Peter 0:03
From MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, this is Talking Technicians. The podcast about technicians: who they are, what they do, and where they come from. I'm your host Peter Kazarinoff. I teach technicians and Engineers at Portland Community College.
In each episode, you'll meet a working technician and hear their story. That means real interviews, with real technicians, about real jobs. And at the end of each episode, You’ll hear actions you can take if you want to be a technician too.
In this episode, you'll meet Vitaliy. Vitaliy a technician at ARC Nano in Minnesota.
Peter 0:49
Vitaliy, welcome to Talking Technicians.
Vitaliy 0:53
Hey Peter, thanks for having me here.
Peter 0:56
So tell me a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? How long have you been there for?
Vitaliy 0:59
I’ve been living in St. Paul in Minnesota for a little over a year now. I moved there because of - because of my job and college to be closer.
Peter 1:16
And where’d you live before St. Paul?
Vitaliy 1:21
Before St. Paul, I actually lived in a small town called New Preg. And before that, I used to live in Ukraine, but I came here when I was very little, so I don't remember much from that time.
Peter 1:32
And do you speak any other languages besides English?
Vitaliy 1:34
I speak Russian.
Peter 1:38
And has that been helpful at all for you working as a technician, being able to speak more than one language?
Vitaliy 1:44
Ah, not really. I haven't encountered a whole lot of Russian at my job. A whole lot of that language.
Peter 1:52
So tell me about where your query you do work. What's your job title and what do you do day-to-day?
Vitaliy 2:01
I work at a small company called ARC Nano. A R C stands for Advanced Research Corp. And my job title is, thin films technician. Most of the stuff I do I do with metal thin film positions. I do assembly, I do quality checks. Occasionally, I clean different parts if I have to.
Peter 2:26
And for some people out there, can you explain a little bit about what a thin film deposition is? What does that mean when you do that?
Vitaliy 2:35
It’s a deposition process where you deposit metal, metals on different parts. It could be any part in it forms a uniform layer and it can be of any different thickness depending on why you need.
Peter 2:56
And did you get a lot of on-the-job training to be able to do these assembly quality checks and thin film depositions? Or did you learn some of that stuff in school?
Vitaliy 3:08
I learned most of that while working there.
Peter 3:12
What did you feel like your first day going into ARC nano?
Vitaliy 3:19
A little bit nervous. But the fact that it was such a small company, it made it made a little bit better, a little bit easier for me.
Peter 3:30
How many people work at ARC?
Vitaliy 3:33
Total? Maybe 30 people. Between 20 and 30 people. In the cleanroom where I work, there's a few other people besides me.
Peter 3:45
And can you talk a little bit about the cleanroom? and what a cleanroom is?
Vitaliy 3:52
Where do I begin? Our cleanroom, it has, we have multiple deposition systems there. We also have a photolithography lab there. We have a chemical room there to where we do a lot of our cleaning and chemical etching, wet etching. And then we have an area for assembly as well. And I'm not, I'm not sure how - what the classification of the clean room is. How essentially, how clean it is. Something like a thousand parts per million or something like that. I don't really remember.
Peter 4:42
And how do you keep it clean as a technician? What do you have to do every day at work?
Vitaliy 4:48
As a technician, we - we usually wipe down stuff. Occasionally we wipe it down with isopropyl alcohol. But to keep the air itself clean, to keep it free of particles, we have air that - we have air that goes in and air that comes out, and it doesn't really circulate, comes in from the outside and then goes back out - and that way we'll keep it clean. There's always a fresh supply of air.
Peter 5:19
And at ARC Nano, besides technicians, what other kind of people, job titles, work there? Who else do you work with?
Vitaly 5:29
Most of the people I work with are Engineers. There are a couple of Chemical Engineers- there's a couple of businesses too. And the cleanroom is small c chemical engineers there that are working. And the chemical engineers and then there's me, a thin films technician and I have another - there's another technician working there also, a thin films technician.
Peter (5:59)
Neat. So how did you become a technician? What was your work experience before going to ARC?
Vitaly 6:09
Before I was working at ARC, I was cleaning houses for maybe three years- almost three years. And then once I graduated from Dakota County Tech college, I started looking for jobs related to my degree and I got a call from the boss of ARC. He asked me if I was interested in working there- I said Yes. So we scheduled an interview and then they called me back- told me I had the job. And I’ve been working there ever since.
Peter 6:45
That's great. So tell me a little bit more about the program that you did at the community college. What was the program called and what were the kind of things you learn there so that you could get a job at ARC?
Vitaly 7:01
The program was an AAS degree in nano science technology and two-year degree. We add some hands-on experience a little bit in the laboratory. So that prepared me for the chemical aspect of my job.
Peter 7:29
How did you know that a nano science technology program exists and that you could work at a company like ARC before you started?
Vitaliy 7:39
Because actually I found out about that when I was 17. My sister went to those same college- I was looking through their brochure and she followed the program, she thought it would be, it might be something that I might be interested in. So she told me about it and I decide to choose that path.
Peter 8:00
What was the hardest part of the program for ya?
Vitaliy 8:07
I would say in some cases, not always, but in some cases saying I'm experimental labs. And - I think that would be probably the most difficult aspect of the of the- of the program.
Peter 8:34
So what was something unexpected about being a technician that you only learned about when you started working? Something that you didn't learn during your AAS degree?
Vitaliy 8:48
One thing that I learned is that you learn a lot more on the job that you do in college. And another thing that I've found interesting is that we had- there were other people coming in and working there who previously worked in larger companies - and big companies - and they could only do just one thing. Whereas somebody like me, you who worked in a small company, since like the very beginning, we've been trained to do pretty much everything. I found that to be kind of interesting.
Peter 9:26
And what advice would you give a current students or people who want to transition careers and work at a company like ARC?
Vitaliy 9:36
Expect to - expect to do a lot more than what your job title implies. So my job guide title is, thin films technician, but I do a lot of other stuff besides thin films.
Peter 9:53
And are you willing to share some of that other stuff? What else besides thin films do you spend a lot of your time working on?
Vitaliy 10:03
Besides thin films, the other part where I work the most is probably assembly. Currently this week I’ve been doing a lot of assembly, pretty much only assembly.
Peter 10:18
That sounds fun, getting to put stuff together.
Vitaliy 10:21
Yeah. Yup.
Peter 10:24
Neat. What are some skills outside of the technical skills that you learned in the AAS degree that have been useful? Things like communication or working in teams. What kind of non-technical skills do you use every day at your job?
Vitaliy 10:47
I'd say cooperation with my co-workers was - was the skill that I've learned on the job. But it's a skill that - that I got from - from college actually doing the labs. And another thing that college prepared me for is problem-solving. If I encountered a problem - how to use logic to solve it.
Peter 11:19
Neat. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you interact with the engineers and the scientists. Do you have to do things like write reports and give presentations? Do you do like daily work logs? How do you interact with people who aren't technicians at ARC?
Vitaliy 11:41
Most of the people I interact with are our engineers, chemical engineers. And it's not super formal, it's more casual. And as far as reports go, I only had to write up a report once when we were doing an experiment. They asked me to write a report on that, which I did. That was kind of fun.
Peter 12:13
Vitaliy, thank you for coming on Talking Technicians.
Vitaliy 12:15
Thanks for having me.
Peter 12:17
Talking Technicians is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program.
Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation.
Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org. We are always looking out for great guests to share more stories with you.
