Are IT Job Titles Getting Out of Control?

grudgelord asks: "Information technology jobs have always been difficult for those from non-technical disciplines to understand. However, in recent years it has become difficult for even IT professionals to divine the actual responsibilities of a given position's role as job titles become increasingly more nebulous and the descriptions more buzz-wordy. At one time, we all had a reasonable grasp of the role of a 'System Administrator' or 'Helpdesk Technician' but now such roles may actually have significant DBA or developer responsibilities bundled into a lesser job title (such as the recent trend of 'Desktop Support Techs' with SQL DBA responsibilities), often robbing the holder of a fair position (and traditionally better paid) title on the résumé. Are these trends a contrivance by corporations to get more 'value' from IT professionals by bundling responsibilities of higher paid jobs into lesser roles and to evade competitive salary by creating titles that have no analogue on pay-scale indexes? Has there ever been a proposed standard for information technology position titles (or at least some form of translation guide)? How do Slashdot job searchers contend with these wildly varying, and increasingly vague titles that seem to have saturated the industry, or worse, when they've been festooned with an inaccurate or absurd job title?"

Look at the "official titles"

[GigsVT]

If you go to some site that's based off government data, you'll notice there are standardized job titles in IT, they are just all obselete.

There's programmer, and systems analyst, and business analyst and etc, with about 5 grades of each, and the descriptions all pretty much sound the same. Then there's still categories for "system operator" and very obselete things like that.

So it's not so much we don't have standardized job titles, they just are 20 years out of date.

Blame the PHBs...

[d3ik]

I think it's more about a manager trying to justify his position by "re-organizing" and "streamlining" positions and their descriptions. For instance, I'm a Java developer. You would think my job description would be "Senior Java Developer" or "Java Developer III" or something... no, I'm an "Information Design Specialist".

To me it doesn't affect my job or my pay, so they can call my position anything they feel like. When I choose to move on I'm still putting "Java Developer" on my resume.

Network Adminstrator

[thepacketmaster]

I've always had a beef with the "Network Administrator" title being applied to a Windows Administrator job. A network administrator keeps your LANs and WANs running, not administering a Windows exchange server. The two jobs are totally separate and a Windows administrator doesn't even come close to anything that should be called a network administrator, and vice-versa.

Let's all face the truth....

[HiredMan]

The IT title thing jumped the shark at "Webmaster" as a real job title.

It's all been re-arranging deck chairs since then.

Seriously.

=tkk

Abuse of the term 'engineer'

[Gothmolly]

There's "Sales Engineers", and "Level One Engineers", and god only know what else. Level one is button pushing, they're TECHNICIANS - people with technical experience, who do what they're told. Then are the real ENGINEERS, who design things (the buttons that the technicians push). Then there are ARCHITECTS, who form all the stuff into a cohesive whole.

There is no "Systems Engineer II", or "Support Engineer III" - you are a technician. Push buttons, don't think.

The same in Europe/Germany?

[Jesus_666]

I'm a German CS student and while I'm mot going to be done for another two years I'd like to know whether the same nonsense is happening in Europe (and, more specifically, Germany). It'd be bad to enter the free market and spend the next two months trying to figure out what the hell the current name-du-jour for a Java developer is or why the hell they're offering me a job as an architect for the salary of a helpdesk technician (of course later I'd find out that "System Information Architect" is the current name for "Helpdesk Callcenter Phone Monkey").

You're kidding, right?

[ocbwilg]

At one time, we all had a reasonable grasp of the role of a 'System Administrator' or 'Helpdesk Technician' but now such roles may actually have significant DBA or developer responsibilities bundled into a lesser job title (such as the recent trend of 'Desktop Support Techs' with SQL DBA responsibilities), often robbing the holder of a fair position (and traditionally better paid) title on the résumé.

Help desk techs doing SQL DBA work? And supposedly this is a "recent trend?" My suspicion is that it isn't a trend, but that instead some Helpdesk Tech somewhere was asked to set up system DSNs in Windows and thinks that it's SQL DBA work. There's a heck of a lot more to being a DBA than just installing SQL, setting up users and creating a DB, but it's not uncommon for people who don't understand that to think that they could do it.

Now, on to the other topic, at my current employer we have several different titles in the IT department: Helpdesk Tech, Network Engineer, Project Manager, Application Specialist, Developer, and Director. Those all seem pretty standard to me, though in a larger company the duties would be a little more granular. For example, the HelpDesk Tech job would be split out into HelpDesk Operator and PC Tech and the Network Engineer would be split into Networking Admin/Engineer and Systems Admin/Engineer, and the Developer would be split into DBA and Developer.

At most places I have worked over the past 10 years it's been basically the same breakdown, with higher or lower levels of granularity. I suspect that if you had a very small company with a very limited IT budget and owners/managers with no IT knowledge, you might get someone looking to hire a HelpDesk Tech and expect them to be able to manage everything. After all, to most users you always call the HelpDesk regardless of whether your needs are as low level as a new mouse or as high level as a boinked application server.

Now, if you're working for someone who expects you to do the work of 2 or 3 widely varying jobs for the salary of a HelpDesk tech, well, any sensible person who had the skills to do the job would either demand more money or go elsewhere. If they didn't have he skills, they could either stay and learn them or go elsewhere.

Re:Abuse of the term 'engineer'

[cowscows]

Architects design buildings. We've designed them for thousands of years. We make, on average, significantly less than you computer nerds. Why must you take our job title as well?

Versatility is the key

[jbarr]

In my 20 years of IT experience, I have NEVER held a position that was limited to its job description. Every job required me to take on additional responsibilities outside my defined job description. And conversely, when I hired people, it was not based solely not on their focused skills, but for their versatility and diversity of experience.

Re:Network Adminstrator

[FordPrfct]

Last time I checked, Windows still ran on a network.

Yeah, and cars run on roads, but I don't think that it is right to call an auto mechanic a civil engineer.

If they are running a system on the network, then they are a Systems Administrator. If they are running the network itself, then they are a Network Administrator. It doesn't matter what the O/S is, or which brand of gear they are using. It seems clear enough a distinction to me.