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Comment by quaunaut | Hacker News Reader

I find it fascinating how obsessed people are with titles.

Edit: I code, but I honestly couldn't care less what someone else calls themselves. If I'm interviewing them, they'd have to prove their abilities in the relevant code right then.

If we're just having a conversation, most disciplines are different enough that you have to explain many things from the bottom up anyway.

Backend developers lead entirely different lives from frontend developers, and both lead entirely different lives from low level developers. Game developers or data science devs similarly work nothing like anyone else. So why does it matter that someone calls themselves a Wordpress Developer?

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I agreed with your one liner and agree even more with your expanded explanation!

The term developer is so broad, so overloaded, and will only keep getting more overloaded as the tech industry continues to expand.

If I meet someone at a party and they say they're a developer, even as a developer myself I have no idea what that really means, and I have to ask more questions and probably drill down for at least a couple more minutes before I have the slightest clue what their actual specialty and interests are, let alone what they do or are capable of doing day to day.

In such a specialised world, there's not really much sense in reserving any particular word for any particular category of job or skill, because to do so would be so high level as to be almost useless anyway. High level titles in this world are completely, utterly meaningless because people can and do use them liberally. We're in a place now where it's necessary to have a fairly involved discussion with someone to figure out what their real job and skillset actually are, whereas maybe 50 or more years ago, that perhaps wasn't so much the case. That's a very good thing and we should embrace it and not worry about broad definitions being 'misused'.

Put it this way, if I was being interviewed by somebody who wanted a custom web app building, and they genuinely confused someone advertising themselves as a WordPress developer with a full stack web developer, to an extent that it caused me not to be hired, I think that would ultimately be a positive thing as I'd almost certainly not want to work on that project anyway! There is no danger of the market for custom software becoming confused with the market for WordPress sites, and if there is an overlap, you don't, as a 'real developer' (air quotes very much emphasised) really want to be there anyway, right?

The same reason you wouldn't call an apple a motorcycle.

Words have meaning. For people who can discern the differences between these titles - probably most visitors to HN - these distinctions seem silly and almost trivial at times because we think "of course those are different!"

But 99.9%+ of the world is not like us.

They don't know the difference between "web developer" and "WordPress developer" or which framework to use. They don't even know there are lots of frameworks, let alone which use which languages.

This is why when you visit family for the holidays, you constantly hear "oh, you work with computers.. can you see what's wrong with my computer?"

And calling someone a Wordpress Administrator instead is supposed to fix that?

> This is why when you visit family for the holidays, you constantly hear "oh, you work with computers.. can you see what's wrong with my computer?"

In my opinion, the correct answer to that is, "Yes, for a fee.", and has nothing to do with the overloading of terms, but everything to do with the undervaluation of tech-related labor. I am perfectly capable of fixing your computer, I just don't want to waste my leisure time doing it for free.

Next time you get this, tell the family (especially if they are distant family) – "If your relative was a doctor, would you ask them to give you a quick once-over physical every time they came over? Or if your accountant brother-in-law comes along, do you ask them to glance over your tax forms for free? No? Then stop asking me to look at your computer."

In my opinion, the correct answer to that is, "Yes, for a fee.", and has nothing to do with the overloading of terms, but everything to do with the undervaluation of tech-related labor.

It's also to do with the large gap between consumer-level knowledge and professional knowledge, and the fact that amateurs enthusiastically fill that gap for free, and often competently. Often, "fix my computer" equates to "uninstall this bloatware" and that's non-trivial but simple enough for Gary the precocious 8 year old grandchild to do for kicks.

That there's a world of difference between Gary and real tech-related labour is entirely opaque to someone who thinks Gary knows everything about computers.

I see what you are saying, and largely agree with it – but I think we should work on reducing that opacity. We shouldn't be a Gary substitute – Gary doesn't make a whole lot in pocket money, does he. :)

My title is "Evil Mastermind." Now, a person might say, don't call yourself an "evil mastermind" if you haven't taken over the world, or at least made some strides towards doing so. I would say to them that there are other ways to be an evil mastermind, and world conquest will always remain the goal anyway....

Sometimes it's important - I would never go around calling myself "Doctor." In the US we don't have the engineering distinction that countries like Canada do, so I don't mind when people call themselves whatever they want in software.

I always feel like the authors of posts like these suffer from a terrible lack of confidence.

I'm reminded of a saying that I'm going to butcher: "At the bottom of the ladder, the rungs are closer together, and the distinctions between them more important."

Confidence ain't the problem here; it is polluting the market with broken extensions, underpricing services that have been estimated by Lego builders first, and being unable to find an actual developer in the wide pool of people with no skills. The bigger picture is that bothers me, as stated in the bullet list with problems in the post.

Unfortunately, in medium to large organizations titles matter for responsibility and compensation, much in the same way what school someone graduated from matters.

Then let it matter in the organization, but there's no reason to perpetuate that kind of worldview to the rest of the community.

Hopefully corporate attitudes toward work categories changes in the future. It only leads to inefficiency and finding a reason for superiority.

But titles don't matter outside of that organization. Because what you do may be called a developer in one organization doesn't mean you'll get paid more or less in another because they call that position a Software Engineer and developer means something else there.

most companies these days do salary surveys to make sure your salary is aligned to the "industry standard" and if you are, say, a senior engineer, your pay is tied to the average of all "senior engineers" in your area, and it doesn't matter if at your company you really are operating at a different level, you still get slotted with "industry standard senior engineer" salary and stock compensation.

It is unfortunate but titles do matter, and they matter also when you apply to future jobs to pass the HR filter.

> titles do matter

No they don't. Companies align positions to industry standard rates, not job titles. One place will call you programmer level 3, some other place will call you Senior developer but if they have the same responsibility, they will be aligned in pay.

Where I am doesn't use the title 'Developer' or 'Programmer. Do you think that means they have no idea how to gauge people coming in or other areas of the industry that do use those titles?

It's an arms race. You are competing for jobs, promotions, raises and other opportunities with people who are optimizing their titles for the gatekeepers of those opportunities. Developer, engineer, architect, now even "scientist". If you insist on not playing the game, fair enough, but you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. Or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Or something.

Since it sounds like "Wordpress developer" is a title used to refer to people who add wordpress plugins, I wonder what you would call actual developers working on Wordpress core engine.

Probably a PHP developer.

"a wordpress core developer" or a "core wordpress developer"

I'd understand the distinction, as would most of my colleagues.

Well, that somehow reminds me of one hilarious subtitle:

    Tim Berners-Lee
    Web Developer

I remember seeing that subtitle somewhere... :)

Tim Berners-Lee, Web Developer

David Shing, AOL Digital Prophet

https://mobile.twitter.com/ElSatanico/status/514340801468706...

WordPress Core developer is standard, but my business for example is building large multisite solutions for enterprise clients and while I do have 30+ patches in Core, that's not what I do for a living and can't compare with those who do that 40+ hours a week

One step further - when you are hiring for such a position, you ask for a reasonable demonstration of the skill needed in the interview.

Based on your need as an interviewer/organization, you may choose to accept someone who shows passion but less refined skill with a learning opportunity, or you may require someone at a high skill level ready to go on day one.

To me, this is the interviewer's responsibility, to know their requirement and make it clear to candidates.

Totally. I don't have a degree myself, so I know that sometimes the best candidates don't look like it on paper. I was just making a generalization, not meaning to only target the overqualified.

The issue is with non-technical clients that can't judge technical skill. Since in software, anyone can call themselves whatever they want (as opposed to medicine and party engineering), the less sophisticated clients are the ones who suffer for it.

I've been there with non-technical clients. I've seen people get ripped off by those who misrepresent themselves or their abilities. I agree, there is pain there and it is wrong. But this is not a problem exclusive to our occupation.

All I can say is, personally, my own professional ethics require me to try to know my own limits and abilities and present those honestly. So, for example, if a client came to me with a technical need, and I felt that I wanted to fulfill it, but it was reasonably out of my wheelhouse, I would either turn down or direct that client to the best alternative I could think of, if I could not provide it.

I suppose, ethics training is a part of professional development in more rigid occupations, maybe if ours was formalized more, this would be more prevalent.

I couldn't agree more. But people need to make a living, and often loud folks take over an ecosystem if they are allowed to do so, and without standardization or a way to verify skills, we'll turn into the Internet marketing community which is flooded with self-titled marketing gurus - but at least their job requires them to be super visible and exposed so it's way easier to verify their credentials and/or skills.

Two of the problems we struggle with here as technical people:

1) You receive hundreds of spam applications even if you mention explicitly code-related stuff - like GitHub/Bitbucket repo, years of programming experience, know-how in TDD, we sometimes experiment with continuous integration experience or others. The wave comes as long as you mention WordPress.

2) Other than the spam applications and standard "bots", many people simply don't know what's included in "developer" or what real "developers" do. Even if they do want to learn and get better, they don't know the limits and can't aim higher than they are.

It doesn't, unless you provide services that consist of installing WordPress and a premium theme and playing with available options, or switching to a new one if a color settings isn't available.

It's like calling yourself a doctor after watching Grey's Anatomy and House, while the majority of the people study for 10 years and do real work.

I think part of the issue is how do you tell if what you're getting is someone who knows how to click the buttons or someone who can write a plugin?

And 'interview' is not a great answer because the signal to noise ratio is so low.

Correct - 500 interviews for developers including requirements for a GitHub/Bitbucket repo, X years of programming experience etc and 400 of them haven't seen code in their lifetime. The fact that people are so assured that what they do is programming is making it close to impossible to find or grow talent to a certain set of skills (which is fairly well defined in other dev communities)

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