IT rant: Senior ______ Engineer = Idiot

The BBQ Pit
1

Why the fuck is it that 95% of people with “Senior” in front of their title are complete chowderheads?

I mean, I understand that calling yourself the “Senior Active Directory Engineer” basically means that you’re too incompetent and/or bearded to actually advance to management, so you’re only “senior” because of the fact that you haven’t been promoted in ten years, but shit, do you have to be so stupid?

To wit, the Reader’s Digest version of a series of emails I just had with a “Senior Network Security Engineer”:

Me: What IP should I be looking for?

Him: 192.168.1.0/24

Me: You’re going to need to NAT those; I need your public addresses.

Him: 192.168.1.1/32

Me: Public. As in, outside the firewall.

Him: Oh. 10.10…

Me: I’ll get back to you. I’ve got to go do something fun, like showing the sales guys how to use their fucking Blackberrys.

Christ.

Now I’m worried that I’m going to come off like a dick in the next email I send him, though I suppose I shouldn’t sweat sounding condescending to somebody who refers to himself as a senior-anything-engineer with a straight face.

Grrrr…

2

Oh, and don’t get me started on the overuse of “Engineer” and “Architect” in certifications.

Much respect to all the MCSEs out there (cough), but doncha think we’re stretching the metaphor a little much?

I say we start using other construction-related nouns. Cisco Certified Network Mason? Or how about a Red Hat Certified Systems Painter?

black455
6th Degree Linux Plumber

3

I claim bricklayer.

4

Hmm…

Less humourously: The “he must still be a [programmer/admin/whatever] because he couldn’t get into management” attitude is a BIG part of the problem. Lots of people think that, so it means there’s a stigma if you’ve been doing non-management work for too long, which means you’re not going to see as many good, non-management tech people around because the good ones… Get into management. It’s a vicious cycle.

5

And then there are some of us who have the title Senior Network Engineer, who are glad he’s not in management cause he’s not a manager, and is perfectly content to run the Exchange servers and most of the general Windows servers.

Sorry you’ve got a bad Senior whatever there, but there are bad techs at all skill levels.

6

I have been in IT management, and I for one would rather surrender a gonad than be in management again.

7

I just wish they’d stop sticking the word ‘engineer’ on there as if it has any kind of meaning.

Getting a job where the name of the job is ‘something engineer’ is often quite different from being an actual engineer.

8

I have no reason to doubt that Metacom, diku, and cwthree are competent Systems Pipefitters.

However, I don’t believe for a second that the SDMB is a representative sample. You guys probably fall within the 5% who don’t suck.

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had a series of really good managers. I’m quite happy to continue toiling under them doing technical work for the forseeable future, but that’s only because they’re good managers. If they sucked, the only way out would be to get in to management myself, and stab them in the back.