[eropple]

You also, candidly, may be experienced enough and have enough time-served to get away with it. ;) There's definitely an effect--I kinda want to call it a thermocline?--above which your actual achievements can speak for themselves, particularly if you've built a solid network.

Today, if I had a notion to, I could probably call myself a "sysadmin" and not have trouble finding well-compensated work. But when I was freelancing, as well as when I was earlier in my career, I can tell you a lot of doors would have slammed right shut had I used the term regardless of my capacity. I do not particularly love the term "devops", but at this point its umbrella at least encompasses what we (like, you and I, not the general we) think about when we're doing this stuff, and it has a certain amount of loaned--or stolen--credibility.

As I said in a top-level comment, I'm more twitchy at this description of being a consultant than I am at the devops part.