to process any payments to the venders for 3 months last year. This guy's primary (and only) responsibility in his job is to pay the bills to the venders, but he did none of that for 3 months last year. This actually screwed up our budget a big time last year (not surprisingly). Well, this guy still has his job in the accounting office, believe or not.
Would I ever give up my job for anything else? I don't think so. I love my job. I worked for a company for a while, and that sucked. My current job is a dream as far as what I concern. Politics could get bad in some places sometimes, but often I can get away with steering clear away from that. If you feel a need for the freedom in your work, academic job could be the greatest thing in the world.
When I was at University the chicks were hot, mature babes. Now, as a longterm University employee, the chicks look like my daughter. I want to make sure they are wrapped up warm instead of wanting to get their clothes OFF. :-(
and I knew someone who worked in a similar field at a neighboring university. I can say it absolutely depends on the university. If you're getting the idea that they don't have their shit together, avoid them like the plague. This is an indication that you'll never get what you need to do things the right way. Or even the half-assed way. The red tape at large, public universities makes most other government organizations look streamlined and efficient. At most universities, perks like health care and pension are being cut to save money, so you don't even have the benefits like you used to. Trust that feeling in your gut that says you're going to get screwed, because you will.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll wipe out the species.
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.
I recently returned to school to work on a PhD after working in industry for seven years. Over the last two years, I've been involved in a number of software engineering projects with scientists and just recently helped hire a software engineer to "replace" me.
Here are some things I've learned:
1) If you're going for a degree, don't mix research and software engineering projects. You'll find yourself spending too much time as a software engineer and not enough developing your research skills. It's ok to have both types of projects, even as part of your official research, but keep the software projects separate from the pure research ones.
2) The only two deadlines that matter are grant deadlines and class deadlines. This is in contrast to working in industry, where there are often many deadlines with many people relying on you to meet them. Research and even academic software development works at a different pace. For the first year, I worked at an industry pace and nearly burned myself out. Then I realized that no one else was working at that pace and I could actually take my time and do things 'right'. This has greatly improved the quality of software I write and helped me hone my research skills by allowing myself the time to explore the problem completely.
3) Everyone is pretty much equal when it comes to intelligence. An earlier poster noted that post docs and other PhDs tend to be arrogant. This is true, but as far as I can tell it's really just a defense mechanism. They're often as itimidated by you (coming from industry) as you are of them. Ultimately, while I've found people's knowledge can vary widely, most everyone you'll work with has the same level of intelligence. And, once you get past the facades, academics are a lot of fun to work with. (and though they'll rarely admit it, they enjoy learning from people with industry experience)
4) The benefits are nice. At my school, the support employees earn competitive salaries ($50k/yr for junior programmers), get 6 weeks of vacation and good health coverage. Couple this with relaxed work schedules and it makes for a nice job.
5) You can't be a full time employee and student at the same time. For legal and practical reasons, pick one or the other and focus full time on it. You'll be saner in the long run. Everyone I know who consults on the side is overwhelmed with work and can't really enjoy the extra money they make. Of course, if you have a family to support, you may have to make some sacrifices (and I'm not talking about the kids).
Anyway, those are some observations. Good luck.
-rockmuelle
I work as an undergrad on a co-op for a major office in my university. I do a ton of research work and programming and work in a very competetive, research driven environment.
:]
The pay isn't the best (I had received offers for more money), but the people I work with and the opportunities I've received are outstanding.
Expect to work closely with a professor, a post-doctorate, grad students, undergrads, and all sorts of folks... and forge good relationships with all of them. that reference from the professor, or the good word from the post-doc when he starts working for IBM (or another random large company) can go a long way.
Look into cheaper (or even free) tuition. I know that the guy next to me gets free tuition in exchange for his work week, so he stocks up on night classes, and has gotten his masters and is working on a PhD.
The work environment is going to be very casual -- as long as you get the job done. I am assigned 40 hours per week (on my word -- no timecard), and I can work whatever hours i want. I've worked nights, weekends, whatever, to fit my schedule best. Eventually I settled into a 7-3 shift (I like mornings) and it was embraced by all my coworkers, who took it to mean that I was very hard working
Make good friends with the office accountant (or secretary, if there is none). Get her/him gifts and engage in conversations. Basically make them a buddy, because you need to make sure your paychecks come through, as well as your reimbursements and travel costs.
My 6 month co-op term is up, but I'm going to be staying on and working for another project. The office got a new project, and was interviewing undergrads for it. They didn't like any of the candidates, so they grabbed me and interviewed me, and asked how I'd like to work for them some more. I accepted and now have another term of work with them, doing some really amazing research work. In fact, we're competing for a very large government check, and if they choose our design and buy our IP, I reap a dividend check, as an undergrad (and my chunk will be large enough to pay my tuition and buy me a house afterwards). So I've got some pretty good inspiration.
To sum it up:
1) make friends with everyone
2) follow up on paperwork, especially with the accountant
3) don't bs anyone -> there are people in the office who know much more than you and, most likely, can call out your BS by pointing to a white paper that says the exact opposite of what youre saying
4) deadlines are going to come. ask for help from your coworkers if you need it. finish early.
5) find a way to get cheap/free tuition. school is expensive. take nightclasses and cheat the system.
hope that helps
-mike
I have worked at a major public university for about 5 years now and what have I learned? 1. If you're working for a public institution, pay raises are far and few in between, especially these days. They're like rumors that are about 0.1% truth. 2. Unlike a private firm of any size, a university's primary goal is academics. As such, employees -- staff and faculty -- have lots of freedom to do things as they see fit (as long as its in accordance to the institution's objectives) and most bosses are open and encourage employees to further their education (besides the fact that most places will pay for it). 3. Pay systems differ depending where you are. I get paid once a month on the first. Its a definite shock especially when you're used to biweekly infusions. I've gotten good at budgetting because of that. 4. Unlike private companies, public institutions don't run on efficiency. Hell, I don't think efficiency is in the top 5 operational priorities. As such, monetary matters can drag on. I know, it takes way too much paperwork to get anything reimbursed. If I were you, don't work for free unless its for some course project or for some research group. 5. Along the lines of academic freedom, projects really aren't planned out when they're assigned to you. Rather, most people care about the destination, not the journey. The method in getting there is up to you. Lots of freedom for you to tinker and try different routes out. I do it all the time for various projects. 6. Make sure to take advantage of the benefits that the university gives you. If you compare the health, vision, dental, and all the other insurances that the university gives versus private companies, you're almost getting everything for free. 7. Universities are much more flexible in terms of work hours and how you work. Granted, this does depend upon your boss but most are quite flexible. I know people that do 4 10 hour days so that they can do 3 day weekends and other more odd schedules. Just make sure you're getting paid and enjoy the ride. The level of stress I have from my job is several degrees lower than anything I had before.
>Why are you asking a bunch of 17 years that have never held a job in their lives these questions?
...maybe because some of us are well-traveled 50-year-olds with 35 years of experience?
I ask a wide variety of people for feedback on most questions.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
i've worked at the university of texas at austin in several departments for about 8 years doing technical work, and still work for the university now. i have worked for about a year and a half in a couple of startups, and done some conslutting on the side over the past 10 years, so i am not speaking totally from within a vacuum of outside experience.
i started out as a student worker, with very little (3 months) outside experience, but with a healthy curiosity and a few years of hacking on stuff on my own time. i have since graduated, been promoted 4 times, achieved approximately an 5-fold salary increase, and changed departments twice. i've had a net very positive experience working at the university, and recommend it to anyone who is not already on the dot-com-dollars treadmill.
however, i think it's a lot like any other job, for the most part--if you can stand the salary, and you like your boss and co-workers and most importantly enjoy what you do, all the piddly shit like appeasing the bureaucracy and occasionally getting trumped by a PhD kind of falls by the wayside.
since i'm basically getting paid the same thing i was as a worker at the startups i was at (minus sometimes worthless stock options and signing bonuses), i include only the pros and cons that are university specific--for instance, i've always had flex time and an extremely casual dress code (tshirts and sandals have always been allowed), both in industry and in academia. and of course, you have to evaluate your situation; i've always worked for research-heavy departments, but a job at the student union (doing the same kind of work) carries a different sort of interaction potential--not so many people who are actually into learning, more morons and bureaucrats.
pros:
- 40 hour work week. i love my work, but even more than that, i love having a life outside of work. i actually get *paid* for any overtime and it is almost never mandatory.
- great job security. if they even want to fire me for any reason not related to breaking the law, they have to give me a year's notice (they have to lodge a complaint that i am told about, and let it sit for a year before i can be dismissed).
- cool toys. we get donations of the darnedest things. i was probably the first person in my state to run linux on a pentium pro (got a prerelease box from intel to do benchmarking on. that took a researcher one day, after which he told me to do whatever i wanted with it). we have some huge clusters, and sun is constantly trying to donate interesting (if not amazing) things to us, like a cluster of thin clients and a beefy server to back them up.
- very relaxed atmosphere; there are deadlines but there aren't many of them and they're rarely hard. nobody has ever said "your failure to deliver on time is costing us $X!"
- some free tuition (currently a $6000/year value if you play the system for all it's worth), potentially leading to a degree if you want it to.
- working in an environment where the value of learning is well-understood, and continued education is encouraged and to some degree funded.
i mostly just enjoy working with smart people, and with people who are motivated to learn about solutions to their problems instead of having me solve the problems for them.
- access to all of the resources of the university: gym, olympic swimming and diving center, libraries, libraries, libraries, museums, university-only events (mo rocca once came to speak; you needed a university ID to get in, for instance. usually concerts, plays, sporting events, etc are cheaper for university personell in addition to students). as well, the university subscribes to a lot of services (lexis nexis, encyclopaedia britannica online, OED online, online magazine/research repositories, etc) to which i automatically get access.
- best 401k plan i've been offered. vests after a few years and gives a 2.3% * (years employed at any salary) * (highest average annua
I think it was Philip Roth in "The Human Stain" that said it best. I'm paraphrasing (because I don't have the exact quote) -
University politics are the dirtiest, because the stakes are so low
1 and 2 I think are true at almost any U. although 1 varies. I have gone through a stretch, of three months now with no actual work, (I work for an adjunct commercial arm of the U., (things have been a bit slow.)) other than some self-generated infrastructure stuff. Four project have been on continuous hold for some time now. That stretch of boredom alone is one of the bigger reasons that I'm leaving. (regarding 2, we had a great admin, reimbursements were *very* fast!)
As far as 3 goes, I'm currently at a military U. I may be one of only two pacifists there. (that is another reason...) Not so much right wing as Ultra-PC. Still a bit disturbing finding yourself occasionally surrounded by heavily armed/hormonal teenagers discussing the kill zone of the modern hand grenade. And the cafeteria is something I have only braved once.
Respond here if you're interested in a job. DB/web/UI programming. 'killer' benefits. Rural environment.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I work for a large Canadian University doing LAN admin support for 14 libraries and it works for me. I won't get rich working here but when I consider the pros and cons compared to public sector jobs couldn't think twice my decision to stay in a university environment. Some of the benefits, 4 day work week in the summer months, 3 weeks vacation a year (compared to the lousy 1 or two week vacation you might get in pub sector), not including the extra week off between xmas and new years, Knowledgeable and reliable team, Good honest managers, centralized it management, I'm even in a frikin union they have to pay me overtime if they want me to work extra. Some of the cons, yes they have committees and useless meetings there is a type of hierarchy but its no worse then anywhere else. Working University is no picnic you have still have deadlines, projects, testing, implementation phases, and people (loosers) can still piss you off. In the end I guess it helps if you work for a big university with a lot of money
Nice pathetic generalization. Slashdot is full of university types.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Working for a university is like kissing your sister. Technically and theoretically it 'counts' as experience but honestly nobody is going to give you credit for it.
... and when you say you 'work for the college' that's the first mental impression they get - and it is going to be a hard sell to overthrow that image. Well that or they remember the BOFH that worked the computer room and will project their resentment onto you (even if only subconsciously.)
Here's the trick - anybody who is somebody went to college and either worked at one of those 'student-work' jobs where they got to goof off for minimum wage, or knew someone who did
\was rejected by the folks handing out the student-work jobs.
\\was poor as hell in college.
\\\still a little bitter about both.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
A confused postdoc. Postdocs have shitty salaries (approximately 2x a grad student salary), at universities at least. I'd expect staff to be paid better tham them.
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.
A confused poster. Principal investigator is a research position, and for various rather obvious reasons (e.g., the funding agency will expect it...), it's expected to be filled by a researcher. A PhD is a "token" that others believe you can do research, without one you'll need some other evidence that you can do that job (e.g., you're famous in the field). A bit of a catch-22 of course, but what do you expect?
I work for a university with about 20,000 students. I am in the library as a tech guy. I get paid 40 hours a week, $12/hr--I have a BS in chemistry from the same school. I worked here as a student, and they offered me a job after i graduated. Basically my job consists of removing spyware.
Salary: I make a lot less than I could be making in a field dedicated to my degree. My prospects for a raise are about $0.50/hr per year--and that is if I am lucky.
Work environment: Very relaxes, I can come and go as I leave, but I always get paid 40 hrs/week. I probably only work 25-30 of those hours, and even when I am here "working" I am browsing the internet or playing nerf guns with the librarians, etc.
Politics: I don't really contact them, except for the old/young gap. I guess that happens in industry as well. Basically, 1/2 of the full-time staffers have been here since the 1980's and the other 1/2 are 2-3 years out of college. You either stay for 5 years or you stay forever (the say). Tension builds up over who is a "real" worker and who isn't, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. We all still get along.
Parking: There will always be less spots each year you come back. THey keep tearing down parking lots for new buildings and we keep getting more students. Plus, the rates go up every year.
Fringe benefits: Free courses (6 undergrad or 3 grad hours a semester--not enough to get out with a 2nd degree anytime soon but more than enough to keep you entertained), medical, dental, life, PTO, free books!, everything the uni has you still get for free, etc etc etc. It is like being a college student and then some.
So the salary sucks, but it is a living wage. I consider this job a transition into grad school, and I am leaving in the fall, along with 4 other full-time staffers that were hired the same week I was (all graduated with me). I guess they will recycle their staff again.
At CSUN we had a small school that closed next to the campu so people started parking there. One of the lots, the one nearest to CSUN had only one entrance so of course during finals some moron parks his/her car right in the entrance and blocks everyone else from leaving. Fortunatly for the car owner there was never a big enough crowd of pissed of students to roll the car. By the end of the day nothing look like it worked on that car, busted lights, bent antenna, flat tires and of course a parking ticket. HAHAHAHAHAHA Ooooo the sweet memories of school life.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I worked as a lecturer for 2 years and ended up hating it with a passion for a number of reasons. This is a bit of a rant, but most of the posters above are very positive, and I think it is important that the other side of university employment is raised.
One of the posters above hit the nail on the head: Universities sell degrees. What this means is that the pressure is on to pass students no matter what. This means that students that know nothing get degrees. I heard of a case where a student went to one of the senior staff members and asked to give his degree back because he had realised that he had learnt nothing! I eventually got sick of being told to adjust the marks to pass more students. We were given "guidelines" about the average number of students that had passed in previous years. These guidelines then became the minimum required pass rate. Even the senior staff who had been presenting the same course at the same level for decades were forced to adjust marks to lower their standards. My conscience could not let me be part of a system where second year electronics students still do not know the difference between series and parallel circuits.
Publication pressure was a major issue. Teaching chewed up most of our time, so there was very little time for anything else. Yet we still had to publish 1 publication credit per year. But there was a catch! A journal paper is only 0.75 credits. And the credit for a paper is split equally between the authors. This meant that a person studying towards a degree (anyone without a PhD) had to produce 3 journal papers per year because half of the credit went to their advisor. The senior staff loved this idea because they got lots of journal publications for an hour meeting a week. The young staff had no opportunity to progress because they always had too much work to ever produce enough publications to be promoted.
Universities are mad about patents and intellectual property at the moment. The upshot of this was that my contract with the university said that anything I thought of in my field of specialisation belonged to the university. Sounds fair? Except that being a lecturer in the department of electrical, electronic and computer engineering meant that that was considered my SPECIALIST field. But that was still not broad enough! The dean of the faculty told me that I was also a specialist in mathematics! The upshot of this is that ANYTHING I did belonged to the university.
And this included consulting - compulsory to establish university credibility and the main way to supplement one's salary. The university forced us to work through their company for anything we did, and that company took 20% of the turnover (not profit) of the project. The problem was that this included nothing. We still had to pay for lab time, equipment usage, lawyers to set up contracts, accountants to sort finances out, etc.. The best bit was that they collected payment from the client, and only way to get our money out of them was through the university's bureaucracy. Basically to do the compulsory consulting we ended up having to jack our prices up by 20% making us uncompetitive, and having to fork out the money to fund the project until the university decided it was time to pay us the money we had earned. It was basically a way for the university to make money for doing nothing while passing the risk to its staff.
In the end I was glad to leave. I do more interesting work, work less hours, get credit and pay for the extra effort I put in, and do not have to deal with the bureaucracy and politics any more.
OK - here's what I've experienced working in Higher Ed for 7 years now...
;) If you're looking to impress and move on to bigger things within the sector make sure you put some effort into working out who really holds the power (usually people like academic standards boards, research committees etc).
:)
There are a lot of similiarities and a few notable differences. The biggest difference comes from a general difference in direction for the organisation. HE institutions aren't profit-focused and as a result a few things happen:
1. The dynamics of the politics is somewhat different - without profitability driving everything forward the prestige is shared out between different departments on very traditional views of their worth rather than any realistic impression of their contribution to the organisation. The main point for you here is that IT gets less prestige in HE than in most profit-chasing organisations.
2. A lot HE places don't run projects on the people+plan+leader+timescale+resources model. They run it more along the person+er??? model. It's really worth checking how a place puts its projects together before signing up or you can end up being lost in an under-resourced project that goes on forever.
3. Resourcing... HE isn't rich but it has access to some resources very cheaply. So - research grads to help out, books, network access, training, labs etc are all likely to be relatively readily available whilst some of the more traditional resources (money, equipment etc) may be a little more scarce.
4. The head-honchos. Working out who you need to impress in a HE institution can be trickier than it looks. Often the people with the power are very much behind the scenes. We love our figureheads and we love, even more, for them to have no real power whatsoever
Hmmm... hope the above is helpful
-- Gaxx
We just interviewed for an IT job at our University and I was on the search committee. Only ONE candidate emailed us back to say thank you for taking the time to meet with them and interview them. They appreciated meeting us, etc... Guess who got the job? Most of the IT folks who interviewed had the same skill sets. It's the people skills that are lacking. One of the best things you can do is buy a book about interviewing and what to do/not do.
I worked for a University for 7 years. 1 year as a research assistant, 1 year as a research programmer, and 5 years as a UNIX system administrator. As UNIX admin I had from 2 to 6 student employees working for me. Sometimes my help was amazingly good and other times it wasn't so hot. Some years we were swimming in money and I could buy anything I needed but other years research grants were lean and I had to make due. One boss was a techie himself and gave me reviews that made it sound like I walked on water, my next boss didn't trust techies and gave me scathing reviews. First the good: there is lots of stuff to learn. Instead of having only one or two different platforms like most companies my department had a few of almost every UNIX box known to man. It was a support nightmare but it was fun to have so many different kinds of toys. Much of the work I did was very cutting edge/early adopter; we were doing stuff years before most businesses were. After my years working in a university I was so strong technically that future "real" jobs were a piece of cake. I did have to scale a learning curve on business and proceedure stuff though. Now the bad stuff: pay, expect to make less than half what you would elsewhere. Speaking of politics, there is an old saying, politics in acadamea are so viscious because the stakes are so low. At universities there is a lot of dead wood. Some managers measure their worth by how many people are under them so they create useless positions to fill. Little wars erupt between rival departments, rival colleges, departments and colleges, deans and their departments, etc. When I started out my attitude was that I was there to help everyone else so I never took sides in any of these little wars. This strategy worked well for the first few years but later when my position was in jeoparty I had no allies to call upon. In my case my job description included a lot of non-technical stuff. I ended up spending half of my time doing procurement, inventory and clerical stuff which was a drag. Before you accept a job be sure you know exactly what your responsibilities will be.