Anyone Work at a Large Research University?

Anyone work at a large research university in desktop? What's the environment like? Do you have a very narrow scope of job responsibilities or do you get to expand on your skill set?

Generally speaking, there are a lot of tech jobs in my area but I have a hard time evaluating them. Sure there is Glassdoor but there is not a lot of data there. The current place I work at stinks. The morale is terrible, everybody wants to leave. I really don't know anyone personally in IT so I can't say "what do you think of working at X, Y, Z".

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Akaricloud

I used to and it was great! The only reason I left was because I was graduating and didn't want to continue living in the area.

One other student and I handled a couple of departments on campus and did everything necessary to keep them up and running smooth. We had flexible hours, a very laid back work environment(jeans + t shirt, meetings at the bar, ect.) and most of our users were fairly educated.

While we had free control over the client support side, we weren't given access to any of the servers. That was a bit limiting but I always found new things to learn. After a few years I felt ready to move on but it was still a great stepping stone.

Also take a look at their benefits. Universities can have amazing benefits including opportunities to take free classes!

MauriceMoss

Thanks for the advice.

I think this environment would be better. I can't even remote into computers where I work via SCCM. I have to ask people for everything. Everyone is so depressed and wanting to work somewhere else. I wouldn't mind working directly for the gov but being a contractor your never "at home". You feel like an unwelcome guest that has to be tolerated.

(e.g. you can't go to the holiday party, you don't get an office like everyone else, you have to stay for early dismissals, scapegoat for everything that is wrong etc).

This might be a stupid question but during your down time at work could you work on your MCITP and expand your skills?

bryanthetechie

I worked for several technology research groups and one technology department at my university and loved every minute of it. University life is laid back and mellow, but there is always more advanced technology being worked on at large research universities then there is in most coroprate environments. +10 for university work.

lsud00d

I worked for a large university in the main IT department, supporting 40k+ constituents. It was pretty awesome for my first job (student worker, then intern, then full time) and I learned a lot. I had a large scope of freedom because other analysts outside of my group knew that I could handle my biz, so I had almost more access than anyone in IT, aside from the domain admins.

We had some pretty boss research projects (CCT, HPC) and have one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world...not to mention, we will be national champs pretty soon here

colemic

Respect the honeybadger.

lsud00d

colemic wrote: »

Respect the honeybadger.

Akaricloud

MauriceMoss wrote: »

This might be a stupid question but during your down time at work could you work on your MCITP and expand your skills?

I never had any real downtime, but I did spend some time testing out different Windows 7 deployment techniques in order to increase efficiency. We were extremely understaffed which meant I was always swamped with work(That's how I like it though!).

I never really studied for my MCITP either; I just scheduled the tests and passed them. I had been working hands on with Windows 7 enough by that point to pass no problem.