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Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

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Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#11
In the 1970s, my first job was an electronics assembly technician. Going to my first tech conference, I asked that the conference badge job title was "Gnome".

Given the incredulous reaction of the badge maker, I was at least the first he'd ever seen. It wasn't long before the rest of the staff at the company became "Wizards" and "Gnomes" as well.

Now I just put "Nerd" as my job title, and nobody raises an eyebrow.

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#13

Can we stop with the self-aggrandizing CxO titles while we are at it? I've had someone introduce themselves as a CTO of a company that has 4 people. How many other technical officers are there for you to be the chief of them? It sounds ridiculous.

Is that any worse than calling yourself a "founder" of a "startup" when you did little more than a barebones MVP you pushed to Heroku?

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#14

In the 1970s, my first job was an electronics assembly technician. Going to my first tech conference, I asked that the conference badge job title was "Gnome". Given the incredulous reaction of the badge maker, I was at least the first he'd ever seen. It wasn't long before the rest of the staff at the company became "Wizards" and "Gnomes" as well. Now I just put "Nerd" as my job title, and nobody raises an eyebrow.

My title is "Director of Technology" in a small company but I tend to introduce myself as "chief nerd" as I think that speaks better to what I really do day-to-day.

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#15
post #5

> Yet a nationally representative study of 1,000 British adults, with which I assisted, found that 75% of British adults thought “scrum master” was a fake job title, or didn’t know for sure if it was real. I think this bit misses the point. "Scrum master" is pretty descriptive and explicit if you are the least bit familiar with Scrum methodology . Unlike the other examples which are intentionally obscure and playful,…

What surprised me more was that he also describes "full stack developer" as an obscure technical job title and then goes on to imply that such obscure technical job titles could dissuade people from applying because the title doesn't communicate what the job entails.

I understand the point on some level, but really, you probably don't want people applying for a full stack dev role who are put off by the obscurity of that job title..

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#16

Can we stop with the self-aggrandizing CxO titles while we are at it? I've had someone introduce themselves as a CTO of a company that has 4 people. How many other technical officers are there for you to be the chief of them? It sounds ridiculous.

I get what you mean, in that CxO titles sound silly. But I'm not sure what the alternative is, really - particularly when you're talking about a startup that's hopefully going to be growing a bit.

It seems when you want to talk about your team, you really want to say 'This person does the business stuff, this person does the technical stuff, this person does the marketing stuff, this person helps with the technical stuff…". Something like CTO is a convenient shorthand for 'person in charge of technical things'.

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#17
post #5

> Yet a nationally representative study of 1,000 British adults, with which I assisted, found that 75% of British adults thought “scrum master” was a fake job title, or didn’t know for sure if it was real. I think this bit misses the point. "Scrum master" is pretty descriptive and explicit if you are the least bit familiar with Scrum methodology . Unlike the other examples which are intentionally obscure and playful,…

They are real scrumbags

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#18
post #5

> Yet a nationally representative study of 1,000 British adults, with which I assisted, found that 75% of British adults thought “scrum master” was a fake job title, or didn’t know for sure if it was real. I think this bit misses the point. "Scrum master" is pretty descriptive and explicit if you are the least bit familiar with Scrum methodology . Unlike the other examples which are intentionally obscure and playful,…

Yeah... it's like: "go watch a bunch of movie credits and try to tell me what even a handful of the infinite number of weirdly specific and awkwardly named jobs actually do"; I mean... "best boy grip"?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/50626/11-strange-movie-job-ti...

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#19
post #4

> So when a pet supplies company advertises for a “time ninja” instead of a human resources administrator or office clerk, we need to ask why. Why not question "human resources" too? I wonder what came first. This term or the way HR handles people as faceless commodities.

If there's a "Human Resources" department, shouldn't there be an "Inhuman Resources" label instead of "IT"?

Re: Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

#20
I am Director of IT at my workplace.

I don't actually direct anyone--I'm the only technical employee. I got the title when my boss told me he was having business cards printed and wanted to know what title I wanted. It was just the first thing that came to mind. Some titles can be very descriptive, and others are just random noise.

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