The itinerant IT journeyman — the root cause of attrition in the information technology industry — may sometimes feel he has seen places and been things. What places? A body-shopping camp in Silicon Valley no doubt. What things? Ahem, that would be too embarrassing to discuss, especially as they are no longer ordinary dogsbodies, but have become cats in the organisations they work for.
But the reality is that they have only seen the tip of the iceberg. In the Antarctic, even PhDs have to clean up. One day a week they have to do the washing. In India, PhDs have to apply for peon’s jobs because of lack of other employment opportunities. Is there a lesson in it somewhere?
“We employ a wide range of people at the British Antarctic Survey from top-flight scientists to chefs,” says a spokesperson for the organisation. “The rewards and opportunities on offer are the kind that money can’t buy.”
At the other end of the world — the Arctic — cooking is a full-time profession. Jobs available include that of a baker/breakfast cook. The compensation is $10 per hour with an additional $1,000 season completion bonus.
Work Arctic, a job site for a cold climate, paints an attractive picture of what awaits you — if you can get over the cold, that is. Humble mothers’ mittens won’t do. These are the advantages:
WILDERNESS 24/7
A paid working vacation, not a mere visit to Alaska's Arctic wilderness but an unparalleled opportunity to live it;
GREAT COWORKERS
Great wilderness attracts great coworkers, perfect teammates for a season of life, work, and play;
HOUSING/MEALS
No rent, no food bills, no commute;
EARN IT, SAVE IT
An environment where the options for spending money are as scarce as the options for wilderness exploration are robust.
The Arctic has holiday camps: the Antarctic has research stations. If you thought that only citizens of countries that have a technology edge can get to work there, you are mistaken. India has a significant presence in the Antarctic.
The Indian Antarctic Program is run by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, which comes under the ministry of earth sciences. The first programme started way back in 1981. India has signed the Antarctic treaty and set up research bases — Dakshin Gangotri, Maitri and Bharati.
The Antarctica can be fun. You may see a HIPPO in the sky. That is an abbreviation for HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observation funded by the US National Science Foundation. HIPPO will provide a vital source of data useful for informing policy related to climate and climate change. In a different context, the Daily Mail reports that Antarctica scientists are getting drunk and indulging in “indecent exposure”. They have apparently been brewing their own beer. It is not known whether they have seen the HIPPO after consuming the beer or before.
Narelle Campbell, station leader at the Mawson station in Antarctica gets intoxicated by the beauty of the place, not beer. “It brings challenge and adventure every day,” she says. One thing which everybody has to do is go outside and collect a pail of snow to melt into water.
In Fritz Leiber’s science fiction short story A Pail of Air, the earth gets knocked off its orbit and moves into barren, cold space. Hell and everything else freezes over. People have to go outside to collect a pail of frozen air to get oxygen to breathe. Another science fiction writer D.F. Jones (Don’t Pick the Flowers) visualises a world in which greenhouses have to be set up in the Antarctic because the world has become too hot to grow flowers and hence generate oxygen. To let your imagination flower, you have to first break the ice.
ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD
Vacancies in the frigid zone
Camp manager
Cost/schedule analyst
Engineering and science support
Engineering planner
Environmental engineer
Facility engineer
Facility operations
Financial analyst
Information security analyst
Project engineer
Project manager
Program planner
Quality assurance analyst
Research engineer
Safety engineer
Satellite systems engineer
Systems administrator
Subcontract administrator
Vehicle fleet administrator
Source: Lockheed Martin; Lockheed operates the US Antarctic Support Programme
