-Jack Woehr
I started college at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. I worked part-time as a computer operator. In 1980, I transferred to the University of Maryland, where in 1985 I obtained a co-op degree in electrical engineering. I was double-majoring in computer science as well. I continued part time and earned my computer-science degree in 1990 from the same institution.
At Maryland, I got a job processing satellite ground data, then I started co-oping. In most of my work as a co-op, I also served as a programmer. It was good to see how programming was being done on the outside. It really helped me in school, too.
The advantage you get from co-oping is incredible. If you can't co-op, at least work part time in your field. You learn all the tricks. School teaches you to write a program to solve problem X. Co-op employment teaches you how to define problem X, how to get problem X approved, how to document problem X, how to test problem X.
In September of 1985 I started at NASA, and I've been there ever since. I answered an ad in the Washington Post for a computer programmer to work on the Space Shuttle project. It was a contracting company. Per my qualifications, they placed me in another position, one they hadn't advertised yet. I worked at NASA five years as a contractor, then became a government employee.
That's one way NASA sometimes does things: Rather than pick kids up right out of school, they'll start you as contractors. You start off doing ground hardware and test software, and then after you get some experience and prove what you can do, you get the flight jobs.
If there's a contractor they really like, they approach the contractor with an offer of government employment. You've got to prove yourself. The government has fewer and fewer hiring opportunities, so they hire the people they know will do a good job. The government has more to offer than the salary. Instead of jumping from one company to another, as contractors often do when contracts expire, the government offers stability.
What really strikes me is the diversity of projects at NASA. There are balloon projects, ocean projects, sounding rocket projects, ground-based projects, satellite projects, shuttle projects, deep space projects. Depending on what team you are part of, how big the team is, you have different degrees of flexibility and freedom.
I worked on SSBUV, Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultra-Violet (http://ssbuv.gsfc.nasa.gov/). We flew the same instrument on the Space Shuttle that flies on the ozone-measuring satellites. The Space Shuttle underflies the satellite to calibrate the satellite using the measurements from the Shuttle.
Let me tell you, there's no neater feeling than designing hardware and writing software and then seeing it operate in real time in space! You're down in Johnson Space Center, and the cameras pan back to the cargo bay and there's the hardware you've worked on. The astronauts send commands from the crew compartment to turn it on. Then you hear from space an astronaut's voice, "SSBUV is operational and we see the Go status," and everyone starts clapping.
I like my career, but I can't claim to have planned it! I just fell into the space effort with the first job I took right out of college. Doors have a way of opening. I'm lucky I had a good mentor, Shane Hynes, in my first job. Working on a number of small, multidisciplined teams has helped, too.
DDJ