The title says it all, but I’d like to write about what I’ve been thinking about engineering roles through my recent work.
First, IT engineers can be roughly categorized into the following roles (in no particular order). I’ve specifically written about engineers in the web industry, so if there are other engineering roles not listed here like ”○○ engineer,” please let me know in the comments!
- Web Engineer
- UI/UX Engineer
- Android Engineer
- iOS Engineer
- Network Engineer
- Infrastructure Engineer
- Database Engineer
- Customer Engineer
- Sales Engineer
- Test Engineer
- Analytics Engineer
When I wondered “What other engineering roles are there?” and looked it up, I found “ITエンジニアの職種と人材 | IT Job Gate” which lists them in detail.
There are so many different roles that you can’t really group them all under the single word “engineer.” For people who haven’t worked as engineers, this might be hard to understand, but to put it in perspective, I’d say each engineering role is about as different as the 5 subjects with 7 sections in university entrance exams.
Using this analogy, a “full-stack engineer” - a term often used in job listings that’s become somewhat outdated - would be like an honor student who excels in all subjects. Obviously, such talented people aren’t everywhere. Most people excel in something and have subjects they’re not so good at.
We call such exceptional engineers “Tsuchinoko” (a legendary cryptid) in our company.
Now, speaking about myself, I mainly work as a Web engineer from the roles listed above. A few years ago, I also did Android and iOS app development. Recently, since we have an office move this weekend, I’m also doing network engineering tasks.
What I wanted to convey in this article is that “engineers aren’t wizards who can do everything.” There are Web engineers who don’t understand network setup, and people who have never done mobile app development.
I don’t want people to group all engineers under one category and think “they can do anything related to IT or web.” If we don’t manage expectations properly, it’s us engineers who end up suffering.
I don’t have any particular complaints since I’m enjoying doing various things at my current workplace, but I’ve been thinking “hmm, that’s not quite right” about this recently, so I put it into writing. Well, I’m planning to pick up any floating work within the company anyway, so ultimately I love the work and say “I’ll do it.” Yeah.
That’s all from the Gemba.