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> I can’t tell you how many times I was on a call and the other person on the phone was referring to their engineering staff as “IT.” Can someone elaborate the

• imgabe 6y ago
  IT works on the company's internal networking and computer equipment. Engineering builds the customer facing product.
  • killtimeatwork 6y ago
    This doesn't cover the millions of developers across the world who do neither - they code internal (i.e. not customer-facing) apps used by employees of the company.
    • bitexploder 6y ago
      Cultural difference. In a broad sense we are all in IT of course. However, the IT department usually means what the parent wrote inside of US corporations.
  • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Only in some countries
• kryptn 6y ago
  IMO Engineering builds and maintains the product, while IT enables Engineering and every other team to build, maintain, and sell the product.
  • orisho 6y ago
    In many countries that aren't the US, IT is used to refer to engineering too. For example, software engineers working in a Brazil bank are considered part of IT. This probably shows a lack of understanding of cultural differences by the person surprised by the use of the term rather than the speaker.
• tshaddox 6y ago
  I think in that context the expectation is that “IT” would refer to the people at your company who would fix the printer or remove a virus from someone’s workstation.
• Yizahi 6y ago
  In my country "IT" is all engineering, and what USA means by IT is called "IT support". Was surprised when I read about this on Reddit, also in some discussion when some developer complained about being called IT.
  • oneeyedpigeon 6y ago
    In the UK, it varies. At large companies, "IT" is roughly analogous to the US usage — think "The IT Crowd", for example. Amongst the general populace, it varies. Those who work at large companies might draw a distinction, for many it simply means "works on computers doing stuff I don't understand". It has very derogatory connotations in general. I spent a lot of time trying to correct people and always referred to myself as a Developer or, occasionally, Software Engineer, never "someone who works in IT".
    • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      Ironically when I worked at BT an "engineer" was always used to refer to (in US terms) the linemen. Only the "executive engineer" held any kudos and there only a handful of those in the country.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• k__ 6y ago
  I think, it depends on the company. In software companies I usually found an IT and an R&D department. In non-software companies I found IT departments that did everything. From IT support to software development.
• underwater 6y ago
  IT is internal facing, their customer is the business and they are a cost centre. Engineering is external facing, their customer is the end user and they generate revenue. The terms being so clearly deliniated is more obvious in the US, in my experience. But some old brick and mortar companies still treat their engineering departments as a cost centre and it shows.
  • marvin 6y ago
    My Norwegian company calls it IT, with developers, devops, UX and the whole shebang. Generally the best-paid department of the whole company, which is in finance. IT support isn’t even employed here, it’s contracted out.
  • IncRnd 6y ago
    > Engineering is external facing, their customer is the end user and they generate revenue. I have always seen Engineering to be a cost center and not revenue generating. This is the case, since Engineering doesn't directly add to profit but still costs money to operate.
• xwdv 6y ago
  I hate when people call engineering staff "IT". It's a derogatory term to use that minimizes their contributions, and I wish I had some equally derogatory term to refer to the jobs of people who say that.
• paulcole 6y ago
  IT is a cost center. Engineering drives revenue.
  • IncRnd 6y ago
    Engineering is also a cost center, since it doesn't directly add to profit but costs money to operate.
• ubermonkey 6y ago
  My impression at this point is that while non-technical people can't tell the difference and don't care to learn, there IS a split in the two sides of things now. This is a little weird to me, because for my age group (I'm 50), both sets were typically made up of the same tribe of computer-obsessed folks who begged a 6502 machine from their parents in the early 80s and took degrees in unrelated fields because of how far behind industry most university CS programs were in the early 90s. (And there really weren't any MIS programs.) Somewhere along the way, though, a split happened. And in many (but not all) companies, IT became a lower-tier support organization. Salaries stagnated, and a quality gap happened. It might just be that, in lots of places, developers are a revenue source while IT is nearly always overhead. It's a rule of thumb that the more talented folks will probably venture towards being revenue and not overhead, because the compensation is typically better, and the organization will treat you with more respect. So now, in many but not all places, there's a perception of a class difference between the two. The IT guy is derided as someone 5 hours short of an associate's degree with a cheap certification, no ability to troubleshoot beyond obvious steps, and zero interest in computing when off the clock while the developer is an ivory-tower whiz kid with hobby projects in Haskell and his/her fingers in half a dozen FOSS projects. I am obviously exaggerating. But this view, which is not uncommon, and reflects a shift that IS real even if not to the degree I lampoon above, is probably why a developer would make the distinction.
  • toyg 6y ago
    There is also a cultural difference. IT is somewhat rooted, traditionally, in BOFH attitudes; which didn't help its overall popularity.
    • ubermonkey 6y ago
      I sell (well, implement -- but it's a small company, so I wear lots of hats) software to big enterprise companies. My exposure to big-co IT is that BOFH attitudes are sadly common. One thing that stuck with me from an early mentor -- who as NOT, I should be clear, talking about IT or software at the time -- is that too many people think there is power in saying "no"; real power comes from the ability say "yes".
• spaetzleesser 6y ago
  "To me IT is more on the operation side while engineering is on development side. " In my company (a big Fortune 500) engineering and IT are totally different things if you look from the bottom of the hierarchy. BUT (this is a big but) when you talk to management the higher you get, the more SW engineering and IT are the same. I have been in several meetings where the CEO always referred to the CIO whenever a tech question came up. So the CIO answered all these questions although in reality she has no input into any software development decisions that are being made for our products and her knowledge basically consist of reading vendor whitepapers. It's quite annoying because this way IT often gets multi million dollar budgets for fancy AI/digitization/ML projects that are all wasted because they have no clue about SW engineering. In summary, there is a very common perception that everybody that uses a computer is part of IT.
• icedchai 6y ago
  Every software engineer who has been asked to fix a relative's computer to remove spyware should recognize the difference...