DO you know who is Ryan Austin?

Name:	Ryan Austin
IT Specialty:	Database Administration
Job Title:	Database Administrator/Database Developer
Company:	Tribune Media Services
Degree:	Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and Mathematics

Q. How long have you had your degree?
A. 7 years.

Q. Do you feel your degree adequately prepared you for your technology career?
A. Definitely

Q. How many years have you been in the IT field?
A. 1 year in school help desk position, plus 7 years since.

Q. Have you ever worked in a field outside IT? If so for how many years and in what other fields have you worked? A. Farming, 13 years. Life guard, 12 months (summer job). Construction/Roofing/Landscaping, 12-15 months (summer jobs).

Q. In what way did working in other fields prepare you for the IT field?
A. Learn to work hard and with a good work ethic. Learn how to comply with the people in charge.

Q. What personality traits and skills do you possess that you feel help you in your specific IT field?
A. Good team work skills. Able to get a long well with anyone and communicate effectively. Desire to be successful in everything.

Q. What steps does someone go through to get a job in this field?
A. I have always found it easy to find a job through internet job finding services.  CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com are good places to start. I have, also, tried to use IT recruiter agencies with limited success.  My last two positions were found on CareerBuilder.com.

Q. What are ways to advance in your field?
A. I've found that experience is the best asset when looking for a new job.  Being willing to be versatile and learn new technologies is a good way to advance yourself in current positions.  More education is never a bad thing.

Q. What is the most enjoyable thing about your job?
A. Solving problems and making things better. Discovering new technology that replaces/fixes previous, troublesome bugs that required workarounds.

Q. What is the biggest challenge regarding your job?
A. Keeping up with the ever-changing technology.

Q. What are your daily tasks like?
A. Monitor production database server logs and status email. Create and test new implementations. Coordinate with development teams for database access. In some cases code as part of the development team. Create software solutions to make maintenance easier.

Q. What skills do you use at work?
A. Communication, Research, Programming Language(s) Coding and Scripting.  (Java, SQL, Perl, C, XML), Software installation and configuration, Email

Q. What percentage of your day do you spend working independently or in a group?
A. 75% solo, 25% team

Q. What is one thing you didn’t know about your field before getting into it that you wish you had known?
A. Experience is very valuable. Learn/try lots of programming languages. Linux is important, learn to use it.

Q. If you were a person getting ready to choose an IT major for college, what advice/guidance would you give them to help them decide between all the fields?

A. Try everything and pick the one thing that you feel you are the best at and enjoy most. Then keep getting better at that one thing. You should fine that there will be many other IT skills that you will pick up and become better at in parallel with that. 

 

From: technology-colleges.info