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As someone who has just moved to the US and been through the "joy" of looking for work; me. I'm a server admin, I have come to realize that what I do can be ti

• rhizome 14y ago
  Systems Engineer, note the plural on "systems." Don't shy away from this, it's a title that has existed for decades and you're in good company. Resist title inflation!
  • tgflynn 14y ago
    But in many industries, defense and aerospace in particular, systems engineers are people who integrate multiple technologies to build systems (such as an aircraft or missile). They don't manage computer systems.
    • vonmoltke 14y ago
      This confusion has been a major annoyance to me, since I spent several years as a classical systems engineer. To make matters worse, I actually wrote code in those roles (C, Fortran, and Matlab) and was at one point a real-time embedded software engineer in all but title.
    • rhizome 14y ago
      Are we talking about those industries? It's a valid title for many sectors, and is perfectly cromulent for OS/Neteng roles.
      • clebio 14y ago
        well, when you're searching tech job boards, it sure matters. As (another) Systems Engineer (in the sense of Von Bertalanffy not Von Neumann), searching for relevant jobs is a _huge_ annoyance. I've given up on titles, and search for, or look at, job descriptions, filtering mentally the various keywords that are positive and negative indicators for what I do (feedback controls, operations research, etc.).
        • rhizome 14y ago
          That goes for all of my job hunts too, but it doesn't mean I'm not whatever a simplified title of my skills implies.
      • tgflynn 14y ago
        I don't know why not, especially since they also employ many software engineers and IT people.