after 7 years with THE medical research university in San Antonio, i have learned the following:
1) micromanagers abound, especially when your boss is an idiot. expect to get nothing worthwhile done and have constant interruptions while making no real progress whatsoever.
2) the level of political infighting would make Washington D.C. proud. no one lasts long in the system without taking sides. and woe be unto you if you choose the wrong side.
3) favoritism... ohhhhhhh, favoritism. let me count the nepotistic ways... your own butt may be on the line regardless of how hard you work, but your manager's daughter or the director's son will be brought on regardless of how many people have to be "constructively terminated" to make it happen.
but that in no way summarizes my experience with THE medical research university in san antonio.
some other fun stuff you can expect working for a University:
- your boss with an MA can't spell, can't manage his way out of a paper bag after 10 years experience, and can't seem to get anything done despite earning 3 times your salary. - if you are not the CYA-type, you soon will be when someone crawls out of the woodwork and blames you for a Solaris workstation not having a login banner or screensaver with said banner, despite that same person making you INTENTIONALLY remove that feature just 3 months before, threatening to write you up as you protest the insanity of the move! - your director, division chief, and manager ALL WORK IN THE SAME HALLWAY! and they all tell you 3 different versions of what they want done. every day. - your manager, who once wrote you up for suggesting a linux-based firewall at the head of the network during the Great Script Kiddie Onslaught of 1999, is now an outspoken advocate of RedHat and refuses to let you work on any linux-related project out of spite. including the cluster. which runs telnet on every node. - you stay late to work on certain systems because "the users' home directories are on that server" and the system can't be taken down during 8-5 hours, and even come in to work odd weekends to get mass-patching done (remember, we do everything by hand at THE medical research University), but leave 5 minutes early one afternoon and get a bad performance evaluation for "attendance". - you might have access to USENET, LUG's, SIG's, tech info libraries, Developer's Networks, wiki's, and Google, but if you don't call Sony on the phone when that monitor's refresh rate looks funny and actually try to TALK TO A LIVE HUMAN BEING AT SONY ABOUT IT - reprimand. don't call Quantum and DEMAND an advance replacement on an out-of-warranty 10-year old SDLT drive without determining if it's the media itself that's bad - reprimand. in fact, we have a joke at THE medical research University. when anything goes wrong with ANY OBJECT in our department, no matter how obscure or non-computer related, we attempt to call the manufacturer and demand service. hence, "call Sony", or "call Linus", or even "call Microsoft" (yes, i have been told that) - no one in our department gets a raise. ever. EVER. (did i mention that no one gets a raise?) no COLA, no inflation-adjustment, no nothing. - despite having "no money", your boss orders DLT tape drives like they're going out of style. need a copy of Windows 2000 Server to make password and account administration on the 30 PC's easier? sorry bud, no money. but help me unpack this brand new Sun Blade 2500 i just got for checking my email. - linux is bad, says your boss, but wait! linux suddenly GOOD! linux GOOD if it comes in a shiny box! pass Go and give RedHat $10k/yr for support. don't forget to call RedHat if you suddenly can't print with the 'tar' command one day. - one day, you bump into another guy who you thought was working in a different department - turns out he has the EXACT SAME POSITION YOU DO! and you have the same boss! and you both work on the same projects! can you say WTF? (and it's been that way for 3 of the 7 years). expect users to
Slashdot Mirror
after 7 years with THE medical research university in San Antonio, i have learned the following:
1) micromanagers abound, especially when your boss is an idiot. expect to get nothing worthwhile done and have constant interruptions while making no real progress whatsoever.
2) the level of political infighting would make Washington D.C. proud. no one lasts long in the system without taking sides. and woe be unto you if you choose the wrong side.
3) favoritism... ohhhhhhh, favoritism. let me count the nepotistic ways... your own butt may be on the line regardless of how hard you work, but your manager's daughter or the director's son will be brought on regardless of how many people have to be "constructively terminated" to make it happen.
but that in no way summarizes my experience with THE medical research university in san antonio.
some other fun stuff you can expect working for a University:
- your boss with an MA can't spell, can't manage his way out of a paper bag after 10 years experience, and can't seem to get anything done despite earning 3 times your salary.
- if you are not the CYA-type, you soon will be when someone crawls out of the woodwork and blames you for a Solaris workstation not having a login banner or screensaver with said banner, despite that same person making you INTENTIONALLY remove that feature just 3 months before, threatening to write you up as you protest the insanity of the move!
- your director, division chief, and manager ALL WORK IN THE SAME HALLWAY! and they all tell you 3 different versions of what they want done. every day.
- your manager, who once wrote you up for suggesting a linux-based firewall at the head of the network during the Great Script Kiddie Onslaught of 1999, is now an outspoken advocate of RedHat and refuses to let you work on any linux-related project out of spite. including the cluster. which runs telnet on every node.
- you stay late to work on certain systems because "the users' home directories are on that server" and the system can't be taken down during 8-5 hours, and even come in to work odd weekends to get mass-patching done (remember, we do everything by hand at THE medical research University), but leave 5 minutes early one afternoon and get a bad performance evaluation for "attendance".
- you might have access to USENET, LUG's, SIG's, tech info libraries, Developer's Networks, wiki's, and Google, but if you don't call Sony on the phone when that monitor's refresh rate looks funny and actually try to TALK TO A LIVE HUMAN BEING AT SONY ABOUT IT - reprimand. don't call Quantum and DEMAND an advance replacement on an out-of-warranty 10-year old SDLT drive without determining if it's the media itself that's bad - reprimand. in fact, we have a joke at THE medical research University. when anything goes wrong with ANY OBJECT in our department, no matter how obscure or non-computer related, we attempt to call the manufacturer and demand service. hence, "call Sony", or "call Linus", or even "call Microsoft" (yes, i have been told that)
- no one in our department gets a raise. ever. EVER. (did i mention that no one gets a raise?) no COLA, no inflation-adjustment, no nothing.
- despite having "no money", your boss orders DLT tape drives like they're going out of style. need a copy of Windows 2000 Server to make password and account administration on the 30 PC's easier? sorry bud, no money. but help me unpack this brand new Sun Blade 2500 i just got for checking my email.
- linux is bad, says your boss, but wait! linux suddenly GOOD! linux GOOD if it comes in a shiny box! pass Go and give RedHat $10k/yr for support. don't forget to call RedHat if you suddenly can't print with the 'tar' command one day.
- one day, you bump into another guy who you thought was working in a different department - turns out he has the EXACT SAME POSITION YOU DO! and you have the same boss! and you both work on the same projects! can you say WTF? (and it's been that way for 3 of the 7 years). expect users to