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Do You Hate Being Called an "IT Guy?"
An anonymous reader writes "The phrase 'IT' is so overused, I'm not sure what it means any more. OK, maybe it's an ego thing, but I spent a lot of years in grad school, lots of years getting good at creating software, and lots of years getting good at creating technical products and I don't want the same label as the intern who fixes windoze. I'm looking at a tech management job at a content company that is trying to become a software company, and they refer to everything about software development, data center operations, and desktop support as 'IT.' I'd like to tell the CEO before I take the job that we have to stop referring to all these people as 'IT people' or I'm not going to be able to attract and retain the top-tier talent that is required. Am I just being petty? Should I just forget it? Change it slowly over time? These folks are really developing products, but we don't normally call software creators 'product developers.' Just call them the 'Tech Department' or the 'Engineering Deptartment?'"
I can't see why this would matter. Hopefully potential candidates will look beyond whatever their official job title is. I'd change it slowly over time.
Le français vous intéresse?
I don't think you're going to help attract a lot of talented engineers by changing the nomenclature to the "'Engineering Deptartment."
That aside, I think "Software Engineer," "Software Architect," "Analyst," "Lead Developer," and such are common titles for people who are creating things with software, as opposed to "IT's" tech-support implications.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Sounds pretty petty to me. I have no problem at all with IT and don't see why anyone would. I don't care what my job's called as long as it interests/challanges me and provides a monthly paycheck. If you're that hung up with titles, I'd suggest your problem lies closer to home.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
In my view of the industry when someone says IT I think of the technical support, admin and sys planning teams. The ones who make the systems work and keep working.
Programmers and the such, I put in the developers group. Graphic designers, html jockeys or software developers. The ones who make what people see on their desktops look pretty.
You dont call someone who washes your car and gives it a bit of a polish a mechanic would you?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
call me Sue if you'll give me a job.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
You ARE in IT.
However, it's the equivalent of calling a Brain surgeon a Doctor
Or referring to a Nuclear physicist as a scientist.
It is kind of vague. Sometimes being more specific is good, as it points out people's specialty more.
Speak for yourself. I worked in a world-class marketing department, and I learned a lot about what marketing should do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Potential employees are probably more worried about future employers/their resumes, and it's not unreasonable of them to do so.
Frankly, a respectable-sounding title is one very cheap way for employers to compensate their employees that costs the company absolutely nothing yet is of material benefit to the employee. It's one reason nearly everyone in sales and marketing is a "director" or "head" of some tiny sliver of a given institution's sales/marketing operation. "Director, Central California Sales," "Head of E-marketing Business Development" etc. You're more likely to attract ambitious, driven people if your position comes with a nice title. These are also the sort of people who will work very hard for you, because they're hungry for advancement. Of course, they also are likely to leave the company as soon as a better offer comes along. But I'd rather get 3 years of work from a ambitious employee than 10 years from a just-getting-by timecard-puncher.
"The phrase 'IT' is so overused, I'm not sure what it means any more.
It means "information technology".
OK, maybe it's an ego thing, but I spent a lot of years in grad school, lots of years getting good at creating software, and lots of years getting good at creating technical products and I don't want the same label as the intern who fixes windoze.
What's wrong with that? Are you really so shallow as this? (Don't answer) I can understand wanting some sort of prestige, but not liking something because the proles get to have it too is one of the worst features of human nature, and it's something that used to get trained out of non-upper-class Americans. Is it really that irritating to be in the same industry as the intern who fixes "Windoze"[sic]? From urbandictionary.com: douchebag "An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intelligence, behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears."
How does the following passage make you feel? Does it make you feel comforted or outraged?
"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
--Andy Warhol
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Do you really value titles before substance?
'IT Guy' isn't a term of abuse, why should you care if people call you that?
Do they value you in your current position? Of so great, if not fix it or leave. Either way being called an 'IT Guy' is not worth worrying about.
It drove me nuts being in college and meeting "IT" majors. I would ask them questions like what they like to program in or what kind of Linux they use, but anything I asked beyond the technical skills required to setup a standard home Linksys router was met with a blank stare and an explanation of how good they are with anti-virus and firewalls. It made me wonder why as an aviation major I knew ten times more than any IT major I ever met.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
I laughed when I read the WAN latency issue. The number of IT people that know the difference between latency and bandwidth and their effect on a system is shocking. The number of times I have to explain that no matter how much bandwidth you are getting, it would not make a difference for a lot of applications. (This of course is a more common issue here in South Africa because the lowest possible round-trip latency to the US and Europe is a 100+ms).
One thing is certain: Referring to any group as a deptartment (or worse, a deptardment) will not win favor with anyone, top-tier talent or not.
There's a few colleges in a similar situation where it seems basically students who know how to manage with computers will avoid their college helldesk like the plague. Leading to getting, well, people who get taken on"do you want to work in IT?" "what's IT?" "you're hired!"
Assuming an unsaturated link, you are of course correct. With a saturated link, or with highly compressable data, light compression can make a difference. Of course it can't increase the speed of light, so I'm still gonna get annoying lag when pressing a key in my ssh client to my server in the states, but tunnelling my smtp/imap/sql/etc connections through that compressed ssh link does make a noticable difference, even with me only using 1% of my available bandwidth.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I find those that are worried about their title are generally those who obtained a degree and think that anything less than the title of their choice is offensive because they take their degree far too seriously or people who, for whatever reason (ie no degree or just stupid) don't feel qualified for the job and want a excellent job title to reaffirm they're doing their job right and it will help when they're caught out and need to be find a job elsewhere.
We already have numerous title for someone who does programming. Too many in fact and it's because of those two types mentioned above or companies wanting to avoid paying a decent wage by giving you a title that is hard to compare to other titles.
Her understanding the difference between server admin and programming is irrelevant, and won't fix the problem: If your wife is telling you she thinks you're spending too much time at the computer, it's because she'd rather you spend the time with her, and were doing something romantic. Relationships work, and stay alive, on doing stuff together and having common interests.
When was the last time you brought her flowers? (assuming she likes them, I do know a couple of women who don't). When was the last time you went out on a date? Was it planned, or did you get home in the evening and say "let's go out tonight"? When was the last time you stayed in, and had a quiet evening snuggling? When was the last time you went dancing, or to the theater?
Getting married does not mean that you have to stop working at the romance side of things. You could probably earn yourself a week's worth of being left alone to program by taking her out on Friday. Try to do something romantic with her at least once a week, preferably more often, and you'll find that she stops feeling neglected, and will give you your time to do things like your hobby of programming.
*sighs*
Tara
I have experience as a programmer, project manager, business analyst, software infrastructure architect, server and my current assignment is to create a new software department. You can call me an IT guy, but that doesn't describe my level of expertise. I graduated college as an Engineer, which doesn't describe all that either.
You wouldn't plainly call a building architect the "construction guy" or the CFO of a bank "a finance guy". Sometimes you need to make the distinction to prevent people from thinking that you have a simple job. If you are proud of your qualities, you can call it whatever makes you feel good.
I generally just tell people, that I'm a nerd.
Agreed, and you have the same hierarchy within an engineering / machine shop, within a hospital, within a building services company, within electricians shops, on board a ship.... you name it.
What ***___IS___*** different now is that back in the old days the only route to being top dog was to work your way up through all the other levels and disciplines.
Now you just take a degree course in engineering and get to be a manager put in charge of people who, for example, use a hacksaw every day of their lives, even though you yourself have never even held one.
I could tell you uncounted real world stories in engineering like this, guys who have literally never held a spanner, but have a degree in hydraulic engineering, designing hydraulic machinery that LITERALLY cannot be made, due to elementary mistakes like insufficient room between unions to fit the spanner to secure said unions, etc etc etc.
This is why all these type think they are better than the "workers", because they lack clue #1 about the workers actual daily job and skills.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I have plenty of recently graduated friends that have gotten all sorts of fancy titles. Why? Because when they're dealing with customers, it's important that the customers perceive that they're dealing with someone important because then it means that they're a valued, important customer. My friends happily admit that it's all "title inflation".
Then you end up pissing off all the "real" engineers in other fields whose titles are regulated by industry oversight committees and professional organizations. But hey, if a title makes you feel more important (even though your work is the same either way), then more power to you.
So apparently you want to be taken more seriously, but you decide to drop "windoze" into your question? Do you really think that the people who hand out jobs - and titles - care about your personal prejudices? As a professional, if the best solution for your company is "Microsoft`s platform" then you deliver it, you don't spend time complaining about how no one respects you because your proposal to migrate Visual Studio to vi isn't taken seriously. If it makes sense, make a business case for it and argue for it, but if the guys upstairs decide against it then either shut up or get out. This is what happens every day in Sales, Marketing, Production, Finance etc., but you seem to believe that IT is different.
If you're so obsessed about a job title then insist on it your contract. As some people say, that may make sense if you're concerned about your next job, but how bad is this job if you're already thinking about the next one?
Nobody with a functioning sense of humor will have thought of South Park for years. It jumped the shark before "jump the shark" did.
To put it another way, your preferences are objectively bad, and I have a graph here in my pocket that can prove it. Stop watching that damn show, you're only encouraging those morons to make more!
Are you going to refer to other departments in the same manner? Are you going to start calling people pay clerks, recruitment managers and pension advisers, or will you simply keep referring to the multitude of different disciplines involved there as HR? To most of us, these jobs appear as interchangeable as DB admin and developer do to the uninformed - but its just as insulting to them when we do it wrong.
*sighs*
Right back at you.
I actually broke my mod point to post this- do you understand how arrogant it is that you feel a)you understand the problem based on one or two sentences, b)you are qualified to give advice on the subject, and c)that it's your business to do the analysis and hand out advice? Nevermind that apparently "you spend too much time in front of the computer" somehow turned into:
Half of which is a bunch of misandry. Here's a big cluebomb for you: they liked each other enough to get married. I think one or both of them has been doing something right.
Seriously- Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot.
Please help metamoderate.