I've read a number of excellent posts regarding working as a CM for WDW, and while these are incredibly informative and wonderful stories, my interests lie a bit more to the career technical fields.
In particular, I have a good deal of experience in web development, online game programming, and software project design and management, including in the game design world and in business system types of software.
As well, I have developed/am developing a fairly unique set of management skills through my position in the Air Force. Day-to-day, I maintain control -- from 60-100 feet underground in a sealed capsule -- of 10 to 50 nuclear weapon systems and 20-30 security, maintenance, and other assorted personnel spread across an area up to several hundred square miles.
As an aside, this job is a primary drive for wanting to move either to a position with Disney or to working full-time on my family's art education mission in Honduran villages. I've decided that instead of potentially being the one responsible for taking the lives of many, many people (:(), I'll spend my life doing what I can to spread happiness to those in need of it (:)).
I would love, love, love to work with the various Disney studios that produce the online games, but the offices, I believe, are exclusively in Cali, and my wife and I need to be a lot closer to home than that (13 hours to Mississippi from Orlando). I've also examined positions that crop up in Disney's data warehouse (D3), web design, business and financial system production, resort software management, and myriad others.
Phew. Bearing all of this in mind, I have a few questions for anyone out there who may know.
What is the career experience like or, alternatively, how do you rate the experience relative to working as a cast member? I'm very curious as to whether the sense of "magic" is affected (I'd imagine not as much for a career office-type job, but I'm open to opinions!).
I'm also worried about continuing to live away from our families -- parents, brothers and sisters (all 10...), and the friends we grew up with. This has been the hardest part of living in the Air Force.
How do you folks fare who share such a disposition and work away from home? The distance, as I said, isn't really THAT great, particularly once the day comes that I can buy/buy into a private plane, but it's still not just across town.... Does the Disney experience mitigate the separation? As a caveat, I should mention that most of our family shares our love for WDW, and so we'd never have trouble getting rid of the comp tickets, but the trips would still be too expensive to make regularly.
I reckon that's about all I can think of at the moment. I look forward to hearing from anyone with experience or even just thoughts related to careers/long term employment with the Disney company.
Blessings,
John
P.S. -- I'll completely understand any replies of "tl;dr" -- tend to be a bit long-winded...
And you can ofcourse meet them with magical gatherings!
