Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation | Hacker News Reader

Incomprehensible job titles are an elitist affectation

theconversation.com

> 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, this one is only obscure if you're unfamiliar with the specific industry.

I'm fairly certain there are perfectly legitimate job titles in other industries "75% of British adults" aren't familiar with. That's okay, they don't have to be.

If it was "75% of British technical project managers", I would be far more concerned. A job opening for a "Scrum master" likely isn't an entry level position for someone with no prior knowledge of Scrum -- and if that career path is interesting to you, you'll likely already know what Scrum is.

To be fair, I'm in tech, have known actual "scrum masters", and still don't think it's a real job title.

yeah, i still dont understand, in my company we have 2 scrum masters, and the only thing i can see they do is sending 2 emails a week and coding like juniors.

They shouldnt code at all and instead be busy with coaching your team and the enterprise in practicing proper scrum

else they be never true scottsman.

It's more like ”JIRA wrangler“ at most places I've worked. We just tools so heavy that managing them is a full-time job. Bugzilla never had this problem.

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..

They are real scrumbags

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...

That's not the main point of the article though. I assume everyone in the industry knows what a best boy grip is; the problem is when the position for best boy grip is advertised as Lightning-and-Thunder Master Ninja or Rockstar Illumination Guru.

that's not the point of the quoted paragraph though. this article makes at least two points: non-descriptive titles are ridiculous to people who would apply to them, and descriptive titles are ridiculous to people who would never apply to them

Agreed. To me a "churn analyst" is meaningless. So are other titles in Finznce, Legal or HR.

I guess we just have more of them in tech, no matter how you think hard, a "full stack dev" is not something you can guess if someone has not explained it to you.

Scrum master feels more like a role rather than a job title. Like one thing that you do among other things.

Is it ironic that the author is Sir Cary Cooper, who received knighthood at a birthday celebration for the Queen? It's an honor, but with so many knights running around, hasn't that title become a bit ludicrous itself?

> who received knighthood at a birthday celebration for the Queen

The Birthday Honours aren't given at a birthday celebration for the Queen. You make it sound like they're handed out at her birthday party!

The 'birthday' part of the name just means that they are the summer version of the bi-annual honours ceremonies, the other being the new year. The Queen's official birthday is a general set of official events held in the summer. It's not even anywhere near her actual birthday.

I for one do like job adverts looking for a 'guru' or 'ninja'. They are a good early indicator that the company is either immature enough to publish such ads, or using a cynical ploy looking to attract younger/flexible recruits less likely to make 'grown-up' demands.

> 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"?

Telus renamed their human resources department to "People and Culture" a number of years ago.

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.

My first job was doing programming / game design / writing / composing / audio design at a startup computer game company in the 1990s. No one really had a title. When we finally decided that we should really have business cards, I got mine printed with the job title of Chaplain.

Oh, father be with us in our hour of need, for we are going gold. Please forgive us our soon released Alpha, for we forgive our brethrens early Alphas released at full price. Amen.

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?

That sounds like a lot of work.

I've seen "founders" with a Wordpress template :)

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'.

Technical Director is a better term. (In fact, it's the job title I use).

It says you are in charge of tech without implying anything about the size of your company.

It also makes it clear that you are a director of the company, a CxO might not be a member of the board.

I would be wary of that one though; I've been 'technical director' in the past without being 'director'.

Yeah, that's not actually a bad idea. Also 'Marketing director' etc.; there are reasonable equivalents for other roles.

It depends, if you are directing only another person or two, which actually is/are actually colleague(s) "Technical Director" sounds also pretentious (to me at least).

There is nothing bad in being few/small, of course but I often have this impression that the smaller the company is the more resounding are titles on business cards.

"Joe's taking care of the technical side along with Jessica, Jenny does business, and Jorge handles marketing."

There, no CxO stuff when the company is young. Maybe these people all know their "big" titles, but they don't call themselves that until it sounds appropriate.

Until then, any business cards might as well just have names without titles. Why not? At smaller sizes formalities are unnecessary.

Of course if you're trying to deceive people into thinking you're huge, this won't usually be the way to go. And on the flip side, being honestly humble can signal authenticity and trustworthiness.

This surely isn't the only way and won't always fit -- not very "fake it 'til you make it" -- but at least it does away with ridiculous President of My Garage scenarios.

I would still think it sounds a bit weird to describe myself as 'the guy who handles the technical side' in a conversation, but I can see that it's an option if you're happy to be less formal!

I guess I don't generally treat CxO titles as heavy-sounding as some other people do. I wouldn't consider it at all unusual to meet a 'CTO' at a moderately small tech company, and it makes it immediately clear to me what the person does. 'Technical director' is pretty good too; I suppose 'Managing director', 'Marketing director' etc. would all fit into the same general group. Maybe that's a good middle-ground.

You could say: I'm responsible for the technical side.

In some cases, that may be your legal job title. If the 4 person company has incorporated as something like a C-corp, you have job titles to pick from the articles of incorporation form. Of course you can make up your own titles, but the department of commerce (depending on state) is gonna want to know who your C*Os are.

Any industry will have weird sounding titles. The different is that in IT some have only existed for a few years so they havn't had time to work their way into general public culture. A quick scan of my local jobs boards finds the following exotic titles:

  * Gib stopper  
  * Manual Materials Handler- Sample Crushing  
  * Hammerhand
  * Class 2 Civil Driver
  * Shot Firer
  * Kaiawhina
  * Precaster
  * Dogman
  * Assistant Greenkeeper
  * Concrete placer
  * Estimator

What is your estimation of when the titles of Guru, Rockstar and Ninja will work their way in popular culture, and the responsibilities will be well understood at least within the industry?

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.

Full-stack Engineer is a perfectly descriptive job title.

This is my favorite stupid job title, though:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shing

Self proclaimed "Thought Leader" and "Digital Prophet" sounds rather egomaniacal. I just assume anyone with titles like that is trying to sell synergy and snake oil.

Cold-Fusion Acupuncturists & Proctologist

Bah. This is the English news org writing this. In the English-dominated age of sailing ships, specialist sailors had all sorts of jargon-laden job descriptions. So did weavers. The English thrived on high tech for centuries. You'd think they'd embrace this kind of obscurity.

Just because some journo doesn't understand "scrum master" doesn't make it a bad job title. (Whether scrum is a good way to do things is not a question this journo raised.)

Now, let's talk about "Chief Experience Officer" and "Chief People Officer." WTF? Title inflation, anybody?

In startups, the executives should aLL be "Chief Maintenance Officer" meaning we'll clean the toilet when it needs it as well as raise money and convince prospects to become customers.

Back before we were bought up by $Multinational_corp, my job title read General Purpose Geek; after a couple of practical jokes in the office which were attributed to me, my boss added 'and master of shenanigans' in the employee database.

When we were being integrated in the company that bought us, some HR apparatchik called me and asked whether geekery or shenanigans was my primary role; compound titles didn't cut it.

They then realized based on my pay grade that I would be a senior engineer at the very least, and my first business cards after the merger read 'Master of advanced shenanigans'.

Then some sod spotted the title and adjusted it to the more corporate-sounding advanced project engineer. Sigh.

IMHO, even "developer" is a stupid job title which shoud be replaced by a more descriptive one like "computer programmer" or "software engineer".

Computer programmer is fine. Software engineer... I think the argument about what qualifies you as a real engineer comes up every other day on HN.

I tend to stick with the (intent of the) law here. I'm not an engineer, not in any jurisdiction I worked in.

I think "software developer" describes quite well what I do on a daily basis. Better than the "principal software engineer" that adorns my business card...

(which is still better than the "principal consultant" I had on my card in the early '90s when I was a mere kid - it made a grey haired banker in the city smirk a bit and remark "well, maybe when you have some grey hairs". At least I now have plenty of that!)

Recruiters also constantly write about how they are searching for "The best ...".

I mean, know many people who are better developers than me, so I'm certainly not the best. I'm always thinking "Then why write me??"

Sometimes they are hiring for a global corp and I kinda can understand that biggest players need the best people and also can pay the best people.

But when some recruiter comes and talks about how he searches the best talent for a job in some no-name company, I can't help but chuckle.

I worked for a few startups and the hiring managers always said two things "I need good people, but there aren't any on the marked!" and "I interviewed someone who was really great, but too expensive."

...patiently waiting for a job title with emoji.

Would you prefer being chief :smile: officer, chief :frown: officer, or chief of :tears: ?

I'll take Chief :eggplant: Officer.

(Previously known as Chief Restructuring Officer)

I find it quite the offensive take on tech jobs.

Arguing that "scrum master" should have a more general name is one of the stupidest things I've read. It's based on a methodology and has a specific meaning. Asking 1000 random people what pi is might result in them defining the food so we might as well change the name of either one. If you don't know what scrum master is you should not be applying for it anyway.

There is no problem with tech job titles. If anything it's a solution. If you don't want to work for a company as a ninja then the environment is probably not the right fit.

Oddly enough, a few things come into play:

1. It's hard to describe what you do, to someone who doesn't understand what you do.

2. This isn't a new problem.

3. There are actually fewer official U.S. Census occupation codes today (545 as of the 2000 census) than in 1920 (587). Much of that explosion had to do with railroads.

I did some research on this a few years back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3832wx/occupat...

The Iron Horse gave us such classifications as:

* Baggagemen and freight agents

* Motormen

* Switchmen, flagmen, and yardmen

* Express, post, telegraph, and telephone, selected occupations

* Express messengers

* Inspectors

Or we could turn, as The Conversation hails from Britain, to the UK Census classifications of 1851, 1861, and 1871, for: joiner, beermaker, gamekeeper (this sounds suspiciously SV, probably growth-hacking on the side), worsted manufacturer (but no "bested manufacturer"), hose manufacturer ("laying pipe..."), hawker, huckster, jockey, straw hat and bonnet maker (don't confuse your boots and bonnets), protestant dissenting minister, ropermaker (in cahoots with the hoseist, we surmise), staymaker (someone who stickifies the gamekeepers gamified websites, obviously), currier (but no ives), wine and spirit merchant (good, not evil, spirts, one hopes), boilermaker, Chelsea pensioner, commercial traveller (ads delivery and reach?), and weaver not otherwise described.

And, ah, yes, to the pedants, I'm aware of the original contexts of these descriptions.

The point is that, especially at times of dynamic change and specialisation, new distinctions become important.

Overblown? In cases, yes. The value of jobs titles is both for internal and external communications and comparison, as with most protocols.

"Astro" Teller, by the way, is the grandson of a gentleman who's known for a few particularly bright points in mid-20th century history, of which there's some residual glow.

Speaking of which, my favourite jobs title remains that from the 1880 U.S. Census classification, #309, "Gentleman".

>Plonking the word ‘guru’ or ‘rockstar’ into a job description just confuses things, writes Sir Cary Cooper.

If that Sir doesn't see the irony in that sentence..

Yeah I cringe at a lot of the job titles I've been seeing, everything from "chief innovation officer or chief resiliency officer" to "big data consultant" (yes I know what this is I just don't like the buzzword) and it drives me kinda batty. On the other hand, I've been seeing a couple of companies employ people in "apprentice" and "journeyman" titles positions, and I like those.

My wife was an advocate's devil while training to go to the bar - the advocates that trained her being her devil masters.

So who has silly titles?

Your wife is clear winner. I kind of like those titles.

Maybe, just maybe, it's a reaction to all that's wrong with job titles - https://stackstreet.com/4-problems-with-job-titles/

If I am ever employed to manage a data centre, I want to be Cloud Master.

All of this discussion could be just a rant on a HN comment and that's it. Not worth a serious article in my opinion.

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