Work Enviornments
So I’ve been working my new coop job at Basis Technology for the last month or so.
Just a minute ago I was sitting in the office kitchen talking with the head of IT about how .NET developer salaries are currently skyrocketing. According to him, VB.NET yearlies are going for $60k. VB.NET? Gross. I would consider myself a mid-level C#.NET developer, which he quoted at $80k. How soon till I graduate? Jeez. Who knows, though, you have to wonder if those are inflated salaries or what. CNN even confirms it. It’s no wonder the international grad students at Northeastern don’t speak a sentence that doesn’t contain some sort of phrase containing “.NET” in it when talking about jobs. They know where the money is going!
And while I was having this conversation, someone else walked into the room and commented on the fact that I was chatting it up, “You are the most outgoing intern!”. The head of the IT replied “Well, that’s why he actually has a girlfriend!” Pretty funny. But this leads me to a bigger issue that I’ve been mulling over for a little while now.
I am extroverted. Maybe I wasn’t when I was younger and wasn’t the most popular kid in school, but these days I most definitely am. My personal friends have attested to this without a doubt. And I’m a minority at my current coop. Basis’ software does some pretty technical things in regards to linguistic and computational analysis. My supervisor correlated this with the high number of introverted-types of people working here - the more technical the software company, the more introverted the [developers] company is. I mean, I could go the whole day without speaking to anybody if I wanted to. I find myself initiating most “hellos” in passing, for example. People tend to look at the ground when walking around the office, and I know it’s not because they’re sad. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that many here are of non-western nationalities, where eye contact is socially disrespectful.
It’s not that bad, though, but I wish my work area actually had the lights on. The nearby developers seem to enjoy 24/7 darkness. Not me. I might even be feeling the hints of seasonal depression from it? Okay, maybe not, but when it’s cloudy outside I might as well be in a room with no windows.
Everyone here is friendly, though, and I’ve been kept busy doing some engaging JSP database driven linguistic as well as business oriented web application projects. But I’ve already started to pick up on the fact that this may not be the kind of company I’d want to work in for the long run - I need to be working with more extroverted types. I don’t have a specialty niche (financial, linguistics, graphics, robotics, etc.) type of software I am focused in on (yet).
I think, after graduation, the first job I should seek should be with a software consulting company. I have a broad range of talents that can be applied for diverse projects and I’m extroverted and work well with people. I think I’d get the most out of my talents in that kind of environment.
But this is exactly what coop is all about - find out about yourself and about what kind of place you’d like to work at after college or grad school. I’m glad I’m able to figure it out now instead of going to a 4-year school and then be stuck in an entry level position for years at some company that turned out to not fit my personality and skills properly.
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