Why do they keep changing my title?

This is literally the 2nd time this has happened to me in the past couple years over two different employers... I go on vacation for a few days and then come back to find that the company has changed my (and my team's) title.

<2 years ago (previous employer): UNIX System Administrator --> UNIX System Engineer
This week (current employer): UNIX System Administrator --> UNIX System Engineer

As always, this doesn't mean more money. So, why do they bother putting forth the resources to do this? All it does for me is force me to order new business cards and change my e-mail signature.

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Comments

NetworkNewb

maybe the new thing for a company to do is have engineers instead of administrators and the new company was just behind on the trend

(no clue though, seems like a waste of time, maybe HR was bored that month)

E Double U

Engineer does sound better than admin.

BradleyHU

title means nothing, its about the duties you do...

NetworkNewb

I do agree, I like the engineer title ^^

networker050184

HR stuff behind the scenes, reorgs, etc. Having Engineer in the title might actually raise your pay band a bit too!

ajs1976

do you work for some type of service provider? Might be easier to charge higher rates for Engineers over Administrators.

Could also be an HR thing for who qualifies for OT versus who is exempt.

RHEL

ajs1976 wrote: »

do you work for some type of service provider? Might be easier to charge higher rates for Engineers over Administrators.

I thought about scenario, and that would make sense... However, both companies have been regional organizations of about 7K employees where my role has been internal infrastructure only. My customers are our internal employees and I rarely interface with anyone outside the company.

I do remember we brought in some very costly consultants a while back to evaluate roles, titles, etc. I was told that we were being compared to national salaries and that nobody will go down in salary, but could likely go up from the results they were seeing. That still does not really explain the title change thing...

It's just a bit confusing why they would create more work for themselves just to change titles around.

NetworkNewb

RHEL wrote: »

I do remember we brought in some very costly consultants a while back to evaluate roles, titles, etc. I was told that we were being compared to national salaries and that nobody will go down in salary, but could likely go up from the results they were seeing. That still does not really explain the title change thing...

Unless what they saw was that UNIX administrator's average salary was higher than UNIX engineer's salary... So they changed the title so you would keep your current payrate instead of having to increase it.

Priston

RHEL wrote: »

I do remember we brought in some very costly consultants a while back to evaluate roles, titles, etc. I was told that we were being compared to national salaries and that nobody will go down in salary, but could likely go up from the results they were seeing. That still does not really explain the title change thing...

unix system administrator Salary | Indeed.com

unix system engineer Salary | Indeed.com

Wait a few weeks and maybe you'll get a pay raise?

RHEL

Yeah, I guess it doesn't really matter too much. My role stays the same -- I'm managing ~750 UNIX servers regardless of what my title is. I'm happy w/ the salary, regular increases, an hours so I won't be too hurt if I don't get an increase in pay from this.

Now that I think of it though, I do have an idea why my previous company did it. They rewrote job descriptions and titles as part of a reorg effort that allowed them to reevaluate employee performance -- ie, it gave them an opportunity to say that employees were not performing up to their new roles. They were able to fire *many* people who worked there for decades for incompetence w/o paying out severance and unemployment. I lucked out in that I still qualified and performed at my new role and was lucky #1 of 2 people who were laid off (w/ severance) vs being fired.

So, it does have me worried a bit. I do not think my current company is that evil though.

kurosaki00

Sounds like a slow month @ HR.

Companies also do that to appeal to investor/looking for partners or clients.

ehnde

Hey, at least you don't have my title! "Service Delivery Engineer" ...that will be an interesting job title to explain. I mostly work on Unix systems like you...HP-UX, AIX, and RHEL 6 & 7. Also do quite a bit of work in VMWare and some backend enterprise app support. If I dig into the job description a bit more, it talks about IAAS (infrastructure as a service). I'd rather be called Unix System Engineer like you. At least interviewers know what that means.

twodogs62

True certified Engineers are very touchy about the IT field using the term Engineer.

Take in point, MSCE is no longer Engineer, it is Expert.

I'm guessing there were lawsuits at the time that the term Engineer could not be used.
Maybe decision has been reversed again?

twodogs62

The term Engineer has been dropped by Microsoft. engineer is now expert.
I believe certified Engineers raised issue and may have sued.

Regulation and licensure in engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See Republic article about the term engineer:
What's the new MCSE certification all about? - TechRepublic

Raisin

twodogs62 wrote: »

True certified Engineers are very touchy about the IT field using the term Engineer.

Take in point, MSCE is no longer Engineer, it is Expert.

I'm guessing there were lawsuits at the time that the term Engineer could not be used.
Maybe decision has been reversed again?

In the US the title of Engineer is not closely regulated and the term gets thrown around rather loosely. In other countries you can actually get into a bit of trouble if you use the title without the proper credentials. This is why Microsoft ended up renaming the MSCE cert, people were taking the exam and then tried to claim they were instant engineers who didn't need the years of schooling.