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I think part of the reason this trend has been going on, and I have observed a similar thing as you point out here, is that businesses have tried to get rid of

I think part of the reason this trend has been going on, and I have observed a similar thing as you point out here, is that businesses have tried to get rid of this “role” for a long time now and by constantly reinventing and renaming it. They have failed miserably. When people ask what I do, I call myself a systems engineer or “backend engineer” if that makes more sense to them. it’s more apt for what is actually needed and asked of me.

boffinAudio 3y ago
Things went wrong when we started calling Computerization, "Information Technology". This was a totally misguided re-branding of the field. It attracted bureaucratic personalities and classist managerial types, and utterly destroyed the field. Like you, I couch my job description: I'm a "Systems Software Developer, I develop software systems" .. because its true, thats what I do, even if its a majority of the time working on embedded projects. And if someone then responds with "ooh, so you're in IT", I immediately go to another corner of the party and avoid them like the intolerable bores they are ..
- flushit 3y ago
  > And if someone then responds with "ooh, so you're in IT", I immediately go to another corner of the party and avoid them like the intolerable bores they are .. No need to be arrogant towards people outside the field. My grandma doesn't know the difference between the random IT guy that updates your Windows printer driver and a Linux kernel dev, but I'd still not call her an "intolerable bore".
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Guess Problem is that a lot of managers also don't know, and have same understanding as your Grandma. I've seen plenty of companies take a very highly paid engineer and have them install printer drivers on peoples PC's.
    - reedf1 3y ago
      I was getting paid £200k/yr as a Software Engineer for a company with an unresponsive offshore IT help desk. I would often spend a few hours (!!) a day helping various stakeholders with their desktops/printers/email. This was an insanely ineffective but absolutely necessary use of my time (I was managing a small development team with stakeholder satisfaction kpis), sadly my IT efforts were clearly more appreciated than development. Hard to convince management that a dedicated onsite IT would be required - especially when they think it is your job already.
      - flushit 3y ago
        I suppose there is a difference between companies that are tech to the core (where everybody in the management chain up to CEO is actually a sw eng) or a company where software engineering / programming is just a dept. somewhere on the side. Gotta appreciate if you're working in the former. Drawback is you can't BS your way through issues. Everybody above me in the chain (which is like 4 people) could write a quicksort blindly. If anybody tries any BS they don't have their job much longer.
    - flushit 3y ago
      > Guess Problem is that a lot of managers also don't know, and have same understanding as your Grandma. Well, nobody forces you to work for a company with managers like that. I personally wouldn't.
      - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        That is a worthless recommendation. That's kind of like saying, even slaves have a choice. Death being the option available to all.
        flushit 3y ago
        There are enough companies out there without such managers. Drawing a comparison to slavery is quite shocking, tbh.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    I go a step beyond. When I’m interacting with “non-IT” folks, I say just I’m “in IT”. It isn’t a problem for my ego to do that, and it’s something that’s both relatable and typically stops the conversation from revealing anymore about my work (not that there’s really anything to hide, I just enjoy my privacy and no, I don’t want to meet your “computer genius” nephew or fix your phone). If I’m in a clearly technical group, I’ll go into more detail. I don’t identify myself with the DevOps term though, or sysadmin, or developer. I don’t clearly fit into any of the -currently assumed- definitions of those.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I'm very similar. In social situations, I usually just say "I'm into computers". Most people who ask what I do don't really care, they're just engaging in ritualistic small talk anyway. If someone does care, they'll ask clarifying questions.
    - devhead 3y ago
      Same here. I always default to "I work in IT". If that person is in the space I might go into specifics; but even then majority can't relate or understand the role i spend my days working in. It also has the benefit of coming across as more blue collar and I catch less grief, as the disdaine for tech workers continues to grow.
    - voidmain0001 3y ago
      I keep it simple and say that "I fix laptops" since I know that no one wants to hear about infrastructure gluing.
  - boffinAudio 3y ago
    Yeah, that's all well and good until someone asks you to fix their printer .. because "you are an IT guy, you should know .."
- idkyall 3y ago
  "I make the systems IT uses"
  - boffinAudio 3y ago
    That's the right approach.
yafbum 3y ago
I disagree. Data center ops have been completely reinvented by the devops practices. Sure it's a bunch of sysadmins at the start, but a bunch of sysadmins really trying hard to take themselves out of the loop so that things can scale. A good example is how software releases work. Where I worked 15 years ago, releases were something we could afford to do about four times a year, at night, on the weekends, doing the rollout by logging onto machines and starting them back up, babysitting the rollout. Because rollbacks were catastrophic, an insane amount of time went into QA, so the time between a code change and a release could be easily multiple months. Now I'm at a place where releases are done every day of the week. Rollout steps are largely automated. Rollbacks are mostly drama free. Risk is mitigated through automated canarying (and automated testing before that). And certainly the business has successfully gotten rid of paying people to log in to servers on a Saturday night to perform a release (which frankly not a lot of people are into in the first place, so everyone wins).

boffinAudio 3y ago

Things went wrong when we started calling Computerization, "Information Technology". This was a totally misguided re-branding of the field. It attracted bureaucratic personalities and classist managerial types, and utterly destroyed the field. Like you, I couch my job description: I'm a "Systems Software Developer, I develop software systems" .. because its true, thats what I do, even if its a majority of the time working on embedded projects. And if someone then responds with "ooh, so you're in IT", I immediately go to another corner of the party and avoid them like the intolerable bores they are ..

flushit 3y ago
> And if someone then responds with "ooh, so you're in IT", I immediately go to another corner of the party and avoid them like the intolerable bores they are .. No need to be arrogant towards people outside the field. My grandma doesn't know the difference between the random IT guy that updates your Windows printer driver and a Linux kernel dev, but I'd still not call her an "intolerable bore".
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Guess Problem is that a lot of managers also don't know, and have same understanding as your Grandma. I've seen plenty of companies take a very highly paid engineer and have them install printer drivers on peoples PC's.
  - reedf1 3y ago
    I was getting paid £200k/yr as a Software Engineer for a company with an unresponsive offshore IT help desk. I would often spend a few hours (!!) a day helping various stakeholders with their desktops/printers/email. This was an insanely ineffective but absolutely necessary use of my time (I was managing a small development team with stakeholder satisfaction kpis), sadly my IT efforts were clearly more appreciated than development. Hard to convince management that a dedicated onsite IT would be required - especially when they think it is your job already.
    - flushit 3y ago
      I suppose there is a difference between companies that are tech to the core (where everybody in the management chain up to CEO is actually a sw eng) or a company where software engineering / programming is just a dept. somewhere on the side. Gotta appreciate if you're working in the former. Drawback is you can't BS your way through issues. Everybody above me in the chain (which is like 4 people) could write a quicksort blindly. If anybody tries any BS they don't have their job much longer.
  - flushit 3y ago
    > Guess Problem is that a lot of managers also don't know, and have same understanding as your Grandma. Well, nobody forces you to work for a company with managers like that. I personally wouldn't.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      That is a worthless recommendation. That's kind of like saying, even slaves have a choice. Death being the option available to all.
      - flushit 3y ago
        There are enough companies out there without such managers. Drawing a comparison to slavery is quite shocking, tbh.
- TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
  I go a step beyond. When I’m interacting with “non-IT” folks, I say just I’m “in IT”. It isn’t a problem for my ego to do that, and it’s something that’s both relatable and typically stops the conversation from revealing anymore about my work (not that there’s really anything to hide, I just enjoy my privacy and no, I don’t want to meet your “computer genius” nephew or fix your phone). If I’m in a clearly technical group, I’ll go into more detail. I don’t identify myself with the DevOps term though, or sysadmin, or developer. I don’t clearly fit into any of the -currently assumed- definitions of those.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I'm very similar. In social situations, I usually just say "I'm into computers". Most people who ask what I do don't really care, they're just engaging in ritualistic small talk anyway. If someone does care, they'll ask clarifying questions.
  - devhead 3y ago
    Same here. I always default to "I work in IT". If that person is in the space I might go into specifics; but even then majority can't relate or understand the role i spend my days working in. It also has the benefit of coming across as more blue collar and I catch less grief, as the disdaine for tech workers continues to grow.
  - voidmain0001 3y ago
    I keep it simple and say that "I fix laptops" since I know that no one wants to hear about infrastructure gluing.
- boffinAudio 3y ago
  Yeah, that's all well and good until someone asks you to fix their printer .. because "you are an IT guy, you should know .."
idkyall 3y ago
"I make the systems IT uses"
- boffinAudio 3y ago
  That's the right approach.

yafbum 3y ago

I disagree. Data center ops have been completely reinvented by the devops practices. Sure it's a bunch of sysadmins at the start, but a bunch of sysadmins really trying hard to take themselves out of the loop so that things can scale. A good example is how software releases work. Where I worked 15 years ago, releases were something we could afford to do about four times a year, at night, on the weekends, doing the rollout by logging onto machines and starting them back up, babysitting the rollout. Because rollbacks were catastrophic, an insane amount of time went into QA, so the time between a code change and a release could be easily multiple months. Now I'm at a place where releases are done every day of the week. Rollout steps are largely automated. Rollbacks are mostly drama free. Risk is mitigated through automated canarying (and automated testing before that). And certainly the business has successfully gotten rid of paying people to log in to servers on a Saturday night to perform a release (which frankly not a lot of people are into in the first place, so everyone wins).