

Ask HN: IT on Cruise Ships? - prezjordan

Just a curiosity I've been thinking about recently. Do cruise ships have a staff for technology purposes? Is this something a college student would be able to try out for short while? I think it would be an interesting experience, does anyone on HN have any history with something like this?
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jason_slack
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.

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stevencorona
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.

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iamdave
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
Facebookers seem to be fine with it.

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iamdave
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.

