Which IT role?

newestUser

At the moment I'm studying for a PhD in Computer Science. I enjoy it (most of the time)! However, I am considering the next step in my career, and I am uncertain.

I love programming, but find software engineering boring. I love to hack out bits of code here and there, quick-and-dirty style. However, coding in industry doesn't work like that. Large programming projects have to be very carefully designed and implemented. And I find all the details involved in this to be quite boring. Utterly necessary, I understand, but hassle. I know every job has it's mundane tasks and strain, but sometimes I think that I'd prefer a different kind of hassle in a job? A different kind of challenge?

I would like a role which isn't completely technical. Although I like working with technical issues, I'd be more happy if I got to interact with people a bit more in my job? Would systems administration give more scope for this? I'd like to know from people who already work in systems-support/sys-admin roles what they think. Does sysadmin work involve more interaction with a wider range of people than programming? Or is it entirely dependent on the position? I'd like to know what attracted sysadmins to that line of work, and not software development, and vice versa.

I'm also not sure that I'd like working in a purely techie company. When I was younger, I worked mostly in techie environments. And now, I don't want to work in these environments. I think I want to try a new environment, new kinds of people, new work-cultures. It's hard to explain how I feel about this, I don't want to insult any people working in techie companies. It's the same in every job. You'll like some aspects of it, and dislike others. I guess I want to go somewhere with a different set of perks and problems.

I'm quite confused at the moment, and would appreciate any thoughts people have on the above.

Thanks for reading!

seamus

Web development may be up your alley, in a small company. Although programming a site can be just like any large programming project, often times you will find yourself coding dirty hacks for bug fixes or to keep the customer happy. Often, even in large sites, the programmers have to meet with the customers - since web programming is very much a made-to-order business, you have to make it exactly what they want (or close to).

There is a technical aspect to it too, where the site may not work as you've programmed due to network/OS/machine issues.

Web designing != web programming. If you haven't a creative cell in your head, that's not an issue.

mountainyman

newestUser wrote:

At the moment I'm studying for a PhD in Computer Science. I enjoy it ... I'd be ...happy if I got to interact with people ...Would systems administration give more scope for this?

DON'T go into systems administration You'll have a doctorate. Going into systems administration is like wiping your arse with it. Get into a top tier consultancy. Go to work in a big 5 bank. Go to work for a high tech in implementation.

Look at Bearing Point, Deloitte's, Havok, Corville, Cape Clear.

In fairness systems adminstration could lead into infrastructutral project management. BUT IT WON'T unless you are targeted to do that.

Decide where you want to be in 5 years and work toward that.

Think about your edge and exploit it.

MM

Rew

Have you considered research? Personnaly I think a PhD is of very little use outside of acedimia.

finlma

I qualified with an IT degree and got sick of programming very quickly.

I got a job as a Business Analyst then for a web development company and really enjoyed it. You have to use your technical knowledge to come up with design solutions, there is some creativity involved and you get to meet people - rare in an IT job.

It is hard to get that type of job though.

I still got sick of it and now I'm trying to become a primary school teacher.

newestUser

Thanks for the replies. Some interesting thoughts here!

Web development isn't something I'd considered. I haven't looked into it in depth, but is it something for which few opportunities exist outside Dublin? I'm not from Dublin originally, and much as I like living here, I don't see myself staying here.

Mountainymans response has been similar to that which I have received from several other people when I suggested I might work as a sysadmin. Of course, none of these responses were quite as graphic as his! I realise that a PhD is not necessary to get a sysadmin job. A PhD is not necessary to get 99% of jobs. I don't want to box myself into a corner because I feel that I can't "waste" my PhD. I didn't study for a PhD because I wanted to get a job directly linked to it. I'd already done a masters through research, and I really enjoyed it. It was interesting work with great perks. It was challenging, stimulating. I thought that I'd like to do more of the same, and I might as well do it when I didn't have kids, mortgage, etc. to worry about. Money/promotion prospects in the short term wasn't an issue. I don't care that my next position won't be 100% related to the area I've been researching. Some people might consider that a waste. I don't, I've learned loads (not just technical knowledge either!) had a great time, even managed to save up a bit of cash, it's definitely been a good move for me. MountainyMan suggested several techie companies I could work in, but as I said in my first post, I'd prefer not to work in a straight 100% tech company. I'm starting to wonder to be honest if I fit into the culture of tech companies. For instance, the founder of Corvil Networks was featured on the Ernst and Young Entrepeneur of the Year several months ago. They had an interview with him, several shots of people at work in the company, and my reaction was, "Ugh". I was relating what I saw to my own experiences, people I've had to work with previously, environments/work cultures I've had to work in, and I have to say I didn't fancy more of that. I realise that I'm veering towards saying "I don't want to work in IT", but I don't want to say something that bold/dramatic at the moment. For now, I just want to find out what options are available to me.

I wouldn't consider research. There are limited opportunities in this field in Ireland, and after spending 5 years with my head buried in books/papers, I'd like a change.

I realise that some of what I said needs to be expanded further, (in particular, why is it I go "Ugh" when I see some tech companies!), but I've got work to do right now!

homeOwner

Can I ask what is the topic of your PHD thesis? Perhaps you could consider becoming an "expert" in that area by concentrating on it solely over the next few years (if it lends itself to that) and in a few years consult in this one niche area only. You could build a reputation and command huge rates if you are any good.

Alternatively you could try setting up your own business. You must have an indept understand on some small area of comp sci to get your phd, maybe develop that into a business.

Sounds like you just dont like the thought of a regular company and that is fine. To be honest, I dont either and am trying to get out of it, like alot of people in IT that I know. Anyway, good for you for thinking outside the box. There are loads of oppertunities out there for someone who is willing to take a bit of a risk and has good ideas.

Eoin

Systems Administration can indeed involve a lot of interaction with people, but it is not something I would do again in a rush.

I love programming, but find software engineering boring. I love to hack out bits of code here and there, quick-and-dirty style. However, coding in industry doesn't work like that. Large programming projects have to be very carefully designed and implemented. And I find all the details involved in this to be quite boring. Utterly necessary, I understand, but hassle

I couldn't agree more - especially after my role has shifted from a quick hit web development type environment to more properly structured OO projects.

Have you covered UML yet? Now that is utterly awful stuff in my opinion.

(The following is my experience only):
Web development may suit you better as the turn around times are generally quicker in my experience. But having said that, now more applications are written in Java and ASP.net (rather than the previously more prevalent scripting technologies), development times and approaches are starting to follow more a traditional software development approach.

There are lots of other roles you could move into - especially in larger companies - but you may have to do your time in a more mundane role first.

Remember that software engineering will vary hugely from company to company. "Software engineering" in one company may be developing Proof of Concept projects that use new technologies using a very ad hoc approach, while it could be supporting an existing bespoke mainframe (or something equally boring) in another company.

With a Doctorate in Computer Science I am sure that you are going to have an excellent knowledge of IT etc, but the chances are that you won't have experience in the day to day life of IT. This is something you will probably have to get used to first before you decide what facet of IT you are going to go for.

uservhy

eoin_s wrote:

Systems Administration can indeed involve a lot of interaction with people, but it is not something I would do again in a rush.



I couldn't agree more - especially after my role has shifted from a quick hit web development type environment to more properly structured OO projects.

Have you covered UML yet? Now that is utterly awful stuff in my opinion.

(The following is my experience only):
Web development may suit you better as the turn around times are generally quicker in my experience. But having said that, now more applications are written in Java and ASP.net (rather than the previously more prevalent scripting technologies), development times and approaches are starting to follow more a traditional software development approach.

There are lots of other roles you could move into - especially in larger companies - but you may have to do your time in a more mundane role first.

Remember that software engineering will vary hugely from company to company. "Software engineering" in one company may be developing Proof of Concept projects that use new technologies using a very ad hoc approach, while it could be supporting an existing bespoke mainframe (or something equally boring) in another company.

With a Doctorate in Computer Science I am sure that you are going to have an excellent knowledge of IT etc, but the chances are that you won't have experience in the day to day life of IT. This is something you will probably have to get used to first before you decide what facet of IT you are going to go for.

I hope not to interrupt the thread but would you be able to elaborate on why you did not like systems administration? What type of admin were you?

newestUser

uservhy wrote:

I hope not to interrupt the thread but would you be able to elaborate on why you did not like systems administration? What type of admin were you?

I'd be interested to hear eoin_s' answer on this too. What kind of place you worked, what your role was, what you disliked about the job...all this would be helpful.

mountainyman

newestUser wrote:

...I realise that a PhD is not necessary to get a sysadmin job. ... I don't want to box myself into a corner because I feel that I can't "waste" my PhD. I didn't study for a PhD because I wanted to get a job directly linked to it. ... Money/promotion prospects in the short term wasn't an issue. ... the founder of Corvil Networks was featured on the Ernst and Young Entrepeneur of the Year several months ago. ...

It isn't wasting the PhD that's the issue. It is maximising its value so 3 years experience with the PhD isn't just 3 years experience.
Why be short termist now?

The founder of Corvil has been dead for some time. The new MD is incompetent.

What about the Civil Service?

MM

newestUser

mountainyman wrote:

. Go to work in a big 5 bank. Go to work for a high tech in implementation.

Look at Bearing Point, Deloitte's, Havok, Corville, Cape Clear.

MM

What kind of work are you suggesting in a big 5 bank? Also, wrt the companies you've suggested, I've said in a couple of my previous posts that I don't want to work in a high tech company. I'll explain this when I've got more time.

What do you mean by implementation? Isn't that just software development/engineering? I don't want to get into that game.

It isn't wasting the PhD that's the issue. It is maximising its value so 3 years experience with the PhD isn't just 3 years experience.

Could you explain what you mean by this please? It's not entirely clear to me...

Why be short termist now?

But I'm not considering the short term. I'm now thinking about where my career will take me in the medium/longer term.

Eoin

newestUser wrote:

I'd be interested to hear eoin_s' answer on this too. What kind of place you worked, what your role was, what you disliked about the job...all this would be helpful.

Like any job it had it's good and bad aspects. For me personally, the negative aspects outweighed the positive ones. To clarify, I was saying that I would not get into sysadmin again, not that I recommend against it.

I was in an IT company of about 120 people. My job was somewhere between SysAdmin and End User Support. Some of my responsibilities were NT Client and Server support, Unix administration, document repository administration and support (this was the worst of them).

Some of the negatives for me were:

1) By it's nature, it tends to be a "fire fighting" job. i.e. you know you are doing a good job because nothing is happening. As much as I really hate the cliche, it tends (or did in my company) to be more of a reactive than proactive job. In development, you have a more tangible sense of achievement when you can see a system you have developed, rather than looking at uptime or MTBF stats.

2) Most of the time when you are dealing with someone, it is because something has gone wrong and they can be quite irritable. You tend to take the brunt of people's frustration.

3) I didn't really like the arrogance that a lot of sysadmins seem to develop. I find that IT people can tend to forget that their systems are pretty much useless unless the end users are happy using it.

4) I just prefer developing. I have been lucky to be involved with a lot of evaluation of new technologies, and proof of concept projects where there were no real boundaries and I was free to innovate. I have found this a lot more enjoyable.

Dingatron

Sys Admin

Dislikes:

Most interaction is usually when diagnosing a failure for me. Users are frustrated and guess where they take it out?

If your supporting high availibilty systems there is a lot of pressure on you to resolve issues quickly. Part of the job though so what can you do?

On call. The worst part for me personally. One week in 4 at the beck and call of everyone 24/7 and I mean 24/7!

Your only as good as your uptime. You can have an uptime of 364.9 days and that .1 is what is remembered.

Other than that it's a ball!

Eoin

Dingatron wrote:

On call. The worst part for me personally. One week in 4 at the beck and call of everyone 24/7 and I mean 24/7!

Oncall is not limited to sysadmins sadly - I did 3 years in Application Support (as a software engineer) and that involved 24/7 support. Most of the time it was one week in three, but for a long while it was every other week, and for a 12 week period I was the only one on call due to resource issues. Did not enjoy that.

Dingatron wrote:

Your only as good as your uptime. You can have an uptime of 364.9 days and that .1 is what is remembered.

Exactly - the owner of a system does not always appreciate that the amount of uptime is due to your hard work, they just assume that the small bit of downtime is due to your f*ck up.

Alun

eoin_s wrote:

Some of the negatives for me were:

1) By it's nature, it tends to be a "fire fighting" job. i.e. you know you are doing a good job because nothing is happening. As much as I really hate the cliche, it tends (or did in my company) to be more of a reactive than proactive job. In development, you have a more tangible sense of achievement when you can see a system you have developed, rather than looking at uptime or MTBF stats.

Also, unfortunately, if you do manage to work proactively, and therfore reduce the amount of firefighting and imitating a headess chicken that you do, management often notice this (in the wrong way!) and assume that either you're not doing your job properly, or things are running so smoothly that you're not needed

I once worked freelance doing this kind of thing and had a contract for a small local government department. It was a mess, and I spent about 6 months cleaning up their act, reinstalling anything and everything, establishing procedures, automated where possible, for damn near everything. In the end the whole network practically ran itself, and therefore I managed to reduce my on-site hours to a max of 2 or 3 half days a week, and could do some other work elsewhere. At the end of the year, the boss decided not to renew my contract since he hadn't seen me racing around fixing things and assumed I was no longer needed. Needless to say after another 6 months I was called in for some more firefighting ...

CiaranC

As horrible as being oncall is, you do tend to get well paid for it. Which is nice.

Dingatron

CiaranC wrote:

As horrible as being oncall is, you do tend to get well paid for it. Which is nice.

That's one of the advantages. However after a few years the novelty is begining to wear off a bit for me. Been proactive reduces the calls but they still come, down to in many cases users lack of understanding of how systems work, and/or the level of hangover they have. Also the business not adhering to the SLA's in place. For me anyway the on call week means social life is at a minimum and everyday things like doing the weeks shopping, bringing the kids for a walk etc can be rudely interupted. But as said that's the job and always will be. For me the benefits outweigh the disadvantages which is why I am still in Sys Admin and have not moved on. I still find it interesting and rewarding after 4 years and haven't the inkling to move on to something new.