When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator
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Example: Helpdesk Tech is really End User Administrator.
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This post is deleted! -
"Systems. Shortened from “operating systems.” Systems roles are focused on the operating systems, normally of servers (but not necessarily in all cases.) This is the most broadly needed specialized IT role. Within systems, specializations tend to be such as Windows, RHEL, Suse, Ubuntu, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac OSX and so forth. High level specializations such as UNIX are common with a single person or department servicing any system that falls under that umbrella, or larger organizations might split AIX, Solaris, RHEL and FreeBSD into four discrete teams to allow for a tight focus on skills, tools and knowledge. Systems specialists provide the application platform on which computer programs (which would also include databases) will run. Desktop support is generally seen as being a sub-discipline of systems, and one that often intersects pragmatically with end user and helpdesk roles."
So what would I be if I administrated both Windows and Linux systems?
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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:
So according to that, the term Administrator should never appear in a job title?
All IT disciplines come in Admin or Engineer. That's how you know HOW the discipline is applied.
This establishes that I am at least an administrator. The question then is of what?
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
So what would I be if I administrated both Windows and Linux systems?
The OS doesn't change anything unless you are specifying something. So while doing this task, you are working as a generic system admin.
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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:
So according to that, the term Administrator should never appear in a job title?
All IT disciplines come in Admin or Engineer. That's how you know HOW the discipline is applied.
This establishes that I am at least an administrator. The question then is of what?
IT. Just IT in general.
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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:
Where is the list of "approved" job titles?
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2017/01/standard-areas-discipline-within/
I would like to see an NIST or other non Scott list that the industry references.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@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:
So according to that, the term Administrator should never appear in a job title?
All IT disciplines come in Admin or Engineer. That's how you know HOW the discipline is applied.
This establishes that I am at least an administrator. The question then is of what?
IT. Just IT in general.
LOL - that's where I landed myself several years ago Just
IT Admin. -
All SMBs have the same role....
SMB workers, with only the rarest exception, are only Generalists and only Admins. There is no engineering roles in SMB, there are no specialists roles in SMB.
SMBs sometimes do engineering (but not often) and it is normally dramatically under 1% of total time. But most SMBs outsource this small amount of engineering to sales people at vendors.
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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 -
@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:
@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:
So according to that, the term Administrator should never appear in a job title?
All IT disciplines come in Admin or Engineer. That's how you know HOW the discipline is applied.
This establishes that I am at least an administrator. The question then is of what?
IT. Just IT in general.
LOL - that's where I landed myself several years ago Just
IT Admin.If you are in the SMB, that's what you do. You can play with things like "IT Generalist", "Generalist Admin", "IT Guy" or whatever, but the basics are always the same.... IT Generalist doing Admin stuff.
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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:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@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:
So according to that, the term Administrator should never appear in a job title?
All IT disciplines come in Admin or Engineer. That's how you know HOW the discipline is applied.
This establishes that I am at least an administrator. The question then is of what?
IT. Just IT in general.
LOL - that's where I landed myself several years ago Just
IT Admin.If you are in the SMB, that's what you do. You can play with things like "IT Generalist", "Generalist Admin", "IT Guy" or whatever, but the basics are always the same.... IT Generalist doing Admin stuff.
Technical Human
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@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.
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@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
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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.
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