Throughout my years in the IT industry I’ve held many positions and titles. Some are fairly accurate descriptions of what I was doing, and some were decidedly very un-acurate.  Now as I start my own business, I’m stuck with the task of giving myself a title.  As it turns out, it’s a little harder than I had anticipated.

Growing Up Geek

When I first fell in love with computers, I was in elementary school.  My parents got a big hunky IBM clone (I don’t remember the brand) complete with two fancy 5 1/4 inch floppy drives.  I loved to play around and find ways to break or confuse the programs.  This started a long love affair with breaking and fixing computers.  At that point, and all through school, I was a true computer geek.  I used computers for the sheer novelty of it.

Flash forward to my time serving in the US Army.   I wanted to flex my computing prowess and volunteered for various computer-centric tasks like creating databases and such.  I then got the opportunity to help network a new office from the ground up.  After that, I was officially appointed the unit’s assistant IMO (Information Management Officer), and was tasked with helping people in the unit with various computer issues.

I loved that job, and found I really had a knack for troubleshooting.  So, after I got out of the army, I took a job as an intern at the Help Desk of a pharmaceutical company.  Within 4 years time I was hired on full time, promoted to a Level 2 Analyst, and promoted again to my current position in the computer industry, Enterprise Systems Analyst.

Every time I was presented with a new position and name (Geek, Assistant IMO, Helpdesk Intern, Helpdesk Analyst, Systems Analyst) I was basically doing the same thing, fixing computer problems.

What’s in a Name?

When I had the idea to start my own computer business, it never occurred to me that I would need to define my job title. In fact, it wasn’t until I started writing this blog that I realized I needed to figure out what to call myself.   So I came up with a list of names that I’m considering using to refer to my position as an independent computer guy, along with how I feel about each one:

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