How IT People See Each Other

Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 1022 points –

Not OC: Just found this on my old hard drive while grabbing some other stuff.

132

You are viewing a single comment

A fellow sysadmin, I thought we went extinct. I had to pivot to “infrastructure engineer” but it’s basically the same thing nowadays.

Job titles in IT don’t mean anything these days.

In particular, the term “engineer” has been butchered beyond recognition.

Wait so you’re telling me I’m NOT an engineer?

Agreed. I usually say developer because I view engineers as people who do actual engineering. I’m more of a plumber who fits pipes (pieces of software) together.

Digital archaelogist here.

Warm greetings to you from the Customer Success Evangelist.

That sounds like an actual job title, that works alongside a React Ninja. What do you do, exactly?

Oh, that isn't my actual title, I just wanted to mix together a pair of the more ridiculous trends.

My first job was as an “engineer”.

I spent most my time resetting passwords and setting up Outlook…

Wait so you’re telling me I’m NOT an engineer?

Are you licensed by the state? There's your answer!

These days it's more "do you have an engineering degree from an accredited University."

The vast majority of engineering diplomas are not in licensed areas.

Iirc it’s full blown illegal to call yourself an engineer in Canada unless you’re a licensed engineer. Meaning that if you marketed yourself as a software engineer without an engineering license, you could technically get in trouble. Not that I think they really enforce that for “Software Engineer”.

Not quite extinct, but endangered.

Thankfully there's been a recent trend of companies pulling back out of the cloud because reality set in and they're neither saving money nor getting a better experience than they had with their on-prem solutions.

So, if that trend holds, we'll hopefully go from endangered to merely threatened.

1 more...

I have two weeks left as a sysadmin and I'm transitioning to development. My experiences in sysadmin are a big reason I got in the door with little coding experience. A lot of devs don't have an in depth knowledge about computers outside of programming, and knowing that extra stuff can certainly raise the ceiling.

1 more...