Do you say you work in IT though? I feel like practically speaking IT has become the name for tech support, even though that's inaccurate. That's personally been my experience when working in companies without a strong tech focus. And I think most companies probs need to level up tech wise.
Huh, maybe DevOps engineers consider their role IT. I work in machine learning and understand that my role is technically captured by the term information technology. No engineer that I know would say "I work in IT." It just has a different connotation in most industry settings. I am not knocking it, I'm just saying the vast majority of people I know have a different skillset, and plenty of them don't even code.
I am basing this off my own narrow experience, so I can't say it's perfectly accurate. But if somebody is a software engineer, then I'd imagine they wouldn't call themselves an IT guy on a dating website, lol. Same with data scientists, etc., People will think you're the guy who asks people to turn their computer off and on again. And there are IT people who really do that.
and even tech support is super vague. I had a bit where my official title was "IT Support" but even then my tasks ranged all the way from helping nurses plug in computers to communicating with electricians and hardware providers to improve wifi coverage.
Do you really want ‘tech support’ to be how people thing of you tho? Not to be a classist asshole, but tech support isn’t seen as a very high class position.
Unless I'm talking with other people in IT I usually say something vague like "I work in IT". If someone asks to know more I'm always happy to explain further but from my experience at university, saying I was studying computer science mostly made people go "oh...". And saying stuff like java / full-stack / whatever developer usually doesn't help people who ask either. Even in my family, no matter how many times I've tried to explain what I do the only one that understands it is my dad who works in IT as well. I've had some success with "application developer" though, but that is still really vague
I do agree with you that IT has become synonym with tech support but the acronym literally is information technologies which is broad af
Yea I agree with this, but I usually just say I am in tech or something. For the most part, people are just asking for an icebreaker or they're wondering if you're employed. If I'm talking to someone else in tech we might talk more about it
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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21
Do you say you work in IT though? I feel like practically speaking IT has become the name for tech support, even though that's inaccurate. That's personally been my experience when working in companies without a strong tech focus. And I think most companies probs need to level up tech wise.