Home Forums Career Employers and Employees To the experienced SQL people out there: How are you titled/how do you title yourself? RE: To the experienced SQL people out there: How are you titled/how do you title yourself?

  • Danah (1/29/2013)


    - DBA: focusing on administration and maintenance of all SQL instances, performance, permissions, disaster recovery, capacity planning and all the usual stuff (this was my original job title here)

    - Lead SQL developer: When upper management needs "the hard stuff" done in SQL I get the call, or I am enlisted to help the developer officially assigned to the request. I also, basically, "teach" all of the SSA's here TSQL, database design, optimize their queries and show them how to do the same.

    - Application development and design: My current job title is "senior systems analyst". I still jump into C# on occasion, and I still find myself teaching other senior systems analysts how to use C# effectively, especially when it comes to working with data.

    - Software architect: I work with the architecture team pretty much daily. The lead architect, the infrastructure manager and myself are the people who generally set the direction of new projects in terms of technology, integration patterns, hardware requirements, and so on.

    - Project management: I try to stay away from this, but because there are only a few of us here who know all the projects underway and what they all need, or are currently using in terms of hardware and software resources, I find myself drawn into these kinds of meetings pretty regularly.

    First, I'm American, so my view is biased. Just throwing that out there. I have absolutely no idea how the Australian Tech Market works.

    Second, what's an SSA? 😉

    Bhuvnesh above called it, for sure. There are a few people out there (you may be one, don't know) that can keep up in multiple facets of the industry with all the new methodologies. In general, though, around here the higher in a single facet you are is how you describe yourself initially. If not, you describe yourself as to where you want to go. Your title doesn't mean much usually here, particularly as a contractor (again, another one of my biases) as your title is assigned by a company and doesn't necessarily describe the skillsets available.

    However, if someone with your skill listing (not seeing your resume and brag sheets, of course) attempted to hire on as a SQL Dev here at where I work, my initial reaction would be that you couldn't possibly be well versed in everything you're describing, there just isn't enough time in a day where one actually sleeps and eats as well. I'd expect to be hiring at best a solid Level II SQL Dev, certainly not a data architect.

    So, we definately concentrate on specialization here in the states, primarily because of expectations of the catch-all developers. They're fine for smaller or maybe even mid-level shops, but once you get into our big-business, we expect specialization because we expect teams of specialists to handle their particular facet of a project. When it works, it works very well. When it doesn't, it fails spectacularly. Small businesses (and I should clarify, I don't mean the mom and pop grocer on the corner) usually don't have the funding to bring in the five or six specialists needed to properly build a single project as well as others to maintain the infrastructure, so they end up using one person who's strong in some places and weaker in others, depending on where their interests lie and what seems to break the most often. Generalists are seen as newbies, still figuring out where they want to go.

    The only place generalists can really shine in the states is at the management level, where they understand enough of the tech from all parties to keep things well oiled and organized, and to make sure goldbrickers can't blow smoke and sunshine. That generality allows them to communicate intelligently with their specialists and help bring all the pieces together.

    If there's a name for it besides 'IT Manager', I'm afraid I have no idea what that title would be called. I intended to get to the point eventually, just felt it needed to be approached with my biased reasonings.


    - Craig Farrell

    Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.

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