Catherine recently changed positions from Web Production Assistant working for Priceradar to a Web Developer position contracting for Cisco Systems in their Internet Business Solutions Group.

No. I work for an online auction aggregator called Priceradar.

What is your background? What types of degrees, skills, experiences are necessary for this field?

I have a 2 year vocational degree from Masters Institute, a technical college in San Jose. However, I was doing this for 2 years before I decided to go back to school. Before obtaining my education, I was pretty much self taught in everything I did. But I found doors I wanted to open to me were not opening without formal education, which was my catalyst for going back and getting my degree.

How did you get started in this field?

I got started doing it professionally through an internship at a design firm based in Santa Barbara, California, in 1997. It was part of my work-study financial aid program. I was an English major at the time, and my responsibilities were supposed to be technical writing, but I got my hands on a lot of different aspects of the business at that time.

What college (if any) courses have been most helpful for your career?

My college degree was very much geared towards going out and getting a job in this field, so I would have to say that every class I had to take in order to graduate has been helpful.

What are your specific responsibilities?

I assist other members of Web Team and members of the content team in managing and maintaining site content. I assisted in keyword classification that is vital to our auction classification systems. I am responsible for the layout and editing of our weekly newsletter. I also assist in website file maintenance and in the ongoing layout and design of the website. I also assist in Q.A. work on an as needed basis.

Describe a typical workday and workweek. What do you do during a typical day?

• Get into work
• Obtain caffeine of some sort
• Read email and respond if necessary
• Do daily QA check -- is the live site working? Good, means no real big hassles 1st thing in the morning.
• Do some daily file maintenance work -- is this file still needed? If not, delete it. If so, leave it.
• If it is Friday or Monday, my main responsiblity is production of the newsletter. This entails dealing with our newsletter editor to get the copy and laying it out. Then it goes to our copyeditor for edits and then back to me to make those changes. Then it goes back to her and the newsletter editor for some final checks. Then we produce the email versions of our newsletter.
• If it is some other day of the week, I am usually working on various projects as assigned by either the other web designer/developers or by our content team manager. This can range from development projects, to cleaning up old files that have cluttered coding, to producing our weekly archives on the site, to classifying auctions into specific categories using our propietary systems.

• Front End Development skills -- the two we use the most here (other than HTML) are javascript and VBscript. We do all our work in ASP (Active server pages) so you need to have a working knowledge of that as well. HTML is first and foremost what I do every day of the week.
• Graphic Design Skills -- although not used as much, they do come in handy and are needed from time to time.
• People Skills -- I work with so many different kinds of people here, it is vital you have the ability to work within a team enviornment Problem solving skills -- things are always going haywire, you need to know how to fix it or at least know how to isolate the problem well enough so someone else can fix it.

Are you in a team oriented position?

Yes, there are two other designers I work with as well as I work closely with the content team and members of our IS team.

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

I get two weeks of vacation a year plus my schedule is very flexible, as long as people are informed as to what is going on.

How many hours per week are expected or warranted for peak performance?Are many evenings or weekends required for your job?

Very rarely more than 40, and as for weekends, not usually. My bosses both have children and tend to be very sensitive to that, although I usually will come in and work some weekends cause it is more conducive to getting things done.

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

From my apartment to my jobsite. There really isn't much travel for my position. Most of that is done by the VP's and other higher ups in the company.

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

My main responsiblity is production of our online newsletter The Weekly Dish (http://www.priceradar.com/newsletter/newsletter.asp). I also do some work on our main site, (http://www.priceradar.com) but that is not my main responsiblity.

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

We are a growing company of around 35 employees. We have two office suites -- one on the 3rd floor, which houses all our upper management and IT guys, and one on the 2nd floor, which has all the production people. Our offices are pretty kick back and it is a very relaxed environment for the fast paced world of a startup. It's a jeans and t-shirt kind of atmosphere. We run on PCs running Windows 2000.

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, I would say it's the growth of the company. We are growing in regards to the work that needs to be done faster than we are growing with the people to do the work, which can put a lot of pressure on all of us. I am also having to learn a great deal of skills I did not have before I came here on top of that, so it can be a pressure cooker.

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

Pros: Seeing something completed that people read, use and enjoy and knowing that I was responsibile for it getting to them. Being with a startup and seeing the company grow and focus and hopefully become successful.
Cons: The massive amounts of office politics that can, and do, happen here -- that can very much interfere with what needs to be done within the work environment. The ever changing currents of working for a start up.. I've been here a bit over 3 months now and we've changed company focus already in the short time I've been here.

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

Not really. I am not in a position of management or any position where I have hard decisions to make. I'm a good little worker bee and don't have those kinds of responsibilities.

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

As a developer, I have interaction with the IS guys and the programmers, as well as with the content developers.

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

Here at this current position, there are 3 developers and I am the only female. In my position as a whole, outside of where I work, I would say the ratio is not much better. In fact in my last two positions before my current one, I was the only female developer in a large group of men.

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 prevalent in our soceity, 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.