WiAC Interview: Gayathri Swaminathan, Systems Engineer at the University of Oklahoma

Submitted by rikki on March 8, 2013 - 9:38 am

Happy International Women's Day! In a new Women in Advanced Computing (WiAC) interview series, we focus on sysadmins. In this interview, we hear from Gayathri Swaminathan, a systems engineering who offers an international perspective on system administration.

RE: Please tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

GS: I'm a Systems Engineer working in the Infrastructure team of the Information Technology Department at the University of Oklahoma. l love re-engineering exercises, building and integrating systems, scripting, performance tuning, and deep dive exercises. My background is in Computer Science and I have been working in technology for almost 13 years in several positions ranging from Windows Systems Administrator to Network Specialist to Programmer Analyst to UNIX/Linux System Administrator to VMware team lead and Systems Engineer. I enjoy working with people at every level in the organization and enjoy team building exercises that involve analytic skills and working with diverse groups of people in different functional areas of the institution.

I have a tremendous passion for the great outdoors and I love biking, hiking, and road trips. I volunteer for every outreach effort to advocate for and encourage young adults to explore STEM, and to give them a perspective on how it feels to work for Information Technology.

RE: How did you get started as a sysadmin?

GS: By chance. Right after graduating from Computer Science and Engineering, I was hired by a small startup firm in Chennai, India as a Visual Basic programmer. We had repeated issues with our SunOS mail server and our lone systems administrator was overwhelmed dealing with incidents between mail and clients running Windows NT (this was in 1999). I offered to assist him in monitoring and troubleshooting the infrastructure while taking advantage of the opportunities to learn and grow. I quickly realized how the duties of a systems administrator hold different aspects and potentials. On any given day, I was responsible for efforts to fix phone systems, power issues, server and network problems, and security/incident handling. At one point I was running the company's VOIP system in Chennai that provided communication with our headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Supporting such diverse and wide range of systems and applications interested me. Soon, I scheduled time to meet with the CEO who realized my potential and interests and helped me to further my career as a systems administrator.

My interest in tinkering with and tweaking systems did not stop at work. I was soon evaluating and learning various OS platforms, database, software, applications, network devices (primarily Cisco) out of pure interest. I was making a switch to UNIX (Solaris) and becoming familiar with Cisco IOS commands. Command Line Interface was very interesting to me largely due to how quickly I could interact with the system and script that procedure. This first job was a good start and it allowed me to apply my CS background.

RE: Do you think you've hit barriers working in IT that your male counterparts haven't had to deal with? If so, please explain.

GS: I was quickly becoming aware of fact that there are not many women systems administrators. To think about it, in every team I have worked on, it has always been just me. While this is not necessarily a barrier, it presents challenges for communication and professionalism. It is important to stay tenacious while disagreements or discouragement occurs. I have learned over years that it does not matter that every single team member within your team understands something that you do not. You must keep asking the questions until you understand it entirely. I have been fortunate to have good peers and teams that allowed for this. It is important for your organization's culture to allows for this. There have been many times when my women colleagues came and thanked me after meetings for raising questions, as they were afraid to ask them in the first place.

Systems administrators have to move quickly, especially with production/operational issues. I have had times when I had to learn a new technology on the fly while immediately tackling production issues. Some of the best opportunities to learn occur when you are troubleshooting a production issue. That said, it takes time to develop this level of confidence and be responsible for a system you half understand. But, it comes! Again, it is important that your peers and teams support you and that you re-factor your steps to troubleshoot problems quickly and approach the task more proficiently in the next iteration.

RE: What advice would you give employers to help them get a more diverse (yet qualified) mix of job applicants?

GS: Excellent question! Being a woman and Indian residing in the United States, this gives me a wonderful opportunity to share some of my observations. Employers must understand their immediate demographics. Do they have a presence? How is their workforce perceived? I believe employers should seek and retain candidates for their skills and knowledge. How do they add value to the organization's knowledge and strategical approach? Do the employees bring their diverse perspectives to make an informed decision? Employers should perform a staged review of recruitment and evaluation methodologies to see if tactics to increase diversity within the workforce are working.

RE: If you could offer one piece of career advice to a woman joining a predominately male team, what would it be? And what advice would you have for her employer and colleagues to help them make the work environment inviting, friendly, and productive?

GS: My one piece of advice to a woman would be: You have to stay focused on the purpose at hand and remain logical.

Use your science background and skills to think swiftly and mitigate risks for the organization. While all your counterparts hurry around you, you must interject validation and logging of the steps being performed along the way. And, it is important to choose your battles wisely. Not all of your recommendations will make it to the final system or product.

Systems administration has taught me two life skills: time management and documentation. If you are able to show the value for a task being performed through metrics, you are not only saving yourself some time but your team/manager's time as well. Document your findings as this improves transparency. Even if no one reads your document right away, it becomes a reference, even for yourself later.

Run a user group and participate in user groups. Present at conferences. Keep a good balance of work-fun and fun-work. By that, I mean, balance aspects of your job duties with hobbies. Balance your hobbies with aspects that might be useful for your job duties and add an innovative leg to your thought process.

My passion is Linux. I balance working with Linux by keeping it fun and tinkering with gadgetry such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, programming within it, fixing bugs, etc. in my hobby projects.

My one piece of advice to employers would be: Grow and retain your technical women team members.

You must allow for women employee participation in technical deep dives and conversations within your organization. Present them opportunities to train and apply their technical skills. Open Source communities are good starts. Open Source found me when I was a programmer for a GIS department that was a research unit in the institution. It was great that our director and my manager allowed me to sample, contribute, and participate with MapServer, an Open Source platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications to the web. You have a sense for contribution and constant involvement in these communities.

Allow for volunteerism and mentorship programs within your organization or non-profits. My present roles and functions allow for this and it's great to continue a full schedule with these windows of opportunities to give back to the community.

RE: Which specific resources (websites, mailing lists, events, etc.) have been most helpful for you in your career?

GS: Several, and definitely usenix.org is top on the list! I subscribe/participate/volunteer with:

I have participated at LISA, Red Hat Summit, and SANS boot camps and find them extremely beneficial. LISA is simply fantastic; the technical sessions in particular are invaluable. [Editor's Note: USENIX provides open access to conference proceedings, including LISA events. Note that the LISA '13 Call for Participation is now open.]

RE: How has mentoring (being a mentor or mentee) influenced your career?

GS: Still an active mentee! My parents are a great influence to my career. And all my teachers, instructors, coworkers, managers who believed in me. For mentoring to work, it is very important to find someone who believes in your ideas and who pushes you along the right direction. It is important you choose your mentors with the intent of improving yourself and constantly pulling the skills they are adding to your career. To date, no one has denied mentorship to me when I asked for help.

At OUIT, I have been serving as a mentor in the Oklahoma Information Technology Mentorship Program (OITMP), which was established under Oklahoma's National Science Foundation Inter-Campus and Intra-Campus Cyber Connectivity (C2) grant as part of the Oklahoma Optical Initiative. This has been a rewarding experience and provides me with a wonderful opportunity to engage students across the state.

Through OITMP, I have had opportunities to mentor and speak with students, and to allow students to job shadow me in the areas of Systems Administration, Software development, and Web development. Additionally, I have been able to assist and transfer technical knowledge with maintenance of small campus infrastructures and build relationships not only with students but faculty across the State of Oklahoma. Last year, I participated in two conferences outreaching to Women: Women in Science and GIS Day. It was brilliant to have young adults try parallel programming exercises, tweak a mobile application and generate a new app, experience Linux, check out a Raspberry Pi running Scratch and Alice, generate and learn about fractals, perform PC troubleshooting, and play with Squishy Circuits. Creating and planning several of these activities helped me appreciate all of my mentors who helped me along my career path.

RE: Anything you'd like to add?

GS: This is a great time to be a woman in Information Technology in the United States. In Higher Education, there are record low levels of enrollment for STEM majors. The male to female ratio in the classrooms are particularly evident. NSF and other agencies have several outreach activities, grants and programs available for promoting growth of this enrollment. If you are a woman, this is a great time to leverage these opportunities in growing your career. Please feel free to contact me at gayathri.swa@gmail.com if you would like to collaborate or discuss ways we may be able to partner in activities that will have a positive impact on getting women involved in Information Technology.

A big thanks to USENIX for hearing my voice! (The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions my employer.)

RE: A big Thank You to Gayathri and the other women who have already participated in this interview series. If you or a woman you know would like to contribute to our Women in Advanced Computing interview series, please contact me at rikki@usenix.org.

Also read:

Video from WiAC '12:

"Career Information and Workload Warriors - Time Saving Tips and Tricks" Presentation

"Staying Happy in System Administration" Presentation

Uncharted Paths

"Overcoming My Biggest Roadblock, Myself" Presentation

Strategies for a Successful Career in Computing

WiAC Panel at LISA '12:

Advancing Women in Computing

 

Please join us for the 2nd USENIX Women in Advanced Computing Summit (WiAC '13), June 27 in San Jose, California.

WiAC '13: Call for Participation

Proposal Deadline: March 13

In the 2nd USENIX Women in Advanced Computing Summit (WiAC '13), we will continue to bring the technical community together to discuss some of the challenges women face in the professional computing world. Beyond mere discussion, we hope to engage all attendees to share ideas, best practices, and knowledge to move us forward in our professional capacity as technical people.

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