Systems Engineer vs. Systems Administrator
This is something of a hotbutton issue with me at the moment and deserves a blog post.
Call me a systems engineer, call me a systems architect. Don’t call me a system administrator or an “ops guy.” Why? Because they’re totally different. Some might disagree with my position in this similar, somewhat dated discussion on System Engineering vs. System Administration. I patently disagree, however, that they are equal and I patently disagree that the former is “resume inflation.”
I’ve discovered that there are a lot of Software Engineers, SDE’s whatever the hell you want to call them that are seriously arrogant bastards. Ok, maybe they’re not arrogant bastards. Maybe their exposure has simply been to “dumb ops guys” that are perhaps trained to press buttons when something breaks. Maybe they’ve just sat on a throne for such a long time that they can do no wrong. Maybe they have some notion in their head that they can do what everyone else can but no one can do what they can.
What might that “ops guy” do or the guy in your “IT” department do? He might fix your piece of shit Outlook. He might fix your piece of shit @microsoft_product. He might revel in buying a new computer all the while oggling over new flim-flams on the motherboard or some crap like that. He might be super uber and haxxorz and do something in BIOS!!111
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with doing that stuff. And, yes, years and years ago I did in fact do the same thing. You’d probably be hard-pressed to find anyone with a degree in computer science that hadn’t done that sort of thing. Now? Now I don’t give a crap about that stuff. I don’t give a crap about configuring apache for the 80 gazillionth time. I don’t care about setting up authentication with openldap for the 80 gizillionth time. What I do care about is figuring out real engineering problems. Why? Because that’s what’s challenging. How do I make large scale systems interact? How do I architect something such that it’s scalable? How do I automate those mundane tasks? What software can I write to make it easier?
These are not the same sorts of things as reading your logs for the, yes, 80 gazillionth time to figure out why postfix didn’t send some random mail. Not the same thing as writing your 10 line bash script to find files meeting criteria foo, bar, baz, and bit. Again, is there absolutely anything wrong with those sorts of tasks? No way. Do I ever find myself doing them? Sure. Is it my primary talent? Nope, because my time is spent better elsewhere.
As pointed out in this blog post, some places disallow use of the term “engineer” because it’s tied up in certifying bodies, etc etc. I’m not talking about that sort of thing. And I’m not talking about “resume inflation” equating the garbage guy with a “waste management engineer” or some crap.
Am I the only one that makes this distinction??