How to lie about your programming job title for great profit | Hacker News Reader

How to lie about your programming job title for great profit

codeformore.com

39 pointspsergeant21 comments

I think I'd still prefer to never be on that list of 600 names in the first place.

A much better way to move your career forward is to perform the necessary actions such that you're the guy whose name the CTO forwards along to HR with instructions to make an offer and, optionally, a resume for the file.

I spent the first half dozen years of my career fighting my way off of that list. Once you have a few good connections with memories of you being good at what you do, along with objective external proof of same, the process of changing jobs becomes a lot more enjoyable.

Let this be the maximum of what you do.

I've seen CVs that have job titles that make the person sound like Daenerys Targaryen... Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, Lady of Dragonstone, Queen of Meereen.

The point made in this article is good, but as someone who reads a lot of CVs and does a lot of phone screening and interviewing... be very wary of over-claiming anywhere. It's a huge red flag.

Once upon a time, I re-wrote my ex’s sisters CV. Fudging some, rounding up, deleting caveats, using ambiguous terms… Nothing onerous. She was barely out of college anyway.

They had been brought up on strict honesty, bordering on puritanical. They were both shocked at what I did.

Dunno… When it comes to CVs, interviews and such… It just feels ridiculous applying your highest standards of integrity. The process is disingenuous anyway. Employers, and the ecosystem around hiring isn’t applying those standards. Are they being honest about how good the job/company/team is? Are they using dirty tricks like finding out your salary before making an offer? Do candidates ask what other team members are making?

It’s asymmetric and tends to dishonesty anyway. So yep, certainly do this if it applies to you. I would call this well within the lines, not even close.

Once, working for a government contractor, I had to write up the qualifications of some people we intended to place on the contract. Now, all of these people already worked on the predecessor, so there was not mystery about who they were or what they did. But people who were OK to plug in cables or clear printer jams were written up as if they had taught Bjarne Stroustrup to code and left Bell Labs because they didn't like New Jersey.

For what it's worth, a) we got the contract, and b) the contractor screwed over the employees who stuck around.

> I've seen CVs that have job titles that make the person sound like Daenerys Targaryen... Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, Lady of Dragonstone, Queen of Meereen.

Are you sure it was job titles and not the job descriptions, which tend to portray real heroic figures?

If it was job titles, really interested in some of those. Maybe can add some of those to spice up my resume ;)

Definitely job titles.

The job descriptions on the most recent example was 3 columns of bullet points.

I like lists as much as the next person, but this was next level.

Summary: report your job title as "description of job (job title given by employer)" in order to improve keyword matching on your CV.

The article is good, it describes a technique I've used in my career with successful results as well.

The title posted by OP is ridiculous though. It's not lying, and the article directly addresses that it's honesty.

Furthermore, at many companies, your internal HR title isn’t even intended for external consumption. I would actually need to go and lookup what title is in the system for me. I’ve never used it.

I've used it too. Early on in my career, I had a job for 1.5 years where the title was "data analyst," but the job was programming Python and C++. Almost immediately I stopped getting as many emails about SQL and Excel based jobs and started getting software engineering inquiries.

>The article is good, it describes a technique I've used in my career with successful results as well.

But, to be picky, it is not like you have a confirmation that if you hadn't used this "technique" you would have had unsuccessful results.

In what markets are titles common for technical people such as developers (apart from megacorps where they seem to be universal)? Would you ever have a formal job title as a developer at a company of 20 developers in e.g the US?

I have had to invent my own title for as long as I can remember because there aren't fixed roles/positions/titles at the company (In the sense that you are hired at a certain role/title.).

I'm now probably some kind of "Senior developer", or "Lead developer" or "Architect" or whatever. And I'd introduce me as such if someone asked. But I don't think this title exists in some database or contract anywhere. When we hire we some times call it "senior developer" just to mean experienced. But we don't have pay grades that means this new hire would necessarily be making more money than anyone not senior.

apart from megacorps where they seem to be universal

So factor out a huge part of the job market?

SV startups are a small percentage of the overall tech world. Legions of programmers are hired in traditional companies in finance, energy, tech, aerospace... And on and on and on.

And in most of those organizations, titles are common.

Moreover, regional cultural differences greatly affect the value of a title. A person in California or Colorado often sees titles differently than someone in New York or Boston. And many cultures outside the US often view titles as extremely important as an outward measure of success.

> So factor out a huge part of the job market?

I was just trying to exclude them from my question. I realize megacorps in all countries and all industries have titles. So they aren't interesting for my question.

> And in most of those organizations, titles are common.

I'm in a very traditional business and I don't have a title, or know many developers that do in small/medium organizations. Hence my question.

> the question you pose just illustrates how cloistered you may be.

I imagine I am. Hence the question.

BTW, I took out that last paragraph, I was being a dick.

But I don't think there's a clear answer to the question, other than "they're pretty common".

My bet is that they're more common on the east coast than the west. As for specific industries, that I can't speak to, though companies with strong HR departments sometimes like titles since it makes salaries and promotions a lot easier to manage.

> In what markets are titles common for technical people such as developers

Common (but not universal) in most. Though they can be as general as “member of the technical staff”.

> Would you ever have a formal job title as a developer at a company of 20 developers in e.g the US?

Often yes, though it's not certain, even in a large org.

> But we don't have pay grades

Pay grades aren't the same thing as job titles; in large orgs (including government), it's possible for pay grades and job classifications to be universal, but titles to still be hit or miss.

I think it's better to look at the market for your profile and decide what to add in the title. And it's not lying. From what I know different companies use different job description/hierarchies. I have seen companies use:

Software Engineer

Software Consultant

Technical Consultant

Associate Engineer

Associate Consultant

Member of Technical Staff

Software Development Engineer

to name a few, which effectively have the same job profile/description.

Then there is the trend of adding "2" to the job role. This helps stoke people's ego by making them believe they have progressed in a new designation but it is confusing.

The "Software Development Engineer 2" can be equivalent to a Senior Engineer in another company.

Then there is confusing titles like "Staff Engineer", specially in semiconductor companies, which to an untrained recruiter is equivalent to the "Member of Technical Staff".

In my personal opinion, recruiters should stop looking at the titles and talk to candidates before rejecting any one.

Good advice. It's not lying if you provide a more accurate description of what you did at your previous job. Job titles are often confusing and can differ significantly between companies. Saying what you actually worked on will help a new employer/recruiter more than your official title.

>> Lawrence Webb, the Murex Support consultant, is probably shit-out-of-luck

I bet that this Lawrence Webb guy gets paid really well being a Murex specialist (whatever that is) and he probably doesn't get irrelevant spam messages from recruiters like I do.

I know for a fact that very niche engineers often get paid a lot. When a really specialized recruiter sees an exact keyword match for some exotic technology that their client specifically asked for, they go insane and will pay anything to get you.

Lawrence Webb, in this case, had applied for a Perl programming job. Name was changed to protect the innocent. If he’d applied for a Murex support role, he’d have been fine.

So, CV SEO?

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