Thread: How do you relate to IT?

Originally Posted by Harner

Personally, my job description/title does not make me out to be an engineer, more of a technician/admin role. So 60k for my position is probably average.

The term engineer is thrown around loosely in the computer industry, I don't mind really, as we aren't claiming to be a professional engineer in a true sense of the traditional degree, such as a Civil Engineer or Electrical Engineer. But some people get pissed and think that no one should be called an engineer unless they hold a professional engineering degree, so in their mind there is no such thing as a network engineer or a software engineer. In my opinion if your job involves design, you are on the right path to that kind of job title.

I'm really nothing more than a field service technician, but my official job title is "Field Engineer". Hey, if trash men can call themselves sanitation engineers than it's fair game, lol. I wear many hats, I do IT consulting work with our customers, design and install their network infrastructure as well as setup their servers, PC's etc... which is all more on the "design" side. And of course the maintenance and break/fix troubleshooting for our contracts.

The other portion is that we also handle all of Dell's small to medium business work, where a random business contact's Dell, they sell them an Assessment, we are dispatched and we go on site for several hours consulting and basically write a complete proposal of what they want their network to be. Anything from a super small server for basic file sharing in a work group with 5 PC's and 2 shared printers, to something like 10 servers (terminal server, file servers, SAN's) across multiple locations. Which is where my employer requires certification because Dell demands certification as part of our partnership. Pretty much was told when I was hired that I had six months to pass the 70-290 (Microsoft) and they would pay for it. This is what Dell required.