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Are IT Job Titles Getting Out of Control?
Posted by
Cliff
on Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:01 AM
from the what's-in-a-name dept.
from the what's-in-a-name dept.
grudgelord asks: "Information technology jobs have always been difficult for those from non-technical disciplines to understand. However, in recent years it has become difficult for even IT professionals to divine the actual responsibilities of a given position's role as job titles become increasingly more nebulous and the descriptions more buzz-wordy. At one time, we all had a reasonable grasp of the role of a 'System Administrator' or 'Helpdesk Technician' but now such roles may actually have significant DBA or developer responsibilities bundled into a lesser job title (such as the recent trend of 'Desktop Support Techs' with SQL DBA responsibilities), often robbing the holder of a fair position (and traditionally better paid) title on the résumé. Are these trends a contrivance by corporations to get more 'value' from IT professionals by bundling responsibilities of higher paid jobs into lesser roles and to evade competitive salary by creating titles that have no analogue on pay-scale indexes? Has there ever been a proposed standard for information technology position titles (or at least some form of translation guide)? How do Slashdot job searchers contend with these wildly varying, and increasingly vague titles that seem to have saturated the industry, or worse, when they've been festooned with an inaccurate or absurd job title?"
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describes my career: (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that's pretty descriptive, it's all I put on my resume and they know EXACTLY what my career was about.
I'd love to know the man-hour charges racked up scratching our collective heads about what the titles and job descriptions needed to be.
I especially loved being an architect -- I had as difficult time defining it to people as they had grasping it.
I also get (got) a kick out of people and their "I LOVE ME" walls in their offices and cubicles, pasting and taping up all of their certificates for classes they'd taken, certifications achieved, etc. In the final analysis, I don't ever see a consistent and understandable title/job description semantic, especially in IT where the landscape changes dramatically sometimes in months. (Other professions seem not much better defined, btw.) If your management is good, they're more tuned into and cognizant of what each employee does well and how to balance work loads accordingly. If they're not, they'll obsess about job titles (sometimes employees do the same, and drive management crazy).
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Look at the "official titles" (Score:2, Insightful)
There's programmer, and systems analyst, and business analyst and etc, with about 5 grades of each, and the descriptions all pretty much sound the same. Then there's still categories for "system operator" and very obselete things like that.
So it's not so much we don't have standardized job titles, they just are 20 years out of date.
Blame the PHBs... (Score:3, Insightful)
To me it doesn't affect my job or my pay, so they can call my position anything they feel like. When I choose to move on I'm still putting "Java Developer" on my resume.
Re: (Score:2)
Not out of date at all, at least in Large IT.
(I'm a Senior Member - Technical Staff, BTW, if that means anything.)
Re: (Score:2)
General Schedule (Score:3, Informative)
There is a General Schedule table w/specific requirements for pretty much any position you can think of... and it'll serve as a good starting point.
I'd also suggest you find someone who is well versed in these GS tables & pay scales, because they are not uniform & will vary by agency and geographic location.
Nothing to see here (Score:3, Informative)
Some job listing sites do require employers to use standardized job titles. The Government of Canada's Job Bank [jobbank.gc.ca] website uses a dewey-decimal-like National Occupation Classification [hrdc-drhc.gc.ca], so that at least you can understand what type of work is being described.
The detailed job description? Well, the devil's in the details. Read the employment contract before you sign it.
- RG>
Network Adminstrator (Score:3, Insightful)
Some thing for dilbert (Score:4, Interesting)
For 2 reasons it was funny. One it came straight out of a Dilbert comic, the prof found it incredibly funny too.
2nd reason, apparently this manager requested that every first letter in his title be in the acronym. Originally it was just DPE. His boss apparently remains completely oblivious.
I was also suprised considering how small the company was.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's all face the truth.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The IT title thing jumped the shark at "Webmaster" as a real job title.
It's all been re-arranging deck chairs since then.
Seriously.
=tkk
Two Tiers (Score:4, Funny)
Sled Dog
Lead sled dog (same work, better view)
Well, (Score:5, Funny)
I said, "fine, just don't mention it to anybody else."
Re: (Score:2)
Funny thing, though. Software Engineering is a real discipline that doesn't get much attention. Instead, we abuse the crap out of Computer Scientist when the engineers aren't even close to real Computer Scientists. That one had me confused for quite a while. I kept wondering why there seemed to be two completely different types of Computer Scientist, except that one had more to do with mathematics and pie in the sky research rather than
My Personal Favorite (Score:3, Funny)
I choose my own title (Score:5, Funny)
Chief Technical Dude.
It's fitting & I liked it, so that's what my title is.
Though a friend of mind (in IT) had on his business card Director, Piratical Affairs. Which is better.
Old trick by H-1B agencies (Score:3, Interesting)
One meaningless title I've been seeing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
(Let's hope you see this!)
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot "Editor" (Score:5, Funny)
It's the "Corporate" thing to do... (Score:2, Informative)
W hat is going on? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have the same problem. My "Chief Lizard Wrangler [slashdot.org]" gag is visible from my list of posts [slashdot.org], but is mislinked to a blank parent [slashdot.org]. Something weird is going on.
The one I love to hate.... (Score:2, Funny)
I mean seriously, how are you ever going to get any work done when you're busy snorting coke off of the breasts of groupies? A real programmer wouldn't know what the hell to do with a groupie in the first place, though the coke would probably come in handy for month long hacking runs (though this may explain the quality of some of the commercial code I've seen).
And the attrition rate would be horrible. In a larger organization you'd probably have to drag a overdosed programmer out of a
How To Deal (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Office (Score:4, Funny)
Dwight
What's in a name? Criminal intent, apparently... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, I work for a fairly big Fortune 500 as a developer-slash-DBA-slash-webmaster (you know the drill, many hats, one paycheck). Last month, I was "Systems Development Specialist". Until they decided that anyone with "developer" in the title was an offshored cubicle dweller with all intention of getting their hands on some identities and credit cards (hey, I didn't make this generalization, don't blame me). I was already busted down from having domain admin privileges to local admin on just a few boxes (SQL server, webserver, development server, and my own PC). After the new title policy change, I was going to lose everything but the developer login, and I would even lose local privileges on my own PC. That was pretty much the last straw for me, since I figured after 7 years of pre-SOX full access, where if I'd had the will (and total lack of morals) to do so, I could have made it out of there with thousands of credit card numbers. What do they reward my loyalty with? Shackles. "Here, wear these boxing gloves when you code, it'll be harder for you to do it, but our data will be safe from your evil wicked ways!"
Anyway, as I was about to hand in my notice, my immediate supervisor, a down-in-the-trenches network guy who ended up Site IT Manager, told me he managed to get my title switched to "Senior Information Management Specialist". Guess what my job description is? Exactly the same as System Development Specialist, although couched in more generic terms to prevent any instances of "developer" or "programmer" to show up. And now I have my access back, and I don't have to have someone hold my hand and wipe my ass when I implement change controls from my dev environment to production. All because of a few words in the title, I went from criminal suspect to a functional member of the IT staff.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Abuse of the term 'engineer' (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no "Systems Engineer II", or "Support Engineer III" - you are a technician. Push buttons, don't think.
Re:What's in a name? Criminal intent, apparently.. (Score:2)
Comes down to:
1) Who do you report to and need to make happy?
2) What do you need to do to achieve 1) and what can you do
3) What do you get as compensation for doing 2) and 1)
Who your boss is helps a lot.
Your job title could be Senior Microsoft Janitor (in charge of care and cleaning of Windows) for all you care.
Your supervisor obviously figured out a way to get the system to work... That's what decent middle managers have to
Übergeek (Score:2)
It's not just IT (Score:5, Interesting)
It happens everywhere (and has been for a good 5+ years now).
Basically, low-end/crap jobs are being given fancier (and fancier still) job titles because:
* They attract poseurs who can handle the low pay that goes with them as long as their job sounds impressive to their peers.
* They look impressive in a Resume (thus being an acceptable stepping-stone job - used to attract people to low-skill, high-turnover positions)
* It's easier to get people to work a bad job if it sounds important
* The cotton-wool generation just starting to get into the workforce, who have been brought up being told they can never lose and never having had their feelings hurt, don't get all depressed about "only" being a "Secretary" or something similarly mundane.
Re: (Score:2)
What is a problem is that in Canada (maybe elsewhere) there is a society that controls the titles of Engineer and Engineering Technologist, which means any school which wants to create a program where someone could call themselves that (with an appropriate prefix attached depending on what they're doing) has to follow their rules for progra
It isn't just an IT thing (Score:2)
Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:2)
Yep
Re: (Score:2)
Not always... (Score:2)
Mine's pretty basic, and succinctly describes what I do:
Network Engineer and Software Developer
Easy, and describes my job description. Of course... when I joined, I wasn't really given a title so much as asked what I wanted it to say. Perhaps a benefit of working for a smaller company?
Re: (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2, Funny)
Cyberspace Engineer (Score:3, Funny)
I really was handed a business card that said "Cyberspace Engineer" on it and I have to confess to bursting out laughing.
Clever guy, important work, and the title wasn't entirely bogus but yikes.
The same in Europe/Germany? (Score:3, Insightful)
Software engineer permutations. (Score:4, Informative)
Luckily, I got out of there before they did this. Shitty though? Yes.
Hmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're kidding, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Help desk techs doing SQL DBA work? And supposedly this is a "recent trend?" My suspicion is that it isn't a trend, but that instead some Helpdesk Tech somewhere was asked to set up system DSNs in Windows and thinks that it's SQL DBA work. There's a heck of a lot more to being a DBA than just installing SQL, setting up users and creating a DB, but it's not uncommon for people who don't understand that to think that they could do it.
Now, on to the other topic, at my current employer we have several different titles in the IT department: Helpdesk Tech, Network Engineer, Project Manager, Application Specialist, Developer, and Director. Those all seem pretty standard to me, though in a larger company the duties would be a little more granular. For example, the HelpDesk Tech job would be split out into HelpDesk Operator and PC Tech and the Network Engineer would be split into Networking Admin/Engineer and Systems Admin/Engineer, and the Developer would be split into DBA and Developer.
At most places I have worked over the past 10 years it's been basically the same breakdown, with higher or lower levels of granularity. I suspect that if you had a very small company with a very limited IT budget and owners/managers with no IT knowledge, you might get someone looking to hire a HelpDesk Tech and expect them to be able to manage everything. After all, to most users you always call the HelpDesk regardless of whether your needs are as low level as a new mouse or as high level as a boinked application server.
Now, if you're working for someone who expects you to do the work of 2 or 3 widely varying jobs for the salary of a HelpDesk tech, well, any sensible person who had the skills to do the job would either demand more money or go elsewhere. If they didn't have he skills, they could either stay and learn them or go elsewhere.
Re:Abuse of the term 'engineer' (Score:3, Insightful)
Versatility is the key (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, (Score:3, Funny)
I hear that's considered harmful.
Chris Mattern