Ask HN: IT on Cruise Ships?

meifun · on Aug 4, 2012

In my younger days I was going to go work on a Carnival Cruise ship doing IT. They offered me the job and I turned it down mainly because you are literally at sea 10-11 months out of the year as well as on call 24/7.

All parts of the ship are controlled by tech and you would become very versatile in your skill set. POS, captains functionality, wireless, and the list goes on.

It sounded exciting and they presented it as an exciting opportunity. I realized that it wasn't for me.

I think (sadly) I still have my notes from that interview that I took of you want them.

stevencorona · on Aug 4, 2012

Yes, they def. have IT staff.

I live in Charleston, and we have a weekly cruise that comes in, so I'm friends with a couple of people that work on it.

They have to sign 6-9 month long contracts, and TBH, don't seem that happy. They can only get off the ship 2-3 days per week, don't necessarily get to pick where they get off, have to work 7 days a week (i.e, no days off), don't get paid very well, etc.

The plus side seems to be a huge community/"high school" atmosphere and getting to travel a little bit.

iamdave · on Aug 4, 2012

After working call-center IT infrastructure for two years and being exposed to lots of post-high school, fresh-college entrants, in no universe would I ever say the "high school" atmosphere/community is a plus side to anyone working in IT.

YMMV.

ninja_rockstar · on Aug 5, 2012

Facebookers seem to be fine with it.

iamdave · on Aug 5, 2012

I'm not sure if that's hardly an adequate sampling pool of individuals you'd recommend for a job in call-center IT; unless you have a pool of individuals who fall into one of two categories: Extremely seasoned or extremely green.

Now that's not to say anything negative about people who work in IT with Facebook profiles, I'm just suggesting that your response that someone on Facebook 'seems fine with it' is a terrible rebuttal while at the same time defending my stance: anyone who is fine accepting a job that someone describes to them as having a high school environment has either become so jaded to constant bikering and childish "I want my way" attitudes that come from program managers and directors or they're so fresh to the world of enterprise IT that the environment is mistaken as a cake walk.

But then again, I will offer this caveat: You and I probably have two different understandings of what "high school" means when someone uses it to describe a work environment. For me, it has historically never failed to be a gigantic and untreatable pain in my ass.