extents skrev:
> I wonder if anyone else feels the same way as I do... when you work as
> a DBA for a quiet sometime and come to point in your career where you
> want to explore other avenues within the technology sector. What do you
> guys suggest? IA, BA, PM .....
In 2001 things soured within the company that I was doing DBA work for,
and I decided that the time had come to do something else (or rather do
something somewhere else)
I got a job teaching database technology at an engineering college that
was starting a new software engineering programme. It turned out to be
really great in a number of ways:
- very flexible working conditions. I could work part time (30 hours a
week) and basically I could design my own working day around scheduled
lessons. This was simply perfect family-wise (your kids are only young
once, and the stuff that you miss now won't ever come back)
- opportunities for digging really deep into stuff. Like most others in
industry there was always a lot of things that I would love to explore
further and understand better, but not a lot of time for it. As a
teacher exploring and understanding was really what my job was all
about - both indepth and in areas that were new to me.
- interesting environment. We had a lot of very good, intelligent and
motivated students (and some ho-hum ones), who really could challenge
your way of thinking. The "it's done in this way because that's the way
it's done" approach got you exactly nowhere with those guys. Having
worked 15 years before taking up teaching I realized that I had picked
up a lot of very set ideas about how things worked and should be done,
and it was really good to get challenged on that.
- interesting people. We had a very international mix of students, and
I got to teach and work with young people from many different
countries, cultures and backgrounds. A good cure for the cobwebs of
middle age .... (though, the music they hear these days - oh my god :-)
Of course there were some downsides to it:
- it won't make you rich. It sure won't. Sure won't
- Unlike a job where you can sort out the duds during interviewing, at
a school you have to work with what you get. Sometimes it could be
frustrating working with someone who was there just for the being there
and seeing them waste three or four years of their lives. But on the
whole, the good students outnumbered the dull ones with a comfortable
margin.
After five years of teaching I've gone back to a job in the IT
industry. I think at some point you have the make a decision: are you
an IT professional who teaches, or a teacher, who happens to teach IT?
I guess I wanted to be the first one, so it was time to get back and
get my hands dirty again (and my son is five years older and getting
more of a life of his own)
>From my personal experience, doing a stint teaching can be very
rewarding. I certainly enjoyed it
Bo Brunsgaard
Received on Wed Dec 20 2006 - 05:54:25 CST
