Are you in a team oriented position?

Yes, I work very closely with 3 other developers/designers as well as various people within our group who need items published to our intranet.

Do you have flextime? Vacation time? Work at home? Telecommute?

I have a very flexible position. As a contractor, I do not accrue vacation time, which is a drawback of being a contractor. I do not have the ability to work at home/telecommute yet, but my boss, who is also new at his job, is looking into methods and processes and is hoping for us all have the ability within the next few months.

How many hours per week are expected or warranted for peak performance?

30-40

Are many evenings or weekends required for your job?

This is very project specific. If I'm working on the project and it requires evenings and weekends to get the job done on or before the deadline, I work evenings and weekends. But it is not a normal occurrence.

How much travel is involved with a job in your field?

Not a lot. The majority of what needs to be done in a design job can more often than not be done via phone, email, and fax. But there are some people who do need/like face to face meetings, so at times there can be some.

Could you give me examples of projects that you are working on?

Right now I am doing mainly intranet work, which can only be reached through having an account within our network. If you want to see some of the work that others in my group have done, you can check out our public site at http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/ibs/.

Could you describe your work settings? Offices, machinery, resources etc.

I work on a HP Kayak XA Running Windows 95. I work in what I've dubbed "the maze" -- rows and rows of cubicles -- at the main Cisco Campus in San Jose, California.

What personal qualities do you think are necessary for someone to be successful in this occupation?

Flexibility, Flexibility, Flexibility! Things change so fast, you need to be flexible and like not having an established routine. Especially if you're working in a start up position.. and you can't take things personally. Your work will be critized, and people will tell you it stinks to your face and that it is completely wrong. You need to know how to have a thick skin about it, and just be able to move on and give the client/boss what they want.

What is the major challenge you face at work?

Right now it's the insane time constraints of the timeline of the project that I was hired to do. It's on a fast track for completion, and since I am the only developer that is working on it, it means that there is a lot of work for me to do.

What aspects of your job do you find most rewarding (pros) ? Least rewarding? (cons)

There are many pros to my current position. First of all, I am leading this migration project. My boss comes to me for advice and opinions, and I lead the work effort on behalf of our group to get this completed in a timely manner. I have flexible hours and am pretty much left to my own devices and am left to do what I'm need to do. The only con of my current position is that I am the only person working full time on this project, and it's a rather big, time intensive project. It's a bit of a stress on me, but I am thriving in the environment of being in charge of the entire thing.

Are you confronted with difficult decisions or situations in your position?

Deadlines are probably the biggest foe in my current position. It's a big chore to be able to manage my time effectively within the deadlines I've been given.

Do you have a lot of interaction with a certain occupation? I.E. media, engineers, etc.

I work a lot with the marketing department, as well as sales people in our group.

What is the Female to Male Ratio in your position/field?

Here in our group, there are 2 females and 2 males. As a whole, I'd say there are more males than females by a long shot.

Has the field changed since you first started your career?

Yes.. the technology has just grown by leaps and bounds since I got my internship in '97. The things we can do today on the internet we wouldn't have even thought about then. Also, there is more room for specialists. When I started you had to know a little bit of everything to get anywhere. Now you really have to focus on just one thing.

Describe the changes taking place in your field. Project future trends? Turnover rate?

Technology is becoming more and more savvy and difficult to fenagle. I think the time will come when there will be so much technology out there that one person will only be able to focus on one thing in order to do it well, thereby bloating the industry to the point where it will take 20 people to accomplish what could have been accomplished by 2 or 3 people in the preceeding years.

Do you think women avoid technical careers? What do you think can be done to encourage girls to get more involved in the technology field?

I think that women are not exposed to the technology field in as great of numbers as men are. I believe that the only way for this trend to change is to have programs and organizations that are specifically geared towards females in technology, like Webgrrls, Gracenet, and San Francisco Women on the Web. These kinds of organizations foster community among females who are interested in this field. I have found a lot of support and great advice from these organizations.

Do you believe that women will be in more technical jobs in the future?

As Technology becomes more and more prevelant in our society, women will have to become more technically savvy, and therefore there will be more and more women in the technology field.

Do you have any advice for women and girls that are interested in going into the field?

Find a woman who is doing what you want to do and ask her any and every question you can think of. I think if I had that, my entry into the field would have been a lot smoother one. Find an internship doing what you want to do be doing to see if it is really what you think it is. Learn everything you can from every source you can.