IT Jobs at Zoos/Aquariums/Wildlife-oriented

Has anybody had or known of IT jobs at Zoos, Aquariums, or anywhere wildlife-oriented where you actually worked close to animals?

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Daniel333

I BGP paired a elephant to a aquarium once then redistributed into RIP. But I can assure you, it was purely by accident.

Over all I would say no, I checked out a few places and they all seems to have pretty simple setup and outsource to MSPs.

networker050184

Daniel333 wrote: »

I BGP paired a elephant to a aquarium once then redistributed into RIP. But I can assure you, it was purely by accident.

Nicely done sir.

dynamik

Those places are always just barely getting by as it is; it doesn't seem like the ideal place to look for IT work.

darkerosxx

I want to go out on an animal research trip. I need to get out of this town.

Warsh1p

darkerosxx wrote: »

Has anybody had or known of IT jobs at Zoos, Aquariums, or anywhere wildlife-oriented where you actually worked close to animals?

I applied to one but they required a Biology+ cert

Aside from the bad joke, I don't think I have ever heard of someone working an IT related job that worked close up with animals. Perhaps maybe for company that runs the zoos or aquariums.

Maybe producers of movies such as Life or Planet Earth have IT guys with them while filming and going across different countries. That is all I can think of.

Alif_Sadida_Ekin

My guess is that places like these contract any IT work they may have. I doubt they would have the funds or the need for a full time admin on-site.

earweed

All I could think of when I saw the title was that DeviWah with his Zoology degree would be the perfect fit.

tearofs

The SYST LED blinks like mad, so do fireflies ...

alan2308

darkerosxx wrote: »

I want to go out on an animal research trip. I need to get out of this town.

There are other, more traditional ways of leaving town....

apena7

I'd love to work the NOC shift at an aquarium....It would be awesome to walk through a shark tunnel and clear your head during breaktime!

MentholMoose

There's a company near me whose office is "pet friendly"... people can and do bring pets to work on a regular basis. This office also has IT staff. That combined with the fact that it is a major candy manufacturer means it is my dream to work there someday!

veritas_libertas

MentholMoose wrote: »

There's a company near me whose office is "pet friendly"... people can and do bring pets to work on a regular basis. This office also has IT staff. That combined with the fact that it is a major candy manufacturer means it is my dream to work there someday!

Yikes, cats and server/network closets do not mix well...

tpatt100

I would gladly take a pay cut to do IT work at an aquarium. But like others have said they are probably outsourced. Plenty of places I see use terminal thin clients so their support staff could be out of the state for all I know

networker050184

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Yikes, cats and server/network closets do not mix well...

Don't say that around Mike

darkerosxx

alan2308 wrote: »

There are other, more traditional ways of leaving town....

I lol'd.

I guess by town, I meant civilization.

apr911

Hey all,

Ive actually done it.

Ive taken a base salary pay cut of $7k/yr and worked for a Zoo in a city that shall remain nameless.

The atmosphere was awesome and I couldnt have asked for a cooler place to work. There were plenty of computers (and a few servers) located in animal areas so I was able to go behind the scenes on more than a few occasions and getting up close to some of the animals and even feed a few was beyond awesome.

If you are not keeper staff however, they typically require you have an escort regardless of if its the lion house or the rodent house.

As for the technology? Well, Ive worked with older equipment before but this definitely took the cake.

A hodge-podge of desktops ranging form P1s to a handful of Dual Cores (reserved for the IT dept. of course) running anything from Win98 to WinXP. A lot of desktop frankensteining.

Most of their servers were running Windows 2000. They had an outside IT company for server management so we barely touched them outside the day to day making sure they dont fall over and changing the tape for backups.

The few Windows 2003 servers (no 2008 but this was back in 2008 so it might be different now) they did have were managed entirely by a different company as this was pretty much COLO equipment. It served a vital purpose for the Zoo (such as the ticketing system) but was ultimately owned by a different company.

We did phone and network support for around the Zoo but they had another firm that they outsourced a lot of the work to as well. The phone system was nearly 20 years old and was in the process of being replaced for the last 5 years, but budgeting prevented it.

Network Maps were non-existent and they didnt have a clue what inventory they had (one of my projects while there was to inventory their desktops). What worked and didnt was mostly guess work with a lot of trial and error. The server room (closet with 2 racks) was a total mess with wires running all over the place and the phone rooms werent much better.

The people I worked with were definitely not "IT" they were the ones who knew the most about computers in a department so they got the job. They looked at me in utter-disbelief as I sat at my desk most days and inventoried computer hardware remotely. They could not and would not believe it could be done. In fact, they had me do it again before I called it quits, this time physically going to each desktop.

Another project they had me do was to inventory phone extensions, apparently however, they had no idea what a dialer program was because again they wanted me to manually call and speak to the person on the other end during business hours instead of the phone dialer w/ recording of voicemail answers off-hours that I ran 4 nights a week and completed in 2 weeks.

So basically my suggestion for any IT professional (at least for Zoos, maybe Aquariums and other such places would be different) would be to stay away. You will find your skills eroding and you will be less and less competitive when you do finally move on as a result of aging technology.

Now, if you were fortunate enough to get involved with a New Zoo, maybe that would be interesting. Especially if you could do it right. Or maybe an old zoo that is looking to gut it's IT department top to bottom of equipment, people and contracts.

So there ya have it, what I thought would be a dream job was a nightmare from the work perspective and an OK-to-Excellent (I spent a lot of time wondering the Zoo and going behind the scenes to avoid my IT co-workers and keep out of the old moldy and stuffy office) atmosphere.

I would definitely like to work in that sort of overall environment again but it would definitely have to be for a for-profit company. I think a dream job of mine would be to do IT for one of the Disney parks. Maybe Im wrong? Anyone with Disney Theme Park IT Experience or any theme/amusement park for that matter?