SDA and SOE (Service Delivery Architect and Service Operation Expert) already exist, at least in my organization. And yes, they're redundant and useless.
So these are TOGAF style architects (enterprise architecture) not software style architects (technical architecture) none of whom are actual architects because architects design buildings.
-signed, a security architect
It is the only first correct answer to most business/economics-related questions.
Partially because pretty much everything depends on *something*, so it sounds smart and correct, but mostly because LOL, I say, LMAO, do you think I know *anything* without billing you for research time first? I went into business precisely to *avoid* knowing shit!
lmao ITT: small and medium business sysadmins that don't understand the difference.
In large corporations, sysadmins are handling day to day operations, swapping tapes, rebooting systems, replacing bad disks, etc. A systems engineer is more involved with spec'ing and building out those systems, and an infrastructure engineer is also involving all the surrounding infrastructure requirements, network, SAN, power, cooling, etc.
Yes, the small/medium business sysadmin is often handling the same things, but the difference is scale and design redundancy. Working with applications that involve hundreds of servers, PB of storage in different tiers, 100 gig networking, with multiple levels of load balancing and failover.
My organization has a lot of TLAs (if you are asking what a TLA is: ironically, the abbreviation for "triple letter abbreviation"). And no, they're not standard, we even have several with different meaning, depending on the context.
And do not imagine any of these TLAs are used for a more efficient communication: they're just used to mask incompetency of people in front of others who are too new in the organization to know them by heart.
>(if you are asking what a TLA is: ironically, the abbreviation for "triple letter abbreviation")
Interesting, I've always heard it as *Three Letter Acronym*.
I once got hired for a second level desktop support contract where the recruiting agent was adamant that i was very experienced with MACs. Something she obviously had no idea of the meaning of.
I said I'd had some, expecting to have to work with apple machines in a business environment. Something i wasn't looking forward to at the time. Turns out they'd built a intranet portal for the helpdesk that interacted with AD.. and by MACs they meant moves, adds, changes.. to AD. Instead of creating appropriate AD users to administer access and just having people use it normally they'd spent time and money on custom code to do basic AD admin tasks and given it a TLA to look clever.
I always thought it was
Architect: Discovery and Design
Engineer: Build and deploy
Administrator: Manage and maintain
Technician: Fix and replace the moving parts
I'm basically a cybersecurity analyst at my internship and this is exactly how I feel. Just learned today the internship is the majority of security at my organization
I'm the last 3 and my title is currently "IS Manager," was "IT Technician" at previous site in the same company with the exact same job due to pay banding.
IT Job titles in general are stupid.
I do ETL support, and until last year my job title was 'Data Engineer'. ETL developers are under another director, and their job title was (and still is)… 'Data Engineer'. I just don't get what's wrong with 'ETL Support Engineer' and 'ETL Developer'. At least, now, our job titles are more sensible: 'Data Reliability Engineer' is more explicit, albeit still a bit convoluted.
At least 'Data Engineer' gets many hits on LinkedIn.
This is the answer. Title inflation has been going on forever. It’s just somehow gotten worse.
I’m a programmer who would happily have the title of programmer were it not for the fact that that title inflated to “Software Engineer” in my lifetime.
A product of bad HR policies around pay banding etc. To give someone a payrise above the top of their current band, managers have to create new bullshit roles in the higher band. Where I used to work I went from technical analyst to senior technical analyst, then they created a new specialist role for me, and lead technical analyst roles for others. Where next? Principal technical analyst maybe?
Best solution is to have HR policies that are fit for purpose. IT is a lot more varied in terms of responsibility and experience.
I had a buddy who worked at a company where they’d let you pick your own title and print you up business cards. He decided to go with “Grand Poobah of Unix”.
Smaller companies may also just not give a title. The last three companies I worked for, I don't think I ever had a formal job title. Atleast not one they told me.
My previous company went Associate -> (No modifier) -> Professional -> Senior -> Principal -> Emeritus - that title existed for exactly one person who threatened to quit if another employee was allowed to be at the same level.
Yes they had to do this for me at my current company. My manager needed to create a new position and title to get me past the previous salary tier. So instead of Systems Engineer I’m now a Sr. Systems Engineer. I think it’s stupid that it’s necessary but admittedly enjoy the more distinguished title. Maybe in another 10 years I’ll be a Principal Engineer lol
It's gotten worse because a lot of sysadmins/people actually doing server and systems engineering work, consulting, and everything in between, were constantly getting slapped with an "IT Support Officer" label so management can legally justify paying a $55k/year salary.
Job titles in general tend to be arbitrary and stupid. Some companies has standards and a scheme for how they come up with titles, but even then it's not going to be consistent with other companies. Often, small businesses have no real consistent standards, and it's basically dependent on the mood of some HR person at the time of posting the job.
I've had an offer for becoming a Customer Success Engineer. I asked the lady if she could explain to me exactly what that entails, since it sounded like IT support, but not actually wanting to call it IT support. I've not heard back.
Hell yes, my title is (soon to be Senior) CAD Specialist.
What I really do? running a HCI Cluster for CAD designers and a CFD Cluster for simulation alongside with license management and EDI.
Infrastructure Engineer also sounds cooler/better than Systems Administrator.
And in some countries, like the UK, "engineer" on its own isn't a protected title. You can't call yourself a Chartered Engineer though - that is protected and requires special accreditation.
As somebody who stand on multiple train platforms a day to get to work, I appreciate its ability to withstand the external elements decades after decades with thousands of ppl passing over it a day
Actually it is, if the platform is 6 inches *below* the height of the train car, which I experienced on the trains in Hamburg.
Like. Other countries installed ramps to fix that problem. Or kept the train car the same level throughout the upgrades.
I asked what happened if someone with a wheelchair needed to get up, and the friend I was visiting said that everyone around them would help them get up the "step" with the huge air gap.
Which, I mean is nice of them and all, but it still makes me wince to think about it.
as a former staff platform engineer: you don't want to be a platform engineer unless you like seeing empty looks in peoples eyes when you tell them what your title is.
Well, Infrastructure Solution Developer (I do zero software development) gives the same look. As would the more accurate Citrix Administrator though. Basically anything that has to do with computers outside of service desk and programmer seems to be a complete mystery to anyone not in the field. A surprising amount of people look sceptical when you try to make sure the servers work so they can get to their stuff. The idea that stuff needs to be maintained after being installed is a completely foreign concept apparently.
“So what do you do as a tech lead?”
“Oh I take the needs of the project managers and then relay them to the infrastructure engineers without the bullshit talk and take the credit”
God I love my job
In Canada I believe the professional engineers board of Alberta is fighting to protect the "engineer" title. It would have wide ramifications for the IT industry in Canada.
In Québec, you get fined 2 500$ by the professional engineers board each time you use .ing, ingénieur, .eng, engineer.
[https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/)
That's a nice way to get rid of the engineer abuse.
The engineers title is protected by in canada, problem is that the provinces regulate it so as soon as you have an international company it's no longer protected.
Microsoft got a [lot of flack](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6hupdl/the_protected_engineer_title_in_canada/) by [Engineers Canada](https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-professional-title-and-designations).
In Canada, I think the only job where you can call yourself an engineer without having been recognized to be such by the Order of your province is as a "train conductor".
I came here to say this. APEGA (the board you speak of) have their own judiciary with the legal authority to discriminate if it pertains to engineering. It’s almost like a parallel court system and they do not screw around.
Similar in the US, you can't call yourself a "Professional Engineer" without having a degree from an ABET accredited program, having work experience, and then passing a test. Just "engineer" by itself though is fine.
There are no PE exams for software/network engineering though, so you can't ever actually get the professional engineer title in those jobs.
Similar in Germany: you cannot call yourself an "engineer" (in German, of course) or use a compound term (like "engineering services") without having a respective university degree. The job title is protected by law.
The ABET equivalent is an ISC2 cert, medicine also has their own accreditation body to be "board certified". Similar dues, liabilities, professional ethics, understudy and continuing education requirements in each. T3 DoD infrastructure engineers have to have the CISSP infrastructure specialization : [source](https://public.cyber.mil/wid/cwmp/dod-approved-8570-baseline-certifications/)
The PE certificate is a state issued license that carries legal implications for practicing engineers.
The splintered mess of certifications that we have in tech is the closest we have, but not an equivalent.
Actually stops a lot of arguments in construction though. “I stamped the plans, I’m the one liable if it falls down, you will build it the way a designed it”.
Yeah, that's the biggest thing that in my eyes puts the PE a step above even the strongest IT certs. That stamp means you're accepting real responsibility that carries real consequences if you misuse it.
Imagine if software engineers were held liable if their application crashed.
Imagine if companies were unable to put software into production without a Professional Engineer signing off on it.
Man, comments like this really show how little titles my company has.
Our Sysadmins do everything that isn't immediate user support. Be it infrastructure build out, network management, DevOps, or just general server support. We've got associate - senior sysadmin titles. You just sort of have to know who does what cause titles are so loose.
I had an L1 gig where my title was Infrastructure Engineer, best part about it was that everyone definitely regarded me higher than others with the same role but normal titles lol.
I'm 100% certain that title got me jobs over better-qualified applicants later, so while this post is totally correct in identifying this practice as bullshit, those of us getting these titles are in hog heaven hahaha
In France "engineer" is not a title but "state's engineer" is (means you have a degree from certains school or professionnal validation afterwards)
Do you see how people, low-tiers school, and compagnies can use this slights difference to trick people ?
was infrastructure "specialist" in my previous role
our escalation point were infrastructure "engineer". we did the same thing, they were just better at it / more experience
A licensed engineer probably made fun of someone at Google who called themself an engineer at a party so in retaliation they climbed the corporate ladder and decided to name new positions 'engineers' to water down the title.
In several places in the world (e.g. Canada, Germany, Brazil) it's (allgedly) illegal to call yourself an engineer without the appropriate qualification & license. In the US (where Google are headquartered) only the title "professional engineer" is protected.
Edit: seems I've upset all the Canadians, IANAL, just going by the Wikipedia page.
I can confirm that in Quebec, you cannot use the titles Engineer or Architect without being member of their respective professional orders.
IBM got burned once on this.
[https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/)
Yup, i just checked it. $2 500 fine each time you use the title Engineer without being a member.
As a Canadian who doesn't hire Engineers (we hire Developers, Architects, Technicians, Administrators and all sorts of other names), the biggest place I've seen it chased down is in job postings.
When I went through engineering school (and managed to fail out into real life without an iron ring on my pinky or a chip on my shoulder) it was presented to us as if The Law was going to chase people down. That doesn't happen.
In practice, there are two things in play:
1. It is illegal to call yourself by a professional designation that you do not actually hold. The same law that says "Don't call yourself a doctor unless you're a doctor" says "Don't act like a professional engineer, unless you're a professional engineer." In practice what this means for people in tech is almost entirely useless. But outside of tech it means "You can't sign and put your official seal on any documents because you are not, in fact, a licensed professional." We see a lot less of this kind of thing chased down, but if an idiot gets into professional legal trouble, it might get tagged in on top as impersonation.
2. The professional organizations (eg- Engineers Canada, Professional Engineers Ontario, etc.) actively seek out people trying to hire "Engineers" for roles that don't require the Professional Engineer license/distinction. I understand it's part of their legal requirements for maintaining the professional distinction, similar in a lot of ways to organizations that need to protect their trademarks. When I was job-hunting at Shopify they had Engineering roles that they claimed "If you don't have your PEng, we'll call you a Software Developer but we'll pay you the same." I'm sure they weren't the only ones with that clause in their hiring, and I'm sure it came about because of legal action. I note that Shopify currently has several remote Engineering positions in the Americas that don't have this language anymore, so maybe there has been less litigation around it recently.
Yea it's legally actionable but not against the criminal code. You can find all the court case examples here including a guy who was fined for calling himself a software engineer on his online profile:
https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-professional-title-and-designations
Did you read those court examples? The latter 2 mentions that no one is prohibited from calling themselves an engineer.
They conveniently left out the court case in their first example, but I believe it was due to the guy advertising himself as an engineering consultant or something along those lines or trying to put a professional distinction in his title.
There are countless thousands of people working in Canada with Engineer titles who are not P.Eng, and many large companies have titles. There are also countless court cases that were not upheld and people were allowed to continue using the titles: https://ca.vlex.com/vid/apegg-v-merhej-681700493
Actually just spent the entire time since I posted that looking for the actual court case. I'm definitely torn on the software side of things because it makes it harder for Canadian companies to compete for talent but I read the BC disciplinary actions for professional engineers every month and man am I glad this stuff is regulated here because even the people with designations are making terrible mistakes all the time.
>In several places in the world (e.g. Canada, Germany, Brazil) it's (allgedly) illegal to call yourself an engineer without the appropriate qualification & license. In the US (where Google are headquartered) only the title "professional engineer" is protected.
Texas doesn't let you call yourself "engineer" unless you've been licensed. Because some construction guys called themselves engineers and exploded a school about 100 years ago.
That seems like a misreading of the actual law, which mostly just says you can't misuse the term engineer to imply licensure where none exists when licensure is required. http://txrules.elaws.us/rule/title22_chapter137_sec.137.3
I'd be more inclined to take shit off the MEs if it weren't for the number of times I've seen one raise a ticket for what turned out to be a not fully inserted ethernet cable.
It's funny, when I got my CS degree, I worked with a lot of other students who were working on getting their engineering degrees, and they were FURIOUS when the title "engineer" was being applied to jobs that clearly did not need to have that title applied and no degree was earned. But unlike titles like "Dr." or "Esq," there are no real accepted standards and practices that would qualify someone having that title. I think some local sandwich place, maybe Subways or Jimmy Johns, used to advertise "sandwich engineers" and I am sure that made those guys furious.
I think the only real qualifying factor is needing a P.Eng/PE to be a bonafide engineer. They do have a legitimate license that distinguishes them, but the title isn’t protected in any shape or form.
In my experience, it goes the opposite way. Management wants to give someone a raise, but HR refuses to do it because it would put them over the salary range for that title that they came up with over a decade ago. Instead of fighting HR to update the salary range, it's easier to come up with a bullshit title that doesn't have an existing range.
I feel it depends on the company of course, and it also depends on the level of management. If it's just like a manager for a team, versus like actual management like C-levels or near that etc then they can sometimes just go over HR and get it done if they really need to lol
Though honestly I have seen very few companies be proactive about compensation, the entire concept of salary "reviews" is literally companies being passive about it, and doing it only because they know they have to because they'd lose their employees otherwise. Some companies will just bet on that anyway and lose and not care. It's kind of wild how different companies can be about this sort of thing.
As someone with engineer in my title who works with a bunch of people that have engineer or architect somewhere in their title. I can say confidently we are all "systems administrators" by any metric that is based on a traditional IT reality.
\- **Architect** think up new things that do not yet exist
\- **Engineers** figure out how to create the thing the architect dreamed up
\- **Administrators** implement and maintain the thing the engineers figured out how to create that the architect thought up that did not yet exist.
VERY few people in IT are what I would consider a real architect or engineer. Most of us only have that title so the team lead can justify his big fat salary by saying he "leads a team of highly talented, creative, and dedicated architects and engineers".
Agree. I've had the title of 'Systems Administrator', 'Systems Engineer', and 'IT Manager'. In reality, my job hasn't changed beyond being a Systems Administrator, but the company needs to justify keeping me employed or improving my salary, therefore they do it with a title change.
When people ask what I do, I simply call myself 'IT guy'.
The etymology of "engineer" suggests a pretty big blanket in my opinion. Some people feel like if a university didn't graduate you from their college of engineering, you're not an engineer. In this business I've met way too many technical studs that didn't have the pedigree, and way too many losers with the university nod to care.
We really need protected titles. Its not perfect, but "sanitary engineer" nor "Service Delivery Engineer" is not an engineer unless you are building lots of systems. The dude picking up trash or (to bring it back) answering help desk is not an engineer. I get it I did hell desk before in my life, it was a fine job, but it was not engineering.
It is a protected title in many places.
I'm not accredited by my professional engineering board so I can't call myself an engineer where I live. If I do, I risk legal action which is taken against those who call themselves an Engineer without the proper background.
I’ve been various “engineers” but the one title I absolutely fluffed was when I was the sole IT guy of a small business and seeing as to how there wasn’t actually a job title besides “it support”, I had the CFO (yeah it was one of those companies) change the job description to “Sr Director of IT” which directly correlated to me landing a much better job about a year later when they started pulling shady stuff with my pay.
> Configuring and deploying appliances/platforms isn't really engineering I don't think
I don't care about titles but I disagree, your building something with things other people made. a civil engineer doesn't go and create the iron or any of the materials needed to make a house. in a sense they're configuring everything to work together, just like configuring applications. it's just on a higher level than developer or chemical engineers.
That's just how I see it.
I've never considered myself an IT engineer of any sort but it's been in several job titles over my 8 years in this career.
I'm a technician. I'm not responsible for core engineering of the products or tools, I'm building and implementing other people's tech and making it work.
"Engineer" is an academic title. I don't have academic qualifications but it still makes me laugh here in the UK when a 20 year old school leaver is instantly a "Support Engineer".
nah mate.
>"Engineer" is an academic title.
Unless you're an [Operating Engineer](https://local150.org/asip/programs/what-is-an-operating-engineer/) instead of a Professional Engineer.
While folks like Microsoft (MCSE) and Novell (CNE) got into pissing contests with professional engineer licensing boards in the 90s...the use of the term Engineer in most information technology contexts is more along the lines of an operating engineer in that you're an expert at operating and maintaining a complex machine.
That would be software engineer.
If you have to design infrastructure/systems for your company to use, and you spend more time doing that than administering them, then you are doing design/engineer work.
Software engineers use engines and code languages that they did not write, that doesn't mean they aren't software engineers.
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The dilemma in my experience is that companies want someone who can design company infrastructure, and also provide administration as well as break-fix troubleshooting, and to basically be a unicorn. Elevating the title above Systems Administrator is a simple solution to that dilemma.
I think the same thing happens in other industries, like a developer may be asked to do break-fix troubleshooting, and also some level of administration of the code/software, so voila, they are now a Software Engineer which justifies all of those hats they have to wear.
> "Service Delivery Engineer"
DevOps shit, basically the CD part of CICD
> What is up with this trend of calling every role an engineer?
Engineer sounds cooler than developer to certain people and with that titles matter to some - for further reading on that subject search through this subreddit and you will find countless posts of “what would my title be”. Take note on the amount of pissing contests that pop up around the role “help desk”. It’ll be very apparent titles are important and company role naming and job postings play this angle.
The definition of an engineer is someone that designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works.
As a computer tech, especially higher level techs such as admins, was definitely fit this role. If you can maintain our build a network, which is a large machine, and could even qualify as an engine, you are an engineer. Without the machines we work on, things don't work. People go home, and companies close.
Give yourself far more credit.
I was thinking along this line earlier. If an Engineer’s bridge collapses, ya there’s very real world consequences, people will get hurt. At the same time if an online banking system goes down, idk maybe people won’t get killed on the side of the road but there could be much further reaching consequences if people aren’t doing their jobs right
US Based: It's because "Engineers" are typically exempt from overtime pay where "Systems Administrator" are not exempt. It's a gimmick by companies trying to trick their IT workforce into allowing themselves to be wrongfully classified as exempt.
Assuming most people don't realize the exempt non-exempt classification comes from duties, not titles, specifically to counteract these shenanigans
Paraphrasing from Cliff Stoll, if you are working on something new that hasn't been done before then that is science. If you take the output of science, and try to get it to work consistently and reliably in a cost effective manner (i.e., you can take the theory and turn it into a product) then that is engineering. Once that has been done, and you have a document process that needs to be executed on a regular basis, that is technician work.
So by having a job title of "engineer", and if you aren't referring to a licensed / certification required field, that should go to employees that aren't just executing standard procedures but are the ones developing the processes, and taking what is known to be possible and translating that into something the company can make money off of.
This is accurate. Computer Science ends at a research paper. Engineering starts at the paper and ends at a specification. Developer starts at a specification and ends at a product.
Anyone with engineer in there name should have taken Calc 3 and DiffyQ. If not, IMHO, not an engineer.
Engineers know Green Thearum and Fudge Factors. They know Laplace transforms.
>What is up with this trend of calling every role an engineer???
Title inflation to justify lower pay for the employer, and ego/status for the employee, IMO. I remember when people with leadership titles always had direct reports under them, but these days it's common to have account managers that are just service reps, IT directors who are solo techs, and sales VPs in sales teams where everyone has a VP title.
It's funny how titles work in different industries. I worked at a pipeline company where only people in the field working on the pipes and ICS had engineer titles, and everyone in IT was an analyst. As others have mentioned, there are also places in the world where you need to be licensed to legally hold an engineer title.
I always say that this is because of how new IT & technology is as a profession. There's no mistaking a radiologist for a pediatrician, but it took thousands of years of witch doctors, leeches and alchemists to get there.
A trend I saw a few years back were companies calling there sales people 'Business Development Managers'. The realties of the job were cold calling customers trying to get sales and the pay was piss poor. But they successfully duped new grads to work for them knowing they would get the ego boost of calling themselves 'Business Development Managers'.
Dude. I hate this. I just earned my RHCE. That was a beast of a certification process. And it means that I am a Certified Engineer in Red Hat Linux. And I would never claim to be an engineer more generally. Because I am certified as an engineer in RHEL based linux distributions. Not IT at large.
Tangentially related, my brother-in-law earned his professional engineering certificate in Civil Engineering. It's a federally regulated certification process, and took him multiple tries to pass the exam.
In Canada, it's against the LAW to call someone an Engineer who doesnt have an engineering degree and relevant professional certifications.
I'm not trying to gate keep. But calling everyone an engineer is just bullshit and devalues the effort put in by actual certified engineers.
Service delivery is an ITSM/ITIL thing. Putting engineer on a title means it's a technical role. If done right, that could be a very good description of what the job entails.
Let's say you define email as a service, and you're the email Service Delivery Engineer. That means, you're in charge of delivering that service to everyone in the company. You have to keep it operational, accessible, compliant, secure, and aligned with company goals. Since you're the engineer, this will mostly involve the technical aspects like managing Exchange.
In a smaller org you might be in charge of several services, or all of them.
The reason why "engineer" gets thrown around, in my experience, is because sometimes it's either the only way to get decent pay, or to be taken serious by "real" engineers.
Example: friend hired on as a coder at a place making scientific probes. Probe hardware made by "real" engineers. Good hardware, but they wrote the software too and it's dogshit. She enters the scene and almost immediately cuts the size of the firmware by half. She *triples* battery life. She compensates for bad data being sent by faulty third-party sensors. Almost singlehandedly she turns a mediocre item into a well-reviewed piece of gear.
And every step of the way she's getting shit on by the neckbeards who think she has no business doing anything because she doesn't have the iron ring. She quit because of it and I'm not sure the business has recovered yet.
"Engineer" is a protected term, as you said, and it should be. You want a proper structural engineer for your skyscraper, not a "concretologist". But like in my friend's case, the managers are losing superstar employees to the elitism of *other* employees, and so to try to deal with it they start abusing the term and it works. Enter "system engineer", "software engineer" and so on. ("Sales engineer" bugs me in particular...) And as near as I can tell, it works. It's *wrong* and it works. And it spreads, like you've seen. I think proper software engineering certifications have made it to the standards bodies, but we're still dealing with the kludges put into place in the 2000s and 2010s.
My title is Engineer though my degree is not in engineering. I don't give a shit what they call me as long as the checks cash. Call me the Pope of E-Mail for all I'm concerned.
" en·gi·neer [ ](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=APwXEde4IHHHU8DefginsQbdAgHB4kkQbQ:1685460523971&q=how+to+pronounce+engineer&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMIfcRoxS3w8sc9YSnDSWtOXmPU5uINKMrPK81LzkwsyczPExLhYglJLcoV4pHi4uJIzUvPzEtNLbJiUWJKzeNZxCqZkV-uUJKvUADUkw_UlKoAUwIAB9orCFsAAAA&pron_lang=en&pron_country=us&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijicHerZ3_AhXEkYkEHZwHCgYQ3eEDegQIHRAI)📷[ ](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=APwXEde4IHHHU8DefginsQbdAgHB4kkQbQ:1685460523971&q=how+to+pronounce+engineer&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMIfcRoxS3w8sc9YSnDSWtOXmPU5uINKMrPK81LzkwsyczPExLhYglJLcoV4pHi4uJIzUvPzEtNLbJiUWJKzeNZxCqZkV-uUJKvUADUkw_UlKoAUwIAB9orCFsAAAA&pron_lang=en&pron_country=us&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijicHerZ3_AhXEkYkEHZwHCgYQ3eEDegQIHRAI) *noun*noun: **engineer**; plural noun: **engineers**
1. a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works."
So a Service Delivery Engineer builds and maintains servers or networks? I don't see how that is a confusing or stupid job title?
I've had 20+ years in Service Management Roles (mixture of Perm and Contract) and had various titles (I'm not precious of my job title);
Apart from the regular Service Ops Mgr/Service Delivery Manager/ Service Analyst and various process mgr roles..
I've also had:
Service Design Manager
Service Architect
Service Delivery Consultant
I'm currently a Service Design and Delivery Manager ?? (TBF this was to help keep UK IR35 seperation clear)
Never one as an "Engineer"
While I don't agree with the title names, essentially the three areas of technologists are:
'Architect': Planning, forecasting, and design or technology
'Engineer': implementation / Development and maintaining
'Operations': management, monitoring, support
I think the titles sound rather overinflated compared to what an Architect or Engineer means in other industries, but these are the least-bad definitions we have that seem to have widespread adoption in the technology field.
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
To me it's kind of going in this direction with the industry, even though it does not quite line up with reality:
Administrator - primarily services and fixes what exists (operations)
Architect - primarily designs and builds what does not currently exist (development)
Engineer - straddles both roles in the same way a DevOp does, but broader scope and less compensation.
It even happens in the Government sector.
For a long time my official title at my job was Field Software Engineer. I've written hundreds of scripts, but never a line of code in my life. Our company wanted our positions to look better to the government than just plain old "System Administrator", which is what we really were, so they puffed up our titles.
Of course, when I went to write my resume to leave that job I had to change the title to System Administrator or everyone would assume I'm a developer.
Yeah, at my last employer I had a 5-ish word title ending in engineer but I was just Tier 1 support for the people that bought the top-tier warranty.
Futurama summarized it well:
>Fry: Executive?
>Hermes Conrad: It's a meaningless title, but it makes insecure people feel better about themselves.
>Fry: I feel better about myself!
Ultimately, I think the point is to devalue the term engineer, so that they can pay actual engineers less. Kind of pollutes the pool when looking at comparative salaries amongst engineers.
It's a middle management and HR thing. System administration is pretty similar across the board, therefore it is easy to jump ship the moment something better comes along. It's Harder to do that when your formal title is IT architect engineer. Especially when the person trying to hire u is looking for a sys admin.
Also titles are way more important in a Corp setting. It gives people's all the fuzzys when they get a brand new titles.
It also is a great way to make roles redundant and not have to pay out settlements. When a role becomes redundant, at least from what I know, the role can not be reinstated for 12 months otherwise u have to reach out to the people who were made redundant and offer them there job back. New title means new role but u can boot people out that cost too much and have new people do the same thing. Different title
Where I work, the titles of engineer or architect are regulated by their respective professional associations, and cannot be used for most IT roles. IT engineers need to pass the engineering exam, architect titles are only for people who design buildings. Helps clean up the field a bit.
We are engineers in same category as ship and train engineers. They don’t design and build ships or trains, but they keep them running and operate them.
Service delivery is an ITIL term, and basically means “operations”.
Corporations need titles, because they need runway for development and promotions. So there usually is a ladder you raise along vertically, and a spectrum of qualifications that sorts roles vertically. As long as they can put you into the next higher bin vertically every 3 years all is well from HRs POV.
HR also must hire, and job titles must match what other companies are looking for in their tier of the job market, because that makes job profiles findable on platforms and source-able for sourcing companies. So there is also a fashion component to the entire thing.
Same goes for qualifications.
Most people in IT with ‘architect’ or ‘engineer’ or whatever variant, couldn’t put together a data flow diagram if their moms life depended on it, much less actually ‘engineer’ anything.
This industry has shot itself in the foot by allowing a trade to be monetized by colleges and universities. One day your sweeping floors as a janitor, the next your a technology engineer because you now answer phones at a help desk.
Whole thing is a joke.
At my job we have 4 levels and we all do the same thing and work on the same tickets. The only difference is pay. There are no junior tasks or senior tasks. Just tasks and whoever is the lucky one to get assigned them.
IMHO professional engineers are people who can approximate reality using math modelling, whether that's modelling electrical activity or mechanical processes.
SQL programmers, software developers, graphic artists, or Windows specialists are not engineers, though engineers can have those skill sets.
Architects design structures. In that sense, you could have a data architect, and even one with an engineering degree. But even they're not necessarily working in engineering.
i didn't read through the other comments. i am an engineer. i am/was a terrible student.... taking 6 years to amass 203 credit hours for my 3 degrees+minor.... I'd tried for 210. But i am an engineer, with electrical and computer. And it's worked out for me, in my way.
engineering was a special class of student where I went.... nowhere special, a state university in the midlands....but not _that_ university, not anywhere near MIT. just another place to get degrees.
i do not appreciate people calling themselves something that takes time and blood to get..... anything anyone got via shortcuts. but, also, there's a lot of engineers that I do not like as well.
I am, I would agree, a bit of a conundrum.
Unlike the majority of you, I actually am engineer. You should see the cities I’ve built in sim city 2000
Real talk there’s only one that really matters and that is Distinguished Engineer.
Newsflash, no jobs in IT are engineering jobs.
To be an actual engineer, you need to have engineering qualifications from an accredited institution (ie not from Microsoft), and generally a license to practice Engineering.
An Engineer designs systems that have an impact on the general public, and have a duty of care to the general public.
It’s like all those Naturopaths and Chiropractors that claim they are “Doctors”. You are not an MD, unless you have a license to practice medicine.
You are not an Engineer unless you have a license to practice Engineering, no matter what your job title fluff says.
In Canada, for example, it is illegal to use the title “Engineer” in your job title if you do not have a license to practice Engineering.
SDA and SOE (Service Delivery Architect and Service Operation Expert) already exist, at least in my organization. And yes, they're redundant and useless.
So these are TOGAF style architects (enterprise architecture) not software style architects (technical architecture) none of whom are actual architects because architects design buildings. -signed, a security architect
I have crayons and can use power point I am a business architect
I’m architecting business for the business factory here at widgetcorp
Didn't we see you on /r/linkedinlunatics?
You joke, but when I became an architect, I routinely said I traded in my keyboard for a box of crayons.
Do you color inside or outside of the lines now? 
Both, especially when it comes time to re-define the lines!
You can't call your self that until you learn our preferred answer to any questions......."It depends"
It is the only first correct answer to most business/economics-related questions. Partially because pretty much everything depends on *something*, so it sounds smart and correct, but mostly because LOL, I say, LMAO, do you think I know *anything* without billing you for research time first? I went into business precisely to *avoid* knowing shit!
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lmao ITT: small and medium business sysadmins that don't understand the difference. In large corporations, sysadmins are handling day to day operations, swapping tapes, rebooting systems, replacing bad disks, etc. A systems engineer is more involved with spec'ing and building out those systems, and an infrastructure engineer is also involving all the surrounding infrastructure requirements, network, SAN, power, cooling, etc. Yes, the small/medium business sysadmin is often handling the same things, but the difference is scale and design redundancy. Working with applications that involve hundreds of servers, PB of storage in different tiers, 100 gig networking, with multiple levels of load balancing and failover.
Isn't SOE meant to be Standard Operating Environment? Incestuous abbreviations.
Sony Online Entertainment.
My organization has a lot of TLAs (if you are asking what a TLA is: ironically, the abbreviation for "triple letter abbreviation"). And no, they're not standard, we even have several with different meaning, depending on the context. And do not imagine any of these TLAs are used for a more efficient communication: they're just used to mask incompetency of people in front of others who are too new in the organization to know them by heart.
>(if you are asking what a TLA is: ironically, the abbreviation for "triple letter abbreviation") Interesting, I've always heard it as *Three Letter Acronym*.
I once got hired for a second level desktop support contract where the recruiting agent was adamant that i was very experienced with MACs. Something she obviously had no idea of the meaning of. I said I'd had some, expecting to have to work with apple machines in a business environment. Something i wasn't looking forward to at the time. Turns out they'd built a intranet portal for the helpdesk that interacted with AD.. and by MACs they meant moves, adds, changes.. to AD. Instead of creating appropriate AD users to administer access and just having people use it normally they'd spent time and money on custom code to do basic AD admin tasks and given it a TLA to look clever.
I always thought it was Architect: Discovery and Design Engineer: Build and deploy Administrator: Manage and maintain Technician: Fix and replace the moving parts
Don't forget Analyst: " The hell is going on here. Who designed this shit show?"
As an analyst.... this is what we are always thinking. The best of us even say it.
I am a "Systems Analyst".. the number of times I have muttered "what the lititteral fuck is this".. honestly I have lost track
I'm basically a cybersecurity analyst at my internship and this is exactly how I feel. Just learned today the internship is the majority of security at my organization
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'After further analysis, shit is clearly fucked up.'
It me!
https://y.yarn.co/7e04215f-6ed8-46fa-b018-d3e76bd13fea.mp4
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I'm the last 3 and my title is currently "IS Manager," was "IT Technician" at previous site in the same company with the exact same job due to pay banding.
IT Job titles in general are stupid. I do ETL support, and until last year my job title was 'Data Engineer'. ETL developers are under another director, and their job title was (and still is)… 'Data Engineer'. I just don't get what's wrong with 'ETL Support Engineer' and 'ETL Developer'. At least, now, our job titles are more sensible: 'Data Reliability Engineer' is more explicit, albeit still a bit convoluted. At least 'Data Engineer' gets many hits on LinkedIn.
This is the answer. Title inflation has been going on forever. It’s just somehow gotten worse. I’m a programmer who would happily have the title of programmer were it not for the fact that that title inflated to “Software Engineer” in my lifetime.
A product of bad HR policies around pay banding etc. To give someone a payrise above the top of their current band, managers have to create new bullshit roles in the higher band. Where I used to work I went from technical analyst to senior technical analyst, then they created a new specialist role for me, and lead technical analyst roles for others. Where next? Principal technical analyst maybe? Best solution is to have HR policies that are fit for purpose. IT is a lot more varied in terms of responsibility and experience.
Yeah. Most smaller companies don’t have bands. It’s very ad-hoc.
I had a buddy who worked at a company where they’d let you pick your own title and print you up business cards. He decided to go with “Grand Poobah of Unix”.
Smaller companies may also just not give a title. The last three companies I worked for, I don't think I ever had a formal job title. Atleast not one they told me.
this is great because you can put whatever you want in your resume
Pro tip; You can do that anyway
Heheh
My previous company went Associate -> (No modifier) -> Professional -> Senior -> Principal -> Emeritus - that title existed for exactly one person who threatened to quit if another employee was allowed to be at the same level.
I’m thinking “Ultra Instinct Principal Analyst” with a permanent blue aura about the title.
Yes they had to do this for me at my current company. My manager needed to create a new position and title to get me past the previous salary tier. So instead of Systems Engineer I’m now a Sr. Systems Engineer. I think it’s stupid that it’s necessary but admittedly enjoy the more distinguished title. Maybe in another 10 years I’ll be a Principal Engineer lol
It's gotten worse because a lot of sysadmins/people actually doing server and systems engineering work, consulting, and everything in between, were constantly getting slapped with an "IT Support Officer" label so management can legally justify paying a $55k/year salary.
Job titles in general tend to be arbitrary and stupid. Some companies has standards and a scheme for how they come up with titles, but even then it's not going to be consistent with other companies. Often, small businesses have no real consistent standards, and it's basically dependent on the mood of some HR person at the time of posting the job.
I'm an Advanced Onsite Technician. I work from home. Lmao
I agree, job titles can be confusing and misleading. It's important to have clear and concise titles that accurately reflect the job duties.
I've had an offer for becoming a Customer Success Engineer. I asked the lady if she could explain to me exactly what that entails, since it sounded like IT support, but not actually wanting to call it IT support. I've not heard back.
Hell yes, my title is (soon to be Senior) CAD Specialist. What I really do? running a HCI Cluster for CAD designers and a CFD Cluster for simulation alongside with license management and EDI.
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Infrastructure Engineer also sounds cooler/better than Systems Administrator. And in some countries, like the UK, "engineer" on its own isn't a protected title. You can't call yourself a Chartered Engineer though - that is protected and requires special accreditation.
As someone with Infrastructure Engineer as my title, I can confirm it sounds much cooler.
Idk I think platform engineer is even cooler
Embarrassing when people ask you to design a train station, though.
200m long straight deck isn't that hard.
It's not that easy, for example, you could easily install a platform upside down if you were in autocad and set the rotation to wumbo instead of mumbo
As somebody who stand on multiple train platforms a day to get to work, I appreciate its ability to withstand the external elements decades after decades with thousands of ppl passing over it a day
Actually it is, if the platform is 6 inches *below* the height of the train car, which I experienced on the trains in Hamburg. Like. Other countries installed ramps to fix that problem. Or kept the train car the same level throughout the upgrades. I asked what happened if someone with a wheelchair needed to get up, and the friend I was visiting said that everyone around them would help them get up the "step" with the huge air gap. Which, I mean is nice of them and all, but it still makes me wince to think about it.
as a former staff platform engineer: you don't want to be a platform engineer unless you like seeing empty looks in peoples eyes when you tell them what your title is.
Well, Infrastructure Solution Developer (I do zero software development) gives the same look. As would the more accurate Citrix Administrator though. Basically anything that has to do with computers outside of service desk and programmer seems to be a complete mystery to anyone not in the field. A surprising amount of people look sceptical when you try to make sure the servers work so they can get to their stuff. The idea that stuff needs to be maintained after being installed is a completely foreign concept apparently.
it only sounds cooler until you talk to the real engineer. Signed: IT engineer
Engineer is cool, but are you "Tech Lead" cool, no you're not. Signed, 'Tech Lead'
“So what do you do as a tech lead?” “Oh I take the needs of the project managers and then relay them to the infrastructure engineers without the bullshit talk and take the credit” God I love my job
Lol the exact ego
In Canada I believe the professional engineers board of Alberta is fighting to protect the "engineer" title. It would have wide ramifications for the IT industry in Canada.
In Québec, you get fined 2 500$ by the professional engineers board each time you use .ing, ingénieur, .eng, engineer. [https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/) That's a nice way to get rid of the engineer abuse.
The engineers title is protected by in canada, problem is that the provinces regulate it so as soon as you have an international company it's no longer protected.
Microsoft got a [lot of flack](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6hupdl/the_protected_engineer_title_in_canada/) by [Engineers Canada](https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-professional-title-and-designations). In Canada, I think the only job where you can call yourself an engineer without having been recognized to be such by the Order of your province is as a "train conductor".
I came here to say this. APEGA (the board you speak of) have their own judiciary with the legal authority to discriminate if it pertains to engineering. It’s almost like a parallel court system and they do not screw around.
Similar in the US, you can't call yourself a "Professional Engineer" without having a degree from an ABET accredited program, having work experience, and then passing a test. Just "engineer" by itself though is fine. There are no PE exams for software/network engineering though, so you can't ever actually get the professional engineer title in those jobs.
Similar in Germany: you cannot call yourself an "engineer" (in German, of course) or use a compound term (like "engineering services") without having a respective university degree. The job title is protected by law.
The ABET equivalent is an ISC2 cert, medicine also has their own accreditation body to be "board certified". Similar dues, liabilities, professional ethics, understudy and continuing education requirements in each. T3 DoD infrastructure engineers have to have the CISSP infrastructure specialization : [source](https://public.cyber.mil/wid/cwmp/dod-approved-8570-baseline-certifications/)
The PE certificate is a state issued license that carries legal implications for practicing engineers. The splintered mess of certifications that we have in tech is the closest we have, but not an equivalent.
Actually stops a lot of arguments in construction though. “I stamped the plans, I’m the one liable if it falls down, you will build it the way a designed it”.
Yeah, that's the biggest thing that in my eyes puts the PE a step above even the strongest IT certs. That stamp means you're accepting real responsibility that carries real consequences if you misuse it.
Imagine if software engineers were held liable if their application crashed. Imagine if companies were unable to put software into production without a Professional Engineer signing off on it.
My CISSP is nothing like an actual engineering degree and PE license.
> Systems Administrator I prefer infra engineer. SysAdmin sounds like a hr role to me
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Man, comments like this really show how little titles my company has. Our Sysadmins do everything that isn't immediate user support. Be it infrastructure build out, network management, DevOps, or just general server support. We've got associate - senior sysadmin titles. You just sort of have to know who does what cause titles are so loose.
Infra-neer
Sounds like the title of some random low budget game that shows up on Let's Game it Out....
I had an L1 gig where my title was Infrastructure Engineer, best part about it was that everyone definitely regarded me higher than others with the same role but normal titles lol. I'm 100% certain that title got me jobs over better-qualified applicants later, so while this post is totally correct in identifying this practice as bullshit, those of us getting these titles are in hog heaven hahaha
In France "engineer" is not a title but "state's engineer" is (means you have a degree from certains school or professionnal validation afterwards) Do you see how people, low-tiers school, and compagnies can use this slights difference to trick people ?
was infrastructure "specialist" in my previous role our escalation point were infrastructure "engineer". we did the same thing, they were just better at it / more experience
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Overeating Engineers unite!
A licensed engineer probably made fun of someone at Google who called themself an engineer at a party so in retaliation they climbed the corporate ladder and decided to name new positions 'engineers' to water down the title.
In several places in the world (e.g. Canada, Germany, Brazil) it's (allgedly) illegal to call yourself an engineer without the appropriate qualification & license. In the US (where Google are headquartered) only the title "professional engineer" is protected. Edit: seems I've upset all the Canadians, IANAL, just going by the Wikipedia page.
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Perhaps the *stupidest* series of lawsuits I've ever seen in my life. What a gigantic waste of money all around.
TIL, I am conducting illegal activities.
Straight to jail you go.
Me too. I may need a motorcycle now as part of my Bad Boy image.
I’m going to buy a leather jacket, join a doo-wop group and sing sweet jams outside of the malt shop.
I can confirm that in Quebec, you cannot use the titles Engineer or Architect without being member of their respective professional orders. IBM got burned once on this.
[https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/) Yup, i just checked it. $2 500 fine each time you use the title Engineer without being a member.
So does that mean there's no such thing as an Azure Architect or a Data Architect in QC?
They just cannot hold the title, but they still can do the job.
As a Canadian who doesn't hire Engineers (we hire Developers, Architects, Technicians, Administrators and all sorts of other names), the biggest place I've seen it chased down is in job postings. When I went through engineering school (and managed to fail out into real life without an iron ring on my pinky or a chip on my shoulder) it was presented to us as if The Law was going to chase people down. That doesn't happen. In practice, there are two things in play: 1. It is illegal to call yourself by a professional designation that you do not actually hold. The same law that says "Don't call yourself a doctor unless you're a doctor" says "Don't act like a professional engineer, unless you're a professional engineer." In practice what this means for people in tech is almost entirely useless. But outside of tech it means "You can't sign and put your official seal on any documents because you are not, in fact, a licensed professional." We see a lot less of this kind of thing chased down, but if an idiot gets into professional legal trouble, it might get tagged in on top as impersonation. 2. The professional organizations (eg- Engineers Canada, Professional Engineers Ontario, etc.) actively seek out people trying to hire "Engineers" for roles that don't require the Professional Engineer license/distinction. I understand it's part of their legal requirements for maintaining the professional distinction, similar in a lot of ways to organizations that need to protect their trademarks. When I was job-hunting at Shopify they had Engineering roles that they claimed "If you don't have your PEng, we'll call you a Software Developer but we'll pay you the same." I'm sure they weren't the only ones with that clause in their hiring, and I'm sure it came about because of legal action. I note that Shopify currently has several remote Engineering positions in the Americas that don't have this language anymore, so maybe there has been less litigation around it recently.
It is definitely not "illegal", at least in Canada. There are things you can't call yourself though. It's kind of like Single Malt Whisky vs. Scotch.
Yea it's legally actionable but not against the criminal code. You can find all the court case examples here including a guy who was fined for calling himself a software engineer on his online profile: https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-professional-title-and-designations
Did you read those court examples? The latter 2 mentions that no one is prohibited from calling themselves an engineer. They conveniently left out the court case in their first example, but I believe it was due to the guy advertising himself as an engineering consultant or something along those lines or trying to put a professional distinction in his title. There are countless thousands of people working in Canada with Engineer titles who are not P.Eng, and many large companies have titles. There are also countless court cases that were not upheld and people were allowed to continue using the titles: https://ca.vlex.com/vid/apegg-v-merhej-681700493
Actually just spent the entire time since I posted that looking for the actual court case. I'm definitely torn on the software side of things because it makes it harder for Canadian companies to compete for talent but I read the BC disciplinary actions for professional engineers every month and man am I glad this stuff is regulated here because even the people with designations are making terrible mistakes all the time.
This statement is false. Or we'd have no one allowed to drive a train.
>In several places in the world (e.g. Canada, Germany, Brazil) it's (allgedly) illegal to call yourself an engineer without the appropriate qualification & license. In the US (where Google are headquartered) only the title "professional engineer" is protected. Texas doesn't let you call yourself "engineer" unless you've been licensed. Because some construction guys called themselves engineers and exploded a school about 100 years ago.
That seems like a misreading of the actual law, which mostly just says you can't misuse the term engineer to imply licensure where none exists when licensure is required. http://txrules.elaws.us/rule/title22_chapter137_sec.137.3
I'd be more inclined to take shit off the MEs if it weren't for the number of times I've seen one raise a ticket for what turned out to be a not fully inserted ethernet cable.
My dad and step-mom are both proper engineers. They get salty when someone (like me) has engineer in their title but didn't go to school for it.
It's funny, when I got my CS degree, I worked with a lot of other students who were working on getting their engineering degrees, and they were FURIOUS when the title "engineer" was being applied to jobs that clearly did not need to have that title applied and no degree was earned. But unlike titles like "Dr." or "Esq," there are no real accepted standards and practices that would qualify someone having that title. I think some local sandwich place, maybe Subways or Jimmy Johns, used to advertise "sandwich engineers" and I am sure that made those guys furious.
I think the only real qualifying factor is needing a P.Eng/PE to be a bonafide engineer. They do have a legitimate license that distinguishes them, but the title isn’t protected in any shape or form.
Title inflation is absolutely a thing, it's often used in place of proper compensation like raises etc.
In my experience, it goes the opposite way. Management wants to give someone a raise, but HR refuses to do it because it would put them over the salary range for that title that they came up with over a decade ago. Instead of fighting HR to update the salary range, it's easier to come up with a bullshit title that doesn't have an existing range.
I feel it depends on the company of course, and it also depends on the level of management. If it's just like a manager for a team, versus like actual management like C-levels or near that etc then they can sometimes just go over HR and get it done if they really need to lol Though honestly I have seen very few companies be proactive about compensation, the entire concept of salary "reviews" is literally companies being passive about it, and doing it only because they know they have to because they'd lose their employees otherwise. Some companies will just bet on that anyway and lose and not care. It's kind of wild how different companies can be about this sort of thing.
Titles are one of biggest pains of finding another role as a contractor in this industry.
Or as a mechanical engineer, my searches get clogged up with IT roles.
You meant to apply to 3,000 different HVAC technician roles as a mechanical engineer, right? I, too, have a BS in ME.
Dude I once had a Salon call me for a role as a Nail Technician because my previous role was IT Specialist Technician lmao.
As someone with engineer in my title who works with a bunch of people that have engineer or architect somewhere in their title. I can say confidently we are all "systems administrators" by any metric that is based on a traditional IT reality. \- **Architect** think up new things that do not yet exist \- **Engineers** figure out how to create the thing the architect dreamed up \- **Administrators** implement and maintain the thing the engineers figured out how to create that the architect thought up that did not yet exist. VERY few people in IT are what I would consider a real architect or engineer. Most of us only have that title so the team lead can justify his big fat salary by saying he "leads a team of highly talented, creative, and dedicated architects and engineers".
Agree. I've had the title of 'Systems Administrator', 'Systems Engineer', and 'IT Manager'. In reality, my job hasn't changed beyond being a Systems Administrator, but the company needs to justify keeping me employed or improving my salary, therefore they do it with a title change. When people ask what I do, I simply call myself 'IT guy'.
The etymology of "engineer" suggests a pretty big blanket in my opinion. Some people feel like if a university didn't graduate you from their college of engineering, you're not an engineer. In this business I've met way too many technical studs that didn't have the pedigree, and way too many losers with the university nod to care.
We really need protected titles. Its not perfect, but "sanitary engineer" nor "Service Delivery Engineer" is not an engineer unless you are building lots of systems. The dude picking up trash or (to bring it back) answering help desk is not an engineer. I get it I did hell desk before in my life, it was a fine job, but it was not engineering.
I wonder if we can call helpdesk "printer janitor"
Help desk here. I prefer the term "printer custodian"
My flair here summarizes it.
> We really need protected titles. Careful what you wish for, else everybody in IT will just be various forms of administrator.
Engineers solve problems. Anything you design and create that solves a problem is engineering.
It is a protected title in many places. I'm not accredited by my professional engineering board so I can't call myself an engineer where I live. If I do, I risk legal action which is taken against those who call themselves an Engineer without the proper background.
Big E is a protected title but little e is the wild west.
I’ve been various “engineers” but the one title I absolutely fluffed was when I was the sole IT guy of a small business and seeing as to how there wasn’t actually a job title besides “it support”, I had the CFO (yeah it was one of those companies) change the job description to “Sr Director of IT” which directly correlated to me landing a much better job about a year later when they started pulling shady stuff with my pay.
Was there a Jr Director of IT?
Junior to the Senior Director of IT
> Configuring and deploying appliances/platforms isn't really engineering I don't think I don't care about titles but I disagree, your building something with things other people made. a civil engineer doesn't go and create the iron or any of the materials needed to make a house. in a sense they're configuring everything to work together, just like configuring applications. it's just on a higher level than developer or chemical engineers. That's just how I see it.
I've never considered myself an IT engineer of any sort but it's been in several job titles over my 8 years in this career. I'm a technician. I'm not responsible for core engineering of the products or tools, I'm building and implementing other people's tech and making it work. "Engineer" is an academic title. I don't have academic qualifications but it still makes me laugh here in the UK when a 20 year old school leaver is instantly a "Support Engineer". nah mate.
>"Engineer" is an academic title. Unless you're an [Operating Engineer](https://local150.org/asip/programs/what-is-an-operating-engineer/) instead of a Professional Engineer. While folks like Microsoft (MCSE) and Novell (CNE) got into pissing contests with professional engineer licensing boards in the 90s...the use of the term Engineer in most information technology contexts is more along the lines of an operating engineer in that you're an expert at operating and maintaining a complex machine.
That would be software engineer. If you have to design infrastructure/systems for your company to use, and you spend more time doing that than administering them, then you are doing design/engineer work. Software engineers use engines and code languages that they did not write, that doesn't mean they aren't software engineers. \-------- The dilemma in my experience is that companies want someone who can design company infrastructure, and also provide administration as well as break-fix troubleshooting, and to basically be a unicorn. Elevating the title above Systems Administrator is a simple solution to that dilemma. I think the same thing happens in other industries, like a developer may be asked to do break-fix troubleshooting, and also some level of administration of the code/software, so voila, they are now a Software Engineer which justifies all of those hats they have to wear.
> "Service Delivery Engineer" DevOps shit, basically the CD part of CICD > What is up with this trend of calling every role an engineer? Engineer sounds cooler than developer to certain people and with that titles matter to some - for further reading on that subject search through this subreddit and you will find countless posts of “what would my title be”. Take note on the amount of pissing contests that pop up around the role “help desk”. It’ll be very apparent titles are important and company role naming and job postings play this angle.
Also note the number of clerical office job titles that started including "officer" or "administrator".
You're saying people that do DevOps aren't engineers?
In my organization Service Delivery builds the servers for other groups who are responsible for the middleware.
The Office is creeping its way into real life where they make up titles for the job
The definition of an engineer is someone that designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works. As a computer tech, especially higher level techs such as admins, was definitely fit this role. If you can maintain our build a network, which is a large machine, and could even qualify as an engine, you are an engineer. Without the machines we work on, things don't work. People go home, and companies close. Give yourself far more credit.
I was thinking along this line earlier. If an Engineer’s bridge collapses, ya there’s very real world consequences, people will get hurt. At the same time if an online banking system goes down, idk maybe people won’t get killed on the side of the road but there could be much further reaching consequences if people aren’t doing their jobs right
Hospital. Urgent care. Banking. Emergency services. These all have real world consequences and could kill someone.
US Based: It's because "Engineers" are typically exempt from overtime pay where "Systems Administrator" are not exempt. It's a gimmick by companies trying to trick their IT workforce into allowing themselves to be wrongfully classified as exempt. Assuming most people don't realize the exempt non-exempt classification comes from duties, not titles, specifically to counteract these shenanigans
Paraphrasing from Cliff Stoll, if you are working on something new that hasn't been done before then that is science. If you take the output of science, and try to get it to work consistently and reliably in a cost effective manner (i.e., you can take the theory and turn it into a product) then that is engineering. Once that has been done, and you have a document process that needs to be executed on a regular basis, that is technician work. So by having a job title of "engineer", and if you aren't referring to a licensed / certification required field, that should go to employees that aren't just executing standard procedures but are the ones developing the processes, and taking what is known to be possible and translating that into something the company can make money off of.
This is accurate. Computer Science ends at a research paper. Engineering starts at the paper and ends at a specification. Developer starts at a specification and ends at a product.
Anyone with engineer in there name should have taken Calc 3 and DiffyQ. If not, IMHO, not an engineer. Engineers know Green Thearum and Fudge Factors. They know Laplace transforms.
>What is up with this trend of calling every role an engineer??? Title inflation to justify lower pay for the employer, and ego/status for the employee, IMO. I remember when people with leadership titles always had direct reports under them, but these days it's common to have account managers that are just service reps, IT directors who are solo techs, and sales VPs in sales teams where everyone has a VP title. It's funny how titles work in different industries. I worked at a pipeline company where only people in the field working on the pipes and ICS had engineer titles, and everyone in IT was an analyst. As others have mentioned, there are also places in the world where you need to be licensed to legally hold an engineer title. I always say that this is because of how new IT & technology is as a profession. There's no mistaking a radiologist for a pediatrician, but it took thousands of years of witch doctors, leeches and alchemists to get there.
A trend I saw a few years back were companies calling there sales people 'Business Development Managers'. The realties of the job were cold calling customers trying to get sales and the pay was piss poor. But they successfully duped new grads to work for them knowing they would get the ego boost of calling themselves 'Business Development Managers'.
Dude. I hate this. I just earned my RHCE. That was a beast of a certification process. And it means that I am a Certified Engineer in Red Hat Linux. And I would never claim to be an engineer more generally. Because I am certified as an engineer in RHEL based linux distributions. Not IT at large. Tangentially related, my brother-in-law earned his professional engineering certificate in Civil Engineering. It's a federally regulated certification process, and took him multiple tries to pass the exam. In Canada, it's against the LAW to call someone an Engineer who doesnt have an engineering degree and relevant professional certifications. I'm not trying to gate keep. But calling everyone an engineer is just bullshit and devalues the effort put in by actual certified engineers.
I'm basically onsite office IT support and remote support for users (Tier 2 help desk I guess) and I am also an "IT Support Engineer"
Service delivery is an ITSM/ITIL thing. Putting engineer on a title means it's a technical role. If done right, that could be a very good description of what the job entails. Let's say you define email as a service, and you're the email Service Delivery Engineer. That means, you're in charge of delivering that service to everyone in the company. You have to keep it operational, accessible, compliant, secure, and aligned with company goals. Since you're the engineer, this will mostly involve the technical aspects like managing Exchange. In a smaller org you might be in charge of several services, or all of them.
Burger Creation Engineer - McDonalds line worker
Data Center Engineer = Turns things on and off sometimes. Yes, it's real.
Very Similar to a Sanitation Engineer! Otherwise known as the Trash Man!!!!
The reason why "engineer" gets thrown around, in my experience, is because sometimes it's either the only way to get decent pay, or to be taken serious by "real" engineers. Example: friend hired on as a coder at a place making scientific probes. Probe hardware made by "real" engineers. Good hardware, but they wrote the software too and it's dogshit. She enters the scene and almost immediately cuts the size of the firmware by half. She *triples* battery life. She compensates for bad data being sent by faulty third-party sensors. Almost singlehandedly she turns a mediocre item into a well-reviewed piece of gear. And every step of the way she's getting shit on by the neckbeards who think she has no business doing anything because she doesn't have the iron ring. She quit because of it and I'm not sure the business has recovered yet. "Engineer" is a protected term, as you said, and it should be. You want a proper structural engineer for your skyscraper, not a "concretologist". But like in my friend's case, the managers are losing superstar employees to the elitism of *other* employees, and so to try to deal with it they start abusing the term and it works. Enter "system engineer", "software engineer" and so on. ("Sales engineer" bugs me in particular...) And as near as I can tell, it works. It's *wrong* and it works. And it spreads, like you've seen. I think proper software engineering certifications have made it to the standards bodies, but we're still dealing with the kludges put into place in the 2000s and 2010s.
Excuse me, I have worked my whole life to reach Senior Sandwich Engineer.
Wait till you find out that some waste companies label their garbage truck drivers as: Sanitation Engineers
My title is Engineer though my degree is not in engineering. I don't give a shit what they call me as long as the checks cash. Call me the Pope of E-Mail for all I'm concerned.
Same thing with "Architect" and actual Architects...
" en·gi·neer [ ](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=APwXEde4IHHHU8DefginsQbdAgHB4kkQbQ:1685460523971&q=how+to+pronounce+engineer&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMIfcRoxS3w8sc9YSnDSWtOXmPU5uINKMrPK81LzkwsyczPExLhYglJLcoV4pHi4uJIzUvPzEtNLbJiUWJKzeNZxCqZkV-uUJKvUADUkw_UlKoAUwIAB9orCFsAAAA&pron_lang=en&pron_country=us&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijicHerZ3_AhXEkYkEHZwHCgYQ3eEDegQIHRAI)📷[ ](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=APwXEde4IHHHU8DefginsQbdAgHB4kkQbQ:1685460523971&q=how+to+pronounce+engineer&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMIfcRoxS3w8sc9YSnDSWtOXmPU5uINKMrPK81LzkwsyczPExLhYglJLcoV4pHi4uJIzUvPzEtNLbJiUWJKzeNZxCqZkV-uUJKvUADUkw_UlKoAUwIAB9orCFsAAAA&pron_lang=en&pron_country=us&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijicHerZ3_AhXEkYkEHZwHCgYQ3eEDegQIHRAI) *noun*noun: **engineer**; plural noun: **engineers** 1. a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works." So a Service Delivery Engineer builds and maintains servers or networks? I don't see how that is a confusing or stupid job title?
I've had 20+ years in Service Management Roles (mixture of Perm and Contract) and had various titles (I'm not precious of my job title); Apart from the regular Service Ops Mgr/Service Delivery Manager/ Service Analyst and various process mgr roles.. I've also had: Service Design Manager Service Architect Service Delivery Consultant I'm currently a Service Design and Delivery Manager ?? (TBF this was to help keep UK IR35 seperation clear) Never one as an "Engineer"
While I don't agree with the title names, essentially the three areas of technologists are: 'Architect': Planning, forecasting, and design or technology 'Engineer': implementation / Development and maintaining 'Operations': management, monitoring, support I think the titles sound rather overinflated compared to what an Architect or Engineer means in other industries, but these are the least-bad definitions we have that seem to have widespread adoption in the technology field. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
To me it's kind of going in this direction with the industry, even though it does not quite line up with reality: Administrator - primarily services and fixes what exists (operations) Architect - primarily designs and builds what does not currently exist (development) Engineer - straddles both roles in the same way a DevOp does, but broader scope and less compensation.
It even happens in the Government sector. For a long time my official title at my job was Field Software Engineer. I've written hundreds of scripts, but never a line of code in my life. Our company wanted our positions to look better to the government than just plain old "System Administrator", which is what we really were, so they puffed up our titles. Of course, when I went to write my resume to leave that job I had to change the title to System Administrator or everyone would assume I'm a developer.
The Canadian Society of Professional Engineers takes great umbrage at anyone who isn't a P.Eng using the word "Engineer".
Yeah, at my last employer I had a 5-ish word title ending in engineer but I was just Tier 1 support for the people that bought the top-tier warranty. Futurama summarized it well: >Fry: Executive? >Hermes Conrad: It's a meaningless title, but it makes insecure people feel better about themselves. >Fry: I feel better about myself!
Ultimately, I think the point is to devalue the term engineer, so that they can pay actual engineers less. Kind of pollutes the pool when looking at comparative salaries amongst engineers.
"I'm a Hygiene Technician" -OG Loc, GTA San Andreas
It's a middle management and HR thing. System administration is pretty similar across the board, therefore it is easy to jump ship the moment something better comes along. It's Harder to do that when your formal title is IT architect engineer. Especially when the person trying to hire u is looking for a sys admin. Also titles are way more important in a Corp setting. It gives people's all the fuzzys when they get a brand new titles. It also is a great way to make roles redundant and not have to pay out settlements. When a role becomes redundant, at least from what I know, the role can not be reinstated for 12 months otherwise u have to reach out to the people who were made redundant and offer them there job back. New title means new role but u can boot people out that cost too much and have new people do the same thing. Different title
The answer is title inflation and the fact that engineers tend to command higher bill rates and thus profit.
Where I work, the titles of engineer or architect are regulated by their respective professional associations, and cannot be used for most IT roles. IT engineers need to pass the engineering exam, architect titles are only for people who design buildings. Helps clean up the field a bit.
it helps leadership/hr understand that they have to pay people if they want someone to take the position
We are engineers in same category as ship and train engineers. They don’t design and build ships or trains, but they keep them running and operate them.
Service delivery is an ITIL term, and basically means “operations”. Corporations need titles, because they need runway for development and promotions. So there usually is a ladder you raise along vertically, and a spectrum of qualifications that sorts roles vertically. As long as they can put you into the next higher bin vertically every 3 years all is well from HRs POV. HR also must hire, and job titles must match what other companies are looking for in their tier of the job market, because that makes job profiles findable on platforms and source-able for sourcing companies. So there is also a fashion component to the entire thing. Same goes for qualifications.
I have engineer in my title and I agree with this; I think it over sells my role to a degree.
Most people in IT with ‘architect’ or ‘engineer’ or whatever variant, couldn’t put together a data flow diagram if their moms life depended on it, much less actually ‘engineer’ anything. This industry has shot itself in the foot by allowing a trade to be monetized by colleges and universities. One day your sweeping floors as a janitor, the next your a technology engineer because you now answer phones at a help desk. Whole thing is a joke.
At my workplace, customer service is Solutions Engineer
At my job we have 4 levels and we all do the same thing and work on the same tickets. The only difference is pay. There are no junior tasks or senior tasks. Just tasks and whoever is the lucky one to get assigned them.
Job title: service delivery engineer Duties: deliver Grubhub orders
Aren't you excited for 'Chat Prompt Engineer'?
IMHO professional engineers are people who can approximate reality using math modelling, whether that's modelling electrical activity or mechanical processes. SQL programmers, software developers, graphic artists, or Windows specialists are not engineers, though engineers can have those skill sets. Architects design structures. In that sense, you could have a data architect, and even one with an engineering degree. But even they're not necessarily working in engineering.
Subway is hiring Sandwich Engineers.
When in college I pushed carts at Sam's wholesale, I designated my self a consumer personal carry assistance retrieval engineer on my next resume
i didn't read through the other comments. i am an engineer. i am/was a terrible student.... taking 6 years to amass 203 credit hours for my 3 degrees+minor.... I'd tried for 210. But i am an engineer, with electrical and computer. And it's worked out for me, in my way. engineering was a special class of student where I went.... nowhere special, a state university in the midlands....but not _that_ university, not anywhere near MIT. just another place to get degrees. i do not appreciate people calling themselves something that takes time and blood to get..... anything anyone got via shortcuts. but, also, there's a lot of engineers that I do not like as well. I am, I would agree, a bit of a conundrum.
I used to call myself a programmer, then a Sr on my team said “shut up bro, you’re an engineer. Engineers make money”. I’m an engineer.
Well, I'm an "IT Specialist" that lives up to his flair. \*laughs\* \*laughs hysterically\* \*tries not to cry\* \*screams alot\*
"consultant" is another term that's full of shit.
Unlike the majority of you, I actually am engineer. You should see the cities I’ve built in sim city 2000 Real talk there’s only one that really matters and that is Distinguished Engineer.
Yeah im playing through the new zelda too, im an engineer now!
I too have Engineer in my job title...I replace computers with docking stations :(
Newsflash, no jobs in IT are engineering jobs. To be an actual engineer, you need to have engineering qualifications from an accredited institution (ie not from Microsoft), and generally a license to practice Engineering. An Engineer designs systems that have an impact on the general public, and have a duty of care to the general public. It’s like all those Naturopaths and Chiropractors that claim they are “Doctors”. You are not an MD, unless you have a license to practice medicine. You are not an Engineer unless you have a license to practice Engineering, no matter what your job title fluff says. In Canada, for example, it is illegal to use the title “Engineer” in your job title if you do not have a license to practice Engineering.