When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
If this conversation were about how to go on a date, this would be your advice:
Girl: So tell me about yourself
Me: I am a human male@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
If this conversation were about how to go on a date, this would be your advice:
Girl: So tell me about yourself
Me: I am a human maleI work in IT....
You aren't trying to score a job with her (maybe something else
). If she is into IT, she will ask more details. If not, she wont ask and likely wont care. -
@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Where is the list of "approved" job titles?
Use the advanced tools and search by skills, title or anything else.
That's definitely a bad source. That's related to the ASVAB from the military, which is totally inept at careers. They don't hire, deal with or know about careers in general and IT specifically. If you look at this, while a bit of it is semi-acceptable, none of it really reflects IT as an industry and certainly not as a discipline:
"BI Analyst" is a math field, not IT, this is pretty basic stuff for them to get wrong. There is not even any tech involved.
"Computer Occupations"... that's just giving up and isn't IT.
"Computer Systems Engineers"... but no admins? Who runs these systems?
"Database Architect"... a what now?
"GIS" is not an IT field
Project Managers are PMs, not IT
Search Marketing Strategist isn't even related to IT, not even kind of, that's marketing
Software Q&A is SE, not IT
Video Game Designers are related to novel writers, not to IT or technology of any kind
Web Admin isn't a thing
COmputer Programmer is an SE field, not IT, and no one calls them that except your grandma
System Analyst is an SE field (this is my area of focus)
INS, not ITAll under that are SE, not IT
Basically, this just shows that the military has terrible technology because they aren't even aware of what IT is, let alone how to do it well. And even for SE, their groups make no sense. Most apps are web based, so how do they have a web developer and a software developer, apps? ANd why are the names different styles for the same job?
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Where is the list of "approved" job titles?
Use the advanced tools and search by skills, title or anything else.
Definitely not an IT job: Informatics Nurse Specialists
I feel like you're doing it wrong.
http://i.imgur.com/dANW3zB.png
I put in 'Systems Administrator' and the results were good:
http://i.imgur.com/Liit9ae.png
Excepting the obvious latter half of results, which are the results of splitting the search term, you can clearly see the IT stuff at the top. Clicking on any of those, especially the top, will tell you exactly what's expected.This site and the data here is used by HR and government entities, and is considered to be the best site for skills and job descriptions.
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Let's reverse it and see what job titles are real in IT from the list...
Assuming we drop ridiculous grandparent things like "computer" from the titles...
System Engineer is a title, but they miss the large admin field associated with it. And this title is not legal in all US states, so any military using it may get in trouble for having it assigned to them.
User Support is a thing. We normally call it helpdesk, but nothing wrong with this title.
Data Warehousing Specialist was a thing. Maybe still is, these jobs were rare in 2003.
Document Management Specialist is a grey area. Fringe IT at best, this is a taxonomist, not actually IT.
Web Admin is a really bad title for a specific application admin.
Network Architect is super uncommon, should be engineer, but we'll give it.
Network and System Admins why are these two lumped together as if they are related? At least admins exist somewhere.That's it. That's everything they see as IT. No DBAs, no network engineers, no security (big surprise, it's the military), no platform people, no one that handles the hardware (which is bench, but they have no bench category only IT so that's an insanely large gap), no storage jobs, no virtualization, no application management... with these job descriptions, there would be no IT. Nothing actually gets "run". Even in 1960 we knew more about IT jobs than this.
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@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
This site and the data here is used by HR and government entities, and is considered to be the best site for skills and job descriptions.
Except HR and government entities are specifically known for getting this stuff epically wrong, all the time. The military is widely known as knowing nothing about this.
The list I showed was their list of IT job titles. Those titles must be coming from things that they think are NOT IT.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
This site and the data here is used by HR and government entities, and is considered to be the best site for skills and job descriptions.
Except HR and government entities are specifically known for getting this stuff epically wrong, all the time. The military is widely known as knowing nothing about this.
The list I showed was their list of IT job titles. Those titles must be coming from things that they think are NOT IT.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
It's really irrelevant what you impose upon how IT titles should be. The reality is that, even if HR departments can't figure out a title or pull their heads from their asses to be more accurate, we [in IT] will still have to deal with being called a Systems Admin, labelled as IT/IS, or even just Mr. Computer Guy/Gal.
Youtube Video -
@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Excepting the obvious latter half of results, which are the results of splitting the search term, you can clearly see the IT stuff at the top. Clicking on any of those, especially the top, will tell you exactly what's expected.
This site and the data here is used by HR and government entities, and is considered to be the best site for skills and job descriptions.
Here is the top portion before it goes crazy....
The have "Computer and IS Managers" but WTF is that? Managers of IT people, I would assume. Which is why it doesn't have an IT code associated with it (15-11xx.xx).
It's not SO bad, if we trim it by word searches to make it look more reasonable. But why are the two most critical specialists jobs in IT, network admins and system admins, lumped together but web admin it's own specialty? Makes no sense.
If you look at the list I provided, that's their ENTIRE view of the IT field, clearly admin is the one term they got slightly better, but totally lost their way in general.
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@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
It's really irrelevant what you impose upon how IT titles should be. The reality is that, even if HR departments can't figure out a title or pull their heads from their asses to be more accurate...
Actually that's not true at all. No "real" IT jobs are hired through HR, even the most incompetent IT hiring manager knows that HR can't handle this stuff and doesn't have the knowledge necessary to define the jobs. REALITY is that real IT is hired by IT and they know these titles and that made up HR stuff is how failing companies try to do things and good IT people avoid those jobs and good hiring managers (and good CEOs) never let HR get involved in that way.
Look at those totally made up and useless titles, you don't really see jobs advertising that gibberish. ANd in the rare case that you do, we all mock them and point out that obviously they aren't hiring anyone and the pay is always way below market.
You can say that HR and the military define IT all you want, but they are not the industry and have no relevance to it. HR isn't in the hiring path in good companies and certainly not in functional IT.
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@Grey said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
It's really irrelevant what you impose upon how IT titles should be.
I've never imposed anything, I'm just pointing out how IT hiring works and what the words mean. When you work all over in IT, these are the titles and how they are used broadly and as hiring managers understand them. It's actually the military and HR trying to impose irrelevant, useless, made up titles on an industry that doesn't deal with them. What hiring managers even know about stuff like this and why would they? Knowing that the military makes up jobs that don't exist in the real world does nothing for hiring the people you need.
If the theory that HR uses this was correct, how could you ever staff your IT departments? Half the jobs you need don't exist so you simply can't hire them? And the other half are all wrong and useless. There is a reason that we don't see jobs with these titles, because this isn't how people are hiring.
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Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
Girl: So tell me about yourself
Me: I am no one. -
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
And that's sad because it's natural to become a generalist
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@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
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@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
You mean as a title? Generalist is the only JOB in the SMB. SMB titles are literally gibberish.
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
And that's sad because it's natural to become a generalist
Only in places lacking enough people to properly split up roles. Actually quite naturally to specialize.
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
And that's sad because it's natural to become a generalist
In the SMB, it's really the only option - as Scott as mentioned and I agree. Sure there are rare times when you can become a specialist, but that's mostly only on the larger side of the SMB market, which by comparison is much smaller an arena
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@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
Right, knowing the truth and knowing how to market are two different things. But you can't market well if you don't know the truth.
Then you have to decide if you are going to market well within the truth, or just lie.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
Right, knowing the truth and knowing how to market are two different things. But you can't market well if you don't know the truth.
Then you have to decide if you are going to market well within the truth, or just lie.
So I either lie or I market myself poorly. Great.
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@Dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
Right, knowing the truth and knowing how to market are two different things. But you can't market well if you don't know the truth.
Then you have to decide if you are going to market well within the truth, or just lie.
So I either lie or I market myself poorly. Great.
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