Any programmers here who work for cruise lines?

I talked to an engineer in that industry. The tools are pretty similar, all build into docker images in this case. He specifically works on the entertainment systems (similar to what you experience in long-haul flight). The most surprising insight was that they still ship harddrives around. Well, that might be related to the size of the movie files here. Remote debugging (European waters) is tricky but works. Rarely do they have to send somebody on-site or rather on-ship, but it happens. He didn't deal with hardware (server racks, internal networking) that was a different team.

I did for several years for Royal Caribbean. Started as a consultant via EY then they hired me direct. I was a principal architect (of the newschool, I wrote a ton of code.) and had to get DHS security clearances, port security authorization, etc.

Ship/shore environment is interesting, the network is very hostile, lots of interesting problems to work on.

I haven’t worked for a cruise line but prior to the pandemic I enjoyed cruising.

Princess Cruises and other lines are implementing a fleet wide mobile-app driven experience that uses Bluetooth Low Energy beacons in concert with a mobile app to enable all of the commerce that takes place on their cruises. Everything from unlocking your cabin door, to ordering room service, scheduling spa services or shore excursions and paying for a beer at one of their bars - it’s all driven by the app.

I was on basically the maiden voyage when they rolled all this stuff out, and it was pretty rough. The app, in particular had the vibe of being slapped together by offshore contractors. That said, it worked well enough but I would not be at all surprised that cruise lines want to continue investing in this infrastructure, especially given that it enables social distancing by default.

I can’t imagine it would be fun to work for a company that doesn’t understand tech outside the context of high priced contractors though, just from a culture perspective. Hospitality companies in general are very old-school in their approach to workers.

I saw a Solutions Architecture role I was tempted to apply for at Carnival, but they're a MS shop and I'm a Linux / Java guy predominantly. I'd guess for most development roles it's typical of your usual corporate style software. Nothing particularly fancy really (inventory systems, stock control, e-commerce etc).

I'd be tempted, but the salaries aren't great compared to what you can get elsewhere.

Princess are doing a pretty good job with e.g. the Princess Medallion and quicker internet access. Other lines (e.g. Cunard) are stuck in the Stone Age a little (although I once got 7Mbit whilst on the Queen Mary 2 and doing a speed test)!

I have no insider information but I can’t imagine how different it would be from any other programming jobs.

They might have some special infrastructure but that would be abstracted away from most people who interact with it so existing technology can be used without needing to recreate everything.

3/4 years ago I provided some professional services related to cybersecurity to a cruise/shipping company in Europe (one of the biggest ones). It was a "normal" environment with lot of care about GDPR and privacy because they daily managed PII information from customers.