Job Title: User Assistant
Location: Irvine, CA
Submitted on: 14-Feb-03
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Our function: we provide computer support to students, faculty and
staff at the satellite campus of a private university known for its
graduate program in business. At our location, we have business,
education and psychology programs, a small library a community
counseling office (run by the psych program) and us.
Within my department at this location, things are very laid back
(sometimes a little too laid back). Other departments tend to run the
gamut from relaxed like ours to being even more rigid than a strict
military unit. I've heard that culture within our department varies
from campus to campus. Most of my department is composed of part-
timers (myself included). We generally work in shifts of 6-8 hours
typically with an average of two or three people on shift at any given
time (including the supervisor).
Dress code: a huge range but "offically" slacks and a polo shirt.
We're open seven days a week, M-Th 12 to 10:30, F 12-9, Sat 8-5 and Sun
1pm-7pm. This schedule can seem confusing so the hours are posted all
over the place but nobody ever reads them so we typically get people
racing over to our department as we're leaving at 10:30 wanting to
return equipment they checked out. Or they return it the next day
upset we were closed, when at eye level two feet from them are the
hours of operation. Our typical response is not to say anything and
just point at the sign; half the time they get the message.
Where we are at one of the satellite campuses, there are NO
opportunities for advancement - you have to apply just as if you had
never worked for this organization. I know this from experience, and
they never even called my supervisor as a check before they sent the
rejection letter.
There have been several attempts to reorganize how the university
operates internally. The biggest change started about two years ago
and is apparently still going on. Among other things, what used to be
separate IT-related departments performing different functions (for
example, academic computing where I am, information resources,
university-wide help desk, etc) have been consolidated into "University
Technology Services." There is now even less communication between
departments than there was before, and there wasn't any before. THis
has created a significant amount of frustration when something happens
like a new service is introduced (nobody tells us about it but we're
expected to provide technical support to students, faculty and staff)
or a network outage occurs or is planned, when printers break and we
need a replacement, etc. We have discovered various "social
engineering" techniques to get some things that otherwise should be
automatic. For example, the phone number on our web site was incorrect
because of an area code change that happened three years ago. We used
to be able to change the web site ourselves but that function was taken
away from us. The phone number we used to have was recently assigned
to somebody's house (we found this out because we were getting calls
from confused students). After two weeks of calling the system
administrator to change the number on the site and getting no response,
one of our employees (who is getting a degree in criminal justice)
mentioned something about harassing phone calls. So our boss calls the
system administrator and leaves a voice mail to the effect that the
person whose home the number now belongs to called up threatening a
lawsuit. Five minutes later we get a call back saying the number was
changed.
Increasingly, departments have been conscious of their budget, almost
to the point of obsession. We still do not have a copy code because
whoever it is who controls those things (it's changed probably four or
five times) doesn't want to give us one to save money. All the other
Academic Computing departments in the other campuses have theirs. We
make maybe four or five copies per week, and the code is tied to OUR
budget at OUR location, not anyone else's. As a result, we've not been
able to properly deliver some of our services to faculty.
So again, *within my department at this particular location* we are a
very close-knit group. We support each other if there's a technical
problem one of us cannot solve, we vent to each other about things, if
a demanding student or faculty member is becoming hard to handle we
help each other out, and so on. Our boss is great, though he's
distracted by school and starting up his own business and he's
still "new" to being a manager. I will say this, though: he's great
at coming to the rescue if a faculty member or student starts getting
out of hand. I can tell he doesn't like it but he jumps right in.
Bottom line is a job here is great for getting through school (working
here got me through undergraduate and graduate school) and getting a
great deal of technical experience as well as sharpening analytical and
problem-solving skills. Direct long term prospects (such as transfers
or promotions) however are dim.
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