In the haste of getting the heck out of Dodge at Giant Pharmaceutical Company, I did some career based analysis and for the third time in my life have been pointed toward being a System Analyst. My problem with it remains what it has been since college: I cannot seem to find out in a way that is meaningful to me what a System Analyst does. At one point I reported to a System Analyst as a boss. I thought I would finally get some answers. So I asked him what he did and he replied with the same business buzz word double speak that appears in every job description I have ever read on the subject. I even tried to get it out of him another way and wasn't successful. I asked "After you have your morning cup of tea, you sit down at your computer and do...what?" Same non-answers. "What's your typical day like?" Same non-answers.

If any of you know anyone with the job title System Analyst or Systems Analyst, I'd like to talk to them. Before I commit to job retraining, graduate school, etc., I'd really like to know if I'd be heading for a job that would make me want to run away screaming after a week. Thanks.

As far as I know they just apply IT solutions that assist businesses. They don't actually code or do programming, just use existing programs to make businesses run more efficiently, or less expensively (whatever their brief is, I guess).

They essentially go in, look closely at the way stuff's being done, then come up with an IT solution to the issue they've been tasked with addressing. Then they go around discussing it with the people who are actually using the stuff they've introduced until the bugs are worked out. That's been my experience of working alongside them, anyway.

It's probably not that insightful a description, but it's all I've got.

A couple of years back, a new rostering system was introduced where I worked, and the Systems Analysts trained us in the use of it, and were there on-hand for a few months afterwards if we needed to call them up and discuss some minor hiccup or thing we hadn't encountered before, until we were all conversant in using it.