graduate researcher

teaching assistant

postdoctoral fellow

graduate assistant

postdoctoral researcher

UC Davis

I find the information technology field fascinating and I bring a unique combination of skills 

that I feel make me an excellent candidate for the Programmer III position. In the past year I 

have become a fully trained and functional member of the ITX team. The basic skills for this 

job that I have learned includes how to navigate and program in the UNIX based system Mothra, 

Remedy, Pinnacle, Map tool, MyUCD Davis portal, SmartSite, the NOC privatehd tool and 

XBase. I have learned to how troubleshoot the campus wired and wireless networks, voicemail 

and phone system. I have learned how to troubleshoot the different e-mail systems such as 

Geckomail, DavisMail, uConnect as well as increase quotas for Geckomail and uConnect. In fact 

I have learned so many new things that it is possible they are not all listed here.

I have become a subject matter expert in Abuse and specifically the DMCA process. I have

learned how to process DMCA infringement notices for residential Ethernet cases, wireless

cases and departmental cases. I have learned how to process DMCA shutdown requests and user 

reactivations. I have also learned how to identify, target and shutdown rogue DHCP servers and 

users who run static IPs. The Abuse team functions with a degree of independence within in ITX 

and this requires a higher level of decision making and teamwork between myself and my fellow 

Abuse coworker. I believe we have found a good way to help each other when it is needed.

I have been an integral part of improving the efficiency of several scripts that are used in the

DMCA process. By communicating our specific needs to a programmer I was able to combine

a several step process into a single step process in more than one area of the Abuse process.

This not only took intimate knowledge of how the Abuse process works but it also drew on my 

own skills as a programmer in order to identify what could be improved given the tools at our 

disposal. Overall by using 10 to 20 hours of a programmer’s time we have saved hundreds of 

hours of work time that can now be applied to other subjects or clients.

I have become a subject matter expert in uConnect. This allows me to solve specific problems

not everyone on the IT Express team can answer, and this makes me a valuable and contributing

member of IT Express. I have learned how to manage the uConnect Admin list, and how to

administrate mailbox creation, modify quotas, administrate DaFIS billing codes, edit SMTP

addresses, department codes, and how to disable mailboxes. I have also taken it upon myself to 

educate the uConnect Tier 1 Administrators who are not as well informed as their peers. This has 

improved the efficiency of the process which will eventuality lead to less requests on our end, 

freeing up our time to help other users and work on other projects.

Currently working for UC Cooperative Extension's Nutrition Education Program.

Pros:
Work/Life balance is great
Working with your community on social issues that personally affect them
Local colleagues are great

Cons:
VERY low wages compared to the cost of living
Advancement is very unlikely even if yearly evaluations state you "exceed expectations"
Director and other higher ups don't seem to see anything wrong with low wages because the "health benefits are good"

I've been here for 5+ years and the system here is very broken when it comes to advancement and wages.  They just changed all of our position descriptions last year and when I first started, my position required a BA or BS.  Since the change, it just now requires "experience" with no educational background needed, rather it is "preferred."  Seems like they did that so they can start at minimum wage (which is low in the first place).  Educators along with most staff (besides our wonderful administration staff) are not represented, therefore no one supports us when it comes to fight for higher wages.  Local work supervisors and directors have already fought for us for higher wages on multiple occasions, but their voices are just as small as ours and there for it is just brushed under the rug.

Most of us (including myself) have one or multiple part time jobs just to stay afloat.  Some also receive SNAP (food stamp) and WIC benefits while working for this "higher education institution" that promotes "fair and adequate" compensation.

Best part of work are my colleague, families, and school communities with work with.  They are the ONLY reason why most of us are still working with UCCE; because the families love the work we do and we love the communities we work with.

The turnover rate is starting to jump and I heard some supervisors worrying because when some of our colleagues retire, they may not have someone takeover because no one will accept the job and pay when competing organizations are offering $15K+ more.

A great student job! The negative things about it are that there is no room for advancement and you get paid slightly over minimum wage. The positives far outweight the negatives though. If you are reading this, you are probably a student looking for a summer job. If you are hired, it is almost entirely for move in and move out weekend. Those weekends you work overtime and are the bussiest days of the year where you will re-arrange the student's beds as fast as possible. Other than those 8 rushed days per year, the job is incredibly enjoyable if you like problem solving, are willing to use your hands, and are willing to get dirty.

Most days, you will walk into the shop, look at the work orders, choose which ones you know how to do and go do it. If there are no work orders you know how to do, if one of the career mechanics are nearby, you ask them what you should do. More often then not, the career mechanic will pick a random work order, give it to you, and tell you to figure it out. If you truely can't figure it out on your own, you call the career mechanic, describe the problem in detail and they can normally tell you what is wrong and how to fix it. If they don't understand the problem over the phone, they will come over and you will figure it out as a team.

The vast majority of the skills you learn are transferable to home maintenance as well.

You will typically work with only the nicest people. You are working with fellow students, career maintenance mechanics who are incredibly over qualified for their jobs (they have degrees and certifications in some some seriously technical fields as well as a lifetime of maintenance and construction experience), and limited time assistants or temps who in general are nice people.

Also, safety is the number one priority. You will never be asked to do something remotely dangerous without extensive training. The people are willing to train you if you come across something you don't know how to fix.

I worked at one of the on-campus convenience stores. 

Management changed many things purely to "have them her way," only for everything to return back to what it was after a year because "her way" was massively inconvenient for the workers that actually had to fill out the paperwork, use the workspace, and store overstock. 

Promotes people who chat with her and befriend her. I had to train superiors on numerous occasions who had no qualifications other than being her friend. I was denied a promotion three times over these coworkers who got paid more than me and did less work than me when I was already doing the student manager job as the lowest student assistant. 

HR Department was no help and out-right ignored my complaints to protect the management. 

Scheduling is a nightmare because nowhere on the sheet does it list anything about double shifts, but then she'll schedule you for weekly double shifts and when you complain, she'll say "you didn't put that on your scheduling form."

Culture of laziness where one or two people are stuck doing all the hard work (stocking the entire store, stocking the fridge/freezers, compiling deposits, etc) when the other twenty people stand around on their phone and do nothing. If they are given a task to complete, they don't and just tell the shift after them to do it which continues to the last shift where they are forced to take care of it. 

She is also known to ignore students who ask her for a letter of recommendation. I thought I would be different since I worked with her for two years, but I spent months calling/texting/emailing her once a week and she ignored me the entire time. She is incredibly passive-aggressive and has no idea how to manage student employees. Not to mention she is unprofessional texting us "bitmojis" in response to quick scheduling or logistic questions. 

Truly a horrible experience.

A typical day would be seeing what tickets came in and escalating where they needed to be, taking calls and walking to the location to assess and fix where possible.

I learned about keeping my time organized based on how long a project would take. The culture was okay but there was no ambition from other student employees to get better even this was on the higher end of student employment work at the school. Not to say that the students were bad workers, but there was no push or need to explore topics outside their specialties which I found to be ineffective down the line in case our supervisors were busy and I wasn't there to help.

The worst part about the job was my tier 1 supervisor who was in his own office next to me. His people management skills were horrendous because he was the father of 3 austistic children. He had to explain everything to them in extreme detail which bled onto his work life. That caused him to brief us in a nonformal way that usually involved him telling us about his morning which took about 45 minutes while sprinkling things we needed to do throughout the conversation. Several conversations happened where I told him that the best way to use me (his employee) effectively, was to give me a bullet point list when I came in so that I could work immediately. He was not able to respect that because as soon as he was done with his 45 minute chat, he would lock himself in his office and would tell us not to bother him unless it was an emergency.

The best part about the job came due to his info dump and go routine was that I frequently used the KnowledgeBase articles and even wrote some of my own which massively improved my ability to understand problems on Windows and MacOS systems at a deeper level than I was before.

Maybe it’s the timing of when I came to work here and the landscape of COVID?! I never seemed to fit in to the culture and it’s likely due to that same reason. Within two weeks of onboarding we were home bound. It made assimilating into the environment hard, training and collaboration awkward with just 1-2 people actually being available and both were managers not familiar with my day to day responsibilities as I needed to perform them well. That’s not even the worst of it though. It was honestly the PAY. I was offended actually. The job posting gave a wide range of $62k-130k. I am a mid-management tier employee at this point in my career. I didn’t expect top of the bell but I didn’t expect to tare too far off it either. I rationalized at minimum I was sure to tag middle of curve easily. Nope, after three interviews that were spaced out long periods of time, finally receiving the offer I was upset that I was being offered the absolute minimum. When I inquired why I was told that it was the budget for the position and no other consideration would be made at this time. I had been out of work, needed the job and figured in a years time I’d be eligible for an increase. Wrong. Wrong again. No one told me nor was it in my contract that I would be ineligible for a salary increase for the first two years of my employment. Thankfully Covid happened because had it not I wouldn’t have been able to afford to make it in to work M-F on that salary. 

A typical day as a Teacher's Assistant (TA) consists of running a three-hour lab section for a lower or upper division undergraduate Earth Sciences class. The lab consists of introducing the exercise(s) and explicating complex concepts to the students. The most important skill I learned/exercised was how to give introductory presentations to a group of people. I had to adjust the delivery of information so that the students could learn it effectively. Management of the classes was trying at times, as I TA'ed during a period of transition in the teaching staff. However, the people I worked with and for consistently made effort to be professional and to deliver a quality education to the students. A major positive aspect of working at the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department is the atmosphere that my co-workers strove to create; they consistently made effort to make work a professional and positive experience. The hardest part of being a TA was balancing the demands of taking classes, doing research, studying, and TA'ing lab-sections. I found it difficult to complete/manage all my obligations in a satisfactory manner; I would play catch-up only one week into most academic quarters. The most enjoyable part of the job was teaching students that were interested in the material I was teaching.

Picnic Day offered me a hands-on experience of what I learned in my business/ economics classes. A typical day for me was contacting and corresponding with sponsors while helping with budgets and compiling information on our Excel database. I learned more about effective management of clientele and the importance of deepening relationships with clients and colleagues. Management was always busy, but they were all organized. I loved all my co-workers- they are all passionate and exciting people who exert a lot of work into Picnic Day. The hardest part of my job was reporting before 4 am for work on the day of the Picnic Day event and running about the whole day (the hard part was just the busy schedule the day of, but it was ultimately rewarding). The most enjoyable part of the job was actually everything, from building relationships with clients and colleagues to running all over the place to tend to sponsors on the day of Picnic Day

Working as a student assistant at the SSO (Shared Services Organization), formerly SSC (Shared Services Center) which is a glorified university-wide HR department, could have been worse. 

Most of the work is dull, repetitive, meaningless drivel (data entry, data verification, odd jobs around the office, etc.), but if you can turn your brain off and stay out of trouble, it's not stressful or physically taxing and you'll have some spending money in your pocket to go towards the CoHo or nights out or something.

I will say that at the time, my supervisors were very nice and supportive people who would occasionally go out of their way to help me professionally or otherwise. Being that many of the people there are lifers who will work there until they retire, chances are you'll be fortunate enough to work with them. 

Generally, they were very flexible and accommodating of student schedules; no complaints there. 

If you want, you can use the time spent here as a springboard to get into some other mindless HR job, but otherwise you'll have some inapplicable experience that will go out the window once you are forcibly kicked out after graduation. 

The engineering program at UC Davis is a dynamic and innovative academic endeavor that prepares students for the challenges of a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Renowned for its rigorous curriculum and forward-thinking approach, the program offers a diverse range of engineering disciplines, from civil and mechanical to electrical and computer engineering. Students benefit from cutting-edge research opportunities, state-of-the-art facilities, and a collaborative environment that fosters interdisciplinary learning. The program's faculty, composed of accomplished researchers and industry experts, engage students in hands-on projects, encouraging practical application of theoretical knowledge. With a strong emphasis on sustainability, ethics, and global impact, UC Davis engineering graduates emerge with not only technical proficiency but also a holistic understanding of how their work intersects with society. As trailblazers in innovation, graduates are well-equipped to address complex challenges and drive progress in the engineering field.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Graduate researcher 12 salaries reported	$38,100 per year
Teaching assistant 10 salaries reported	$3,564 per month
Postdoctoral fellow 5 salaries reported	$62,000 per year
Graduate assistant 8 salaries reported	$2,942 per month
Postdoctoral researcher 11 salaries reported	$66,262 per year

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