Are IT Job Titles Getting Out of Control?

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?"

General Schedule

[TubeSteak]

Dig up the General Schedule (GS) tables that the Federal Government uses to pay its employees.

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

[RealGrouchy]

Euphemistic, unclear, and non-standardized job descriptions are common no matter the field. Of course, it's more common in places where there is high demand and low job quality: workers at Subway are called "sandwich artists", telemarketing is "enumeration-type work".

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>

It's the "Corporate" thing to do...

[bitbucketeer]

They're much more willing to give you a fancy job title rather than a decent salary.

Software engineer permutations.

[pjbass]

A few years ago, Intel changed the title of all the software engineers working for the software automation of the fabs to automation engineers. Interesting that the management did that when there was a mandatory market adjustment (increase) in pay for software engineers for that review cycle. They changed the titles right before the cutoff date, and screwed a few thousand engineers out of a mandatory raise.

Luckily, I got out of there before they did this. Shitty though? Yes.

It could be worse

[NMigo]

come on guys, don't complain it could be worse... I've recently heard from a friend seeking a job in marketing: the title read "Relational Marketing" sounds cool, jult like relational DBMS... we'll on the interview they talked to him about marketing, he replied with the current trends and everything seam ok and like an important job, the office looked important... he decided to join... On his first day, they drove him to an outside neighborhood gave him and two other guys a bunch of forms, and his "boss" told them "show him what we do, and swep the area, Ill be back at two"... He had to ring bells and sell phone lines, relational marketing isn't it? btw... he just returned home by bus and was never to be seen.