Ask HN: Is "systems analyst" still a distinct career? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is "systems analyst" still a distinct career?

7 pointsparpfish10 comments

I was just thinking about an old Simpsons joke where Martin is excited to get the “systems analyst” job for career day.

I remember hearing about that job title in school and it was always described as a really good job for technically minded people but was never really clear what they did. And now I never hear about it as a career so I’m curious what happened.

Did it evolve something else (system architect, UX)? did it just disappear as software/tech changed? Or is it actually thriving and I’m just in a bubble?

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I did take a systems analyst job once. They let me pick the title. I wanted something weird like "astro boy", but that was the weirdest one. I somewhat regret it because people are more likely to understand astro boy.

But basically the job is living documentation. Understand how everything goes together. Clear the path for devs. Handle the talks with Product to make sure what they want to build is possible. We'd have week long UX workshops and I'd be jumping through documentation and code to note down which endpoints can handle this and what's missing. And this way, these product discussions aren't taking away maker time from the ICs.

It's a semi-management role, because people are part of the system too. It's most similar to tech lead these days.

In over 25 years of working, I never knew anyone who was actually a "systems analyst." It always seemed like an antiquated job title used for government classification and little else. Perhaps it existed more in larger enterprises?

I was wondering if it was an older job that was the person that was supposed to help a company transition to using computers?

It also reminds me about how guidance counselors used to tell me “you like math, so you should become an actuary”

Nowadays, anybody with math/stats aptitude will go into one of the tech related data jobs that pay way better and don’t require a long list of exams

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

> Computer systems analysts study an organization’s current computer systems and design ways to improve efficiency.

That sounds like what we’d call an architect now?

Even the title architect doesn't really exist in large software companies.

I think Systems Analyst current title might be closest to TPM, where someone would use data to propose a behavioral change to a system or process (opposed to simply a technical one).

In Europe at least, it's still alive in government projects. Governments are often paying companies to develop large system for them, and system analysts are the people who describe requirements in detail so that the developer company knows what to build, and the government knows if the system delivered meets the requirements or not. System analysts are hired on both the government and the software company sides. The job is basically half creating the requirements, half quasi-lawyering in meetings on whether the system meets/doesn't meet the requirements described in documentation. Also, lots of money is at stake from the PoV of the development company, so these meetings are often quite adversarial. Overall, not the most pleasant job, unless you love to publicly prove to your opponents that they're lying scumm :)

A system analyst Job is an archaic job title for someone who isn’t technical but they wish they were.

salmon gutter???

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