@Pete-S said in Hello IT Community!:
They don't manage or operate anything, they design different aspects of the car.
Well, in the race car analogy, lol, yes. But in IT they don't.
Software Engineer: Writes the code that runs on a router or switch.
Hardware Engineer: Designs the chips and motherboards of the router or switch.
Network Engineer: Determines which routers or switches to buy, how many, and how to initially configure/deploy them.
Network Admin: Maintains and adjusts routers and switches that are already in use.
The first two roles are software engineer and electrical engineer. They make products that you can sell and buy and neither would ever consider themselves IT in any way, and as IT we should naturally feel that they are very different.
The second two roles are IT. They don't make products, the configure and manage the products. The first two roles sit on the "Vendor side" of things . The second two sit on the customer side. The IT jobs are all about "using whatever products are right for our network and business needs", that's where they become IT.