Are there any Systems Analysts or other business/technical process analysts among us? You could really help me out by sharing a little bit about your job. I'm considering a career shift from systems administrator to a seemingly more creative, involved and human interactive analyst position.

Three quick questions:
- What skills do you use most at work? ie: personal, problem solving, creativity, etc.

- What's the stress level and how do you cope with it?

- What were one or two of the most fun things you've done at the job?

These any anything else you could share would help me in considering this direction for my career. Or, how does someone consider a new career track? Thanks.

Systems Analyst. Is that what they used to call an Efficiency Expert?

Can you code ? All the systems analysts that I have met that didn't come from a coding background where, erm, less useful than they could have been.

In fact I can't remember the last time I met some one describing themselves as a systems analyst. But then I don't work with big companies very often.

I occasionally get described (when someone else is selling my services) as an Analyst Programmer and sometimes as a Programmer Architect. I think what they are trying to say when they add that to my CV for me is that I'm a programmer who when designing systems can think of the bigger picture and the fine detail without losing the plot.

But I wouldn't have a clue when it comes to the stuff that "proper" analysts are supposed to know, which seems to largely consist of spending years drawing complex drawings that no one ever looks at again.

My title is Sr. Systems Analyst. That basically describes my pay scale and not what I do.

Three quick questions:
- What skills do you use most at work? ie: personal, problem solving, creativity, etc.
«» Trouble shooting, creativity, and putting up with assholes while keeping your mouth shut.

- What's the stress level and how do you cope with it?
«» Seems to depend on my manager. Right now I have no stress. I work from home and all is good, at the moment.


- What were one or two of the most fun things you've done at the job?
«» Got published in a trade magazine for creating some fancy applications.
«» When times were good traveled a lot to conferences and classes in warmer places. Even got the company to rent me a convertible on one trip to LA.


Advise – Pick a particular specialty in the IT world and work toward that line of work. Example: Oracle DBA, SAP technical or functional expert, Sun UNIX…

I'm not a Systems Analyst (Operations Research Analyst is one of my job titles), so I can't comment on the other questions, but I can tell you what my boss says about this one. We are paid to deal with the stress of the job.

I find if you stay out of the "Systems Support" roles and steer more toward the development side your phone doesn’t ring as much in the middle of the night.

At one time I was supporting the Pay Roll and HR systems, stress, and lots of it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Redrum: Seems like a good gig. Creativity hopefully outweighs assholes. What experience and formal education did you need to land the job?

Tim: Input from any analysts are welcome, and operations seems exciting. What's so stressful?


How do I get someone to sell me? I've got a pile of services that people must want, but nobody knows I exist. Tediously sending resumes has yet to work.

Andy: I can code and I understand programming, having studied it in college. My fluency is low, which is why I do IT instead of coding. It's one of the many services which I can do, but haven't specialized in.

I can't imagine specializing, after years of doing every IT function at once. My broad skill set must be applicable to management, analysis or other positions which require seeing the big picture and knowing a little about a lot.

Thanks again.

That is a good question, one that I'm not sure I can help much with. Just over 12 years ago I was stuck in the system admin, jack-of-all-trades place, as the single IT person in a 300 strong company. I got out of there into being a programmer by making my CV as coding strong as I could and sending it to some agencys.

I think I got lucky as I got a contract from my first interview that lasted for 7 years. Since then all my work has come from recommendations connected with that first contract or recommendations via friends/family.

I am in the odd position that I've only had one interview in my "professional" life.


My fluency was low when I made the jump from sys admin to coding. I had done some VB/Perl as part of my sys admin work, but that was about it.

More importantly my curiosity was high, when someone described a problem to me I could pick it apart and show I understood how to work through solving it. I also read a lot of books on coding around that time.



I have also avoided specialising. Which is why I'll usually be the only person on a team who understands how Ethernet, TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, ASP, XML, XSLT, Unicode, SQL and database indexes work, but can also code efficiently. Sure I won't know in detail how every level of the technology stack works, but I'll know where to look when something goes wrong.

So I've always been a bit of a firefighter/problem solver, I get given the bits to fix or make work that other people can't fathom. Seems to work well most of the time.

I do dread ending up and an interview again sometime though, I'm not at all convinced that I'd be any good at it.

I was able to ride the tech. bubble so “landing in the job” was not too hard. Keeping my job is another story. “Off Shoring” is much easier for IT workers than it is factory workers. A company doesn’t need to wait 3 months for the ship to deliver code as they do with physical products. Half my department is now in India.

My degree is in electrical engineering so my schooling was not a big helped. I started out doing end user support for a growing company. Whenever someone would need something developed or a technical problem solved I’d step up and say “I can do that.” So I gradually volunteered myself in to the jobs I liked to do. Even though most of the time I had no clue how to do what I said I could do. Luckily in my case my management never initially asked how I was going to get the job done.

Right now I’m helping to create a Java sign signon process to link our companies Portal to another sight. Never messed with Java before but I’m getting it done.

I would suggest getting your foot in the door of a small company “on the grow” and then maneuvering yourself to the job you want.

Job hopping is a much faster way but I was never much for radical change.

One reason I recommended specializing in high paying software/hardware is that high paying support goes along with the high dollar product.

Any 15 year old kid can create a web page but not too many 15 year old kids get paid $100k+ to consult on an SAP installation.

Mainly the deadlines and timelines. It has been more than just a couple times that I went in to work on a Friday/Monday thinking it was a normal day and then finding out they need me in another state/country in a couple days. Everything seems to pile up at the same time, July and Aug I was working 60-70 hour weeks to meet a deadline. Combine that with my other responsibilities, including the survivability of folks using our equipment, adds up to a boatload of stress.

You two are living the dream:
Leveraging diverse skills to land interesting projects.
Using your personal networks to find job opportunities.

Sounds like I could keep doing the diverse things I do, but at a larger organization with more opportunity. Thanks for the tips.