New job - sorta

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jfugina
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New job - sorta

Post by jfugina »

So, officially starting Monday, I have a new job. Sort of. Our department has been going through a re-org (not like all those other times though - this was was for realz!). For the last two months, I've been spending large portions of my days twiddling my thumbs and wondering where I'm going to land. The entire department wasn't taking on any new work because they wanted to be able to move people once the decisions were made, without negatively impacting work in progress, and letting them start fresh in their new roles. So they solved that problem by letting people basically not work. Everyone has been in system containment/support mode for months.

For the past 15 years at the university, I've been a software designer and developer, database designer/developer, project manger, business analyst, QA/tester, support technician, and a team supervisor. For many of those years, it was all of those things, all of the time. It wasn't good, and being on the hook for everything meant I could never get particularly skilled at ANYTHING.. making me un-marketable outside of the University.

Anyway... throughout the reorg process, we were shown the proposed new structure, and asked if we had any preferences. No guarantees, but they did ask. The goal was to get away from everyone being a generalist and move towards specialization. In all of the years I've been in software development, playing with data has been my favorite thing. I love being presented with a database and asked for information and mining it out and presenting it for analysis. So, as of Monday, I am now a full-time "Data Architect". :happywave:

In theory, I should get to spend most of my days doing the stuff that I find entertaining, and none (or very little) of the stuff I found dreadful. There's no change in pay grade, which is fine, but one of the other things this job has that has never existed before, is a defined career path with opportunity for advancement.

I'm looking forward to the change. There's a lot to learn, and it will be a while before I'm able to accomplish anything significant, but I'm happy about the new job. The University is run by old money and old ideas. That doesn't work with technology. Having technology, but choosing to not stay up to date with it, is actually the worst possible thing from a financial perspective. And if you're going to use technology as a tool to keep costs low, and keep operations at peak efficiency, that's occasionally going to require some large capital investments. The ROI will be there, but the investment has to be made. The prior head of our department has been in our department for 45 years. She's never worked anywhere else in her entire life. To say she was clueless about how IT should be run, was an understatement of epic proportions. We hired a CIO a few years ago though, who knew he was coming in to an "immature" IT organization. I don't think he had any idea how bad it really was. But he accepted the challenge and got to work, and now all of the results of those efforts are finally trickling down to me. I've got another 15 years until retirement, and I'm hopeful that the second half of my time here will be something enjoyable. :cool5:
Julie Fugina
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Monica
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by Monica »

Congrats to you!! :cool5: :cool5:
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by pbp908 »

Congratulations! :happywave:
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by Debbie J »

Sounds like a perfect fit.
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by paddlegal »

Awesome Julie...good for you! I hope this all works out the way you want it to.
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by pamcook »

Finally!
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azemigh
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by azemigh »

Wow! Congrats that you get to switch to something you really enjoy doing!
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jfugina
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by jfugina »

Thanks everyone! It will be a while before I get on my feet in my new role, but yesterday my new boss's boss's boss (the first two in that line haven't even been hired yet) asked me if I was available for a data modeling conference in mid-October in CT. The timing actually works out perfectly and doesn't cause significant headaches to my after-work life. So I booked everything today, and look forward to receiving some education in something other than "effective hiring techniques" and "diversity and inclusion" and "emotional intelligence". It's been years since I've experienced any relevant technical training, so that should be exciting!
Julie Fugina
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by clamscrapper »

Congratulations Julie! I'm very happy for you. Enjoying what you do and being excited about going to work is so important.
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by nancine »

Congratulations, that sounds great! And some new training to.

It seems a bit scary to me that a prestigious university would be so far behind the times in IT - or is that normal? I am not a university educated person so I'm a bit clueless in that area.

But I'm happy that the next half of your career wi looking brighter! :cool5:
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jfugina
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Re: New job - sorta

Post by jfugina »

It's an interesting question Nancy. I don't think that it's typical of most universities, but at the same time, when we're evaluating particular technologies, it doesn't seem like we're actually all that far behind the curve. I think we (specifically us) got here in part because the highest ranking person in IT started here during the punch card era, and has never worked anywhere else. And for her whole career, software has been built, not bought. And it begat a culture of end users who are used to software systems that are completely user-designed, and to them, it doesn't appear to cost anything but time. For 40 years, users ask, and we build - most of the time with complete disregard for whether what they were asking for made any sense or was sustainable, or how much the labor costs all added up to.

I don't think this University is alone in that respect though - I think it just took us longer to see the light. Also, even as large commercial software systems and services have been available for well over a decade now, higher ed is a slightly different market. We don't run the way a corporation does, and so the need has only recently been realized to treat Higher Ed as a completely different kind of business, and for software companies to add those considerations to their designs. And now that more of these types of systems are available and more compatible with Higher Ed, the challenge shifts entirely to culture.

Building software is not all that dissimilar to building a house. And our user base is quite used to having an army of skilled craftsmen/people at their disposal to build or modify whatever they want however they want. But our organizational shift is going to cause users to have to shop for an existing house instead, and select the one that most closely suits their needs, with the knowledge that they now have little more than a handyman or two to help with minor things. Unfortunately, the university isn't known for paying high wages, so we typically wind up with more handyman types of people than those of "master craftsman" grade. And, like building a house, our software isn't always the most well-constructed stuff. People here are also coming to the realization that if you want a mansion, then you're going to have to fork out the money for a mansion. But if you are only willing to spend $20k, then the best you're going to get is a shack of questionable construction quality. It will keep you sheltered for a while, but electricity and indoor plumbing might be a little too much to ask.

Sorry for the long-winded response. But it was an interesting question. This university (similarly to others) recognize that capital investments (usually in the form of new or remodeled buildings) will provide long-term benefit. Building new buildings makes us more attractive to potential students and increases our enrollment capacity. Replacing every light bulb in a building with LED bulbs is another example of a high initial cost, but where efficiency gains will pay off and eventually save money. Efficiencies gained by high quality software works the same way. It just took a while for that concept to sink in at the highest levels.
Julie Fugina
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