Christian "Ian" Paredes
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What they do:
- Ian is a junior systems administrator working with a web hosting company. They offer both "managed hosting", which means someone actually makes sure the server is working, and "server colocation", which means the customer may provide their own equipment to be managed by the company. This would include network connectivity, power, and cooling for the server.
- The company has about 500+ UNIX servers that they administer, with much of the workload split between five systems administrators, of which Ian is one.
- On a daily basis, Ian's job can vary. Most of the time, he is simply there to prevent disaster. In a particular week, he can sit idle and read various books and documentation related to the job. Other weeks, there could be critical issues to address daily inolving a serve that isn't working properly.
- Other duties involved programming wiht Perl and bash, or visiting the data center to help rewire servers.
- The expectation is to keep all servers up and running.
Math on the job:
- Ian says he doesn't do any math on a regular basis, but it is extremely important in his work to have a good sense of logical reasoning. Systems administration combines many different skill sets together. One needs to have a good grasp on programming, how to build a computer from scratch, an exceptional talent with server operating systems and excellent problem solving skills.
- Some systems administrators are trying to introduce better statistical methods in analyzing system logs and alert messages, to name a few. Ian says that his math background has given him the ability to abstract away certain details when they are not needed, as well as being able to drill down into the details if his mental abstraction was "too leaky."
Ian's background:
- Ian received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Philosophy in Spring, 2009 .
- Ian started at Seattle University and transferred to UW. His general background was in computing, where he was always tinkering with computers. He worked as a student assistant doing systems administration in a research lab, and after doing this realized this was the field he wanted to pursue.
- A strong influence for Ian was his father. Ever since he brought in an old DOS machine from the garage of a house they were renting, he was hooked. He would help him go through a few technical manuals when he was little and helped him understand some of the language and steps. He eventually started replacing parts himself without his father's help and the rest is history.
Advice for students:
- He recommends taking a large variety of classes. Having a well-rounded education is important. Even though mathematics has taught him alot of valuable skills, he feels his CHID and Philosophy classes influenced his thinking as well. He suggests taking "Axiomatic Set Theory", a course offered by the Philosophy department. Most of the theory in that class has no effect on the majority of mathematics research, learning about set theory and the various antinomies that you can run into is very insightful.
- Don't pigeonhold yourself into a strict math career. It is okay to go into other fields that are related.
- Strike a balance between education and a social life. In the real world, you have to be skilled at what you do, but you also have to be able to interact well with people. Not knowing how to interact with others can be disastrous and label you as hard to work with.