“What's the deal? This is the path of many glorious ones.”
NA Nekrasov
Hi all!
My name is Karina, and I am a “part-time job” — I combine my master’s studies and the work of a technical writer at Veeam Software. How I did it, I want to tell you. At the same time, someone will find out how you can come into this profession, and what I see for myself the pros and cons of working during my studies.
I've been working at Veeam for about a year, a week, half a year, and it's been the busiest half a year of my life. I write technical documentation (and learn how to write it) - now I'm doing the manual for Veeam ONE Reporter () and guides on the Veeam Availability Console (there was a ) for end users and resellers. I am also one of those who find it difficult to answer the question “Where did you come from?” with a few words. The question "How do you spend your free time?" also not easy.
The look of a working student when they complain about the lack of free time
If necessary (and if I strain my brains), I can write some kind of program or even a simple neural network in keras. If you really strain, then on tensorflow. Or conduct a semantic analysis of the text. Maybe write a program for this. Or claim that the design is bad and justify it with Norman heuristics and user experience funnels. Just kidding, I don't remember heuristics by heart. I’ll also talk about my studies, but let’s start with where I came from and why it’s quite difficult to explain (especially at the university). And as you already understood, the classic of Russian literature Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov will help me.
“You will be at the university! The dream will come true!”
I was born in Dimitrovgrad. Few people know, but this is a town in the Ulyanovsk region, and the Ulyanovsk region (as communication with people showed, few people know about it either) is located in the Volga region, and the Volga region is around the Volga, from the confluence of the Oka and below. We have a scientific institute of atomic reactors, but not every student in Dimitrovgrad decides to devote himself to nuclear physics.
Dimitrovgrad, Central District. Photo from the site
Therefore, when the question of higher education arose, it became clear that I would be sent away from home for a long time. And then I had to think thoroughly about who I want to become when I grow up, who I want to study.
I still don’t have an answer to the question of who I want to be when I grow up, so I had to proceed from what I like to do. And I liked, one might say, opposite things: on the one hand, literature and foreign languages, on the other, mathematics (and to some extent programming, that is, computer science).
In search of a combination of the incompatible, I came across a training program for linguists-programmers, implemented at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. Since I have a persistent allergy to Moscow, it was decided to apply to Nizhny Novgorod, where I eventually successfully entered the bachelor's program "Fundamental and Applied Linguistics".
Having survived an avalanche of questions like “Higher School of Economics – will you be an economist?”, “Higher education is everywhere, what university?” and other associations on the topic of capital punishment and “who will you work for?”, I arrived in Nizhny, settled in a hostel and began to live a fun student life. The main fun was that we were supposed to be applied linguists, but what to apply to ...
It was programming that we were mainly applied to, up to machine learning and writing neural networks in Python, but it was still not very clear who was to blame and what to do after graduation.
The vague phrase “technical writer”, which first appeared in the lexicon of my mother, and then the teachers of the course at 4, became the salvation. Although what kind of animal it was and what it was eaten with, it was little clear. It seems to be humanitarian work, but you also need to understand technology, and, perhaps, even be able to write code (or at least read it). But it is not exactly.
3 most incredible hybrids on our planet: tigrolev, spoon fork, technical writer
It was during my 4th year that I first encountered this profession, that is, with a vacancy for it, at Intel, where I was even invited for an interview. Perhaps I would have stayed there, if not for two circumstances:
- The end of the bachelor's degree was approaching and the diploma was still not written, and in Nizhny Novgorod there was no master's program that I liked.
- The World Cup 2018 suddenly came, and all the students were politely asked to leave the hostel somewhere in the middle of May, because the hostel was given to volunteers. Because of the same World Cup, all my studies ended early, but it was still a shame.
These circumstances resulted in the fact that I was leaving Nizhny for good, and therefore I had to refuse Intel's invitation to an interview. It was also somewhat insulting, but where to go. We had to decide what to do next.
“I see a book in a knapsack - well, you are going to study ...”
The question of entering the magistracy was not raised, or rather, it was, but the answer to it was accepted only in the affirmative. It remained to decide on the magistracy, and what I want to become when I grow up what I want to do, I still did not really understand. I took care of this matter back in the winter and at first I wanted to go to St. Petersburg State University for a near-linguistic specialty, but a couple of trips there quickly repulsed this desire, and I had to just as quickly look for a new option.
As we say, “after HSE, you can only enter HSE.” Too different training systems, rules and traditions. Therefore, I turned my gaze to my native university, or rather, to its St. Petersburg branch (an allergy to Moscow again said hello). The choice of master's programs was not very large, so I decided to start writing a motivation letter for one and urgently pump mathematics for another. It took two weeks to write, and all summer to do math...
Of course, I entered exactly where I needed a motivation letter. And here I am at the Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction program at HSE in St. Petersburg. Spoiler: only now I have more or less learned to answer the question “Who are you studying for?”.
And at first it was difficult to explain to my classmates where I came from: few people can imagine that you can be born in one place, study in another and come back to study in the third (and I fly home on the fourth, yeah).
But further here we will not talk about this, but about work.
Since now I am in St. Petersburg, the issue of finding a job has become a little more acute than in Nizhny. For some reason, there was almost no study in September, and all the forces were thrown into finding a job. Which, like everything in my life, was found almost by accident.
“The case is also not new - do not be shy, you will not be lost!”
On the HSE vacancies page, there were vacancies for developers at Veeam, and I decided to see what kind of company it was and if there was anything else. The "something" turned out to be a junior technical writer position, to which I submitted my little resume after some thought. A few days later, Nastya, a charming and very positive recruiter, called me and conducted the telephone stage of the interview. It was exciting, but interesting and very friendly.
Several times we discussed whether I could combine everything. I study in the evening, from 18:20, and the office is relatively close to the academic building, and I was sure that I could combine it (and, in fact, there was no other choice).
Part of the interview was held in Russian, part in English, I was asked what I studied at the university, where I learned about the profession of a technical writer and what I think about it, what I know about the company (at that time it was “nothing”, in which I honestly confessed). Nastya told me about the company, all sorts of social goodies and that I needed to do a test task. This was the second big step.
The test task consisted of two parts: translate the text and write instructions. I did it for about a week without much haste.
-From the new: I learned how to connect a computer to a domain (later it even came in handy).
-From the interesting: I zadolbala all the friends who have already got a job, so that they check my translation and read the instructions. I was still terribly shaking when submitting the task, but everything went fine: soon Nastya called and said that the guys from the technical documentation department liked my test task and they were waiting for me for a personal meeting. The meeting was scheduled about a week later and I exhaled for a while, plunging into the study tasks.
A week later, I arrived at the office on Kondratievsky Prospekt. It was my first time in this part of St. Petersburg and, frankly, it was scary. And shy. It became even more embarrassing when I did not recognize Nastya by her voice - in life he turned out to be thinner. Fortunately, her friendliness overcame my shyness, and by the time my interlocutors arrived in the small cozy meeting room, I had more or less calmed down. Anton, the head of the department, and Alena, as it turned out later, my future mentor, talked to me (during the interview, I somehow didn’t think of this before).
It turned out that everyone really liked my test task - it was a relief. All questions were about him and my very short resume. Once again, we discussed the possibility of combining work and study thanks to a floating schedule.
As it turned out, the last stage was waiting for me - a test task in the office itself.
After thinking and deciding that it is better to solve everything at once, I agreed to go through it right away. Come to think of it, this was my first visit to the office. Then another quiet, dark and slightly mysterious office.
Some walls in the corridors and halls of the office building are decorated with reproductions
All the time while I was doing my task, which took much less than the allotted 4 hours, no one was talking - everyone was minding their own business, looking at the monitors, and no one turned on the big lights.
Colleagues from other teams are wondering why the big lights are not turned on in the technical writers room? We answer1) you can’t see people (introverts!)
2) energy saving (ecology!)
Profit!
It was somewhat strange, but allowed to study what was happening. So, I noticed that one of the guys recently had a birthday, and that the place for testing is in the most interesting position - between Anton and Alena. It seemed that my arrival, short stay and departure had little effect on the life of a small office, as if no one noticed them, and the general atmosphere did not change at all from this. All I had to do was go home and wait for a decision.
Which, as you might guess, was very positive, and at the end of September I again came to the office, already for official employment. After the registration and lecture-tour on safety, I was again brought to the office of technical writers as a “rookie”.
“There is already a wide field: know work and do not be afraid ...”
I still remember my first day: how surprised I was by the silence of the department (no one spoke to me except Anton and Alena, and Anton mostly communicated by mail), how I got used to the common kitchen, although Alena wanted to show me the dining room (since then since I rarely carried food with me, but on that first day ...), as I tried to formulate a request to leave early. But in the end, the request was formulated and approved, and there slowly came October, and with it the real study began.
The first time was easy enough. Then there was hell. Then it somehow stabilized, but the boiler under us sometimes flares up again.
If you think about it, combining work and study is quite realistic. Sometimes it's even easy. Not when session and release are dangerously close to each other, deadlines overlap, or a lot of things have to be turned in at once. But on other days - very even.
A brief summary of my program and interesting things that are studied on it
Let's look at my typical week.
I work from Monday to Friday, I study 2-5 days on weekdays in the evenings and on Saturday mornings (which makes me very sad, but nothing can be done). If I study, I get up at eight o'clock in the morning to arrive at work by nine, and leave work a little earlier than six to go to the educational building. There are couples from half past seven to nine in the evening, and at eleven o'clock I return home. Of course, if there is no study, then life is easier, and you can get up later, and even at nine I am quite at home (at first, tears welled up from this fact), but let's look at another important point.
I'm studying for a master's program and some of my classmates also work. Teachers understand this, but no one canceled homework, as well as term paper and mandatory project activities. So if you want to live - know how to spin, allocate your time and set priorities.
Homework is usually done in the evenings of non-school days and one and a half remaining weekends. Most of it is group work, so you can quickly do your part and switch to other things. However, as you know, any plan is imperfect if there are people in it, so it is better to always monitor group projects so that everyone does not screw up in the end. Plus, teachers, until recently, were very fond of sending the assignment the day before class, so they had to urgently do it that evening, and it doesn’t matter that you come home at eleven. But about the pros and cons a little lower.
The peculiarities of evening master's studies (and its working students) are also related to the fact that lateness and absenteeism are treated with loyalty until they forget how you look. And some time after that. The late delivery of the final assignments is also looked through through the fingers until the session closes (but no one has checked the coursework yet). Due to the peculiarities of our beloved HSE, we have 4 sessions: autumn and spring, 1 week each, winter and summer, 2 weeks each. But since no one wants to do anything during the session, the hottest comes a week before - you need to pass all the assignments and get grades so as not to go to exams. But on May (in which no one does anything, because the holidays) writing term papers fell out, and therefore everyone was a little pressed. Summer is coming, and the deadlines of all projects will soon come up, so everyone will be pressed even more. But that's later.
In general, combining work and study has its pros and cons. For me it looks something like this:
pros
+ Independence. I mean financial. After all, being able not to ask your parents for money every month is a blessing for any student. And at the end of the month, you are responsible only to yourself for the lightened wallet.
+ Experience. Both in terms of “work experience” (which everyone needs and always), and in terms of “life experience”. This is facilitated by the hostel, about which there is always a pack of drop-dead stories, and such an existence itself - after it, almost nothing is scary.
That very moment when the job ad read “requires 10+ years of Go experience”
+ Ability to prioritize. When you can skip a couple, when you can forget about homework, to whom you can shift it, how to complete all the tasks in order to be in time. This way of life is good at corroding the “inner perfectionist” and teaches you to distinguish what is actually important and urgent.
+ Savings. Saving time - you study and already gain experience at work. Saving money - living in a hostel is cheaper. Economy of forces - well, this is not here, of course.
+ You can take an internship at work. Comfortable.
+ New people, new acquaintances. Everything is as always, only twice as much.
Cons
And now for the cons:
- Mode. I am a night owl, and getting up early is a real punishment, just like getting up on the weekend.
- Free time, or rather, its total absence. Rare weekday evenings are spent on homework, and one and a half of the remaining weekends are spent on household chores and homework. Therefore, when they ask me what I had time to see in St. Petersburg, I laugh nervously and answer "the educational building, the work office and the road between them."
In fact, the sights can be seen even from the windows of the office
— Stress. Caused by the previous two factors and in general a change in lifestyle to a more stressful one. This is rather an initial situation (a person is such a beast, he gets used to everything), and at the moments of releases/sessions, when you want to lie down somewhere and die. But this time passes, the nerves are slowly recovering, and at work I am surrounded by surprisingly understanding people. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve it.
- Loss of sense of time. Something from the category of my grandmother’s conversations that “you just seemed to go to first grade just yesterday.” Six-day weeks, closed in "work-study-sleep-eating-business", fly by surprisingly quickly, sometimes - quickly to panic (deadlines are always close), weekends are surprisingly short, and there is a lot of work. The end of May came somehow suddenly, and I caught myself thinking that I don’t remember the rest of the month at all. Somehow twisted. I hope it goes away with the end of the course.
But I found such traces of Veeam in one of the HSE computer classes. Probably, they gave out bachelors on Career Day)) I also want this, but on Career Day all masters work
There are a few more problems associated with an untested program (the first set, after all), but in general, the pros outweigh, or I'm just an optimist. And in general, everything is not so difficult, and it will last only 2 years (already 1 with a little left). In addition, such an experience builds character well and teaches many new things - both professionally and personally. And it allows you to learn a lot about yourself (including “for how much you can write a term paper”).
Maybe when school is finally over, I will even miss her (actually, no).
Source: habr.com