Submission + - What's In a Name: IT Job Titles Out of Control?
grudgelord writes: 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.
To make matters worse, many companies seem to take an almost malicious joy in altering common titles or inventing their own position titles which are almost impossible to interpret without lengthy summaries. As if tacking "analyst" or "specialist" to the end of a common job title wasn't irritating enough companies now have titles such as "Supercilious Senior Foobar/Spam & Eggs v69.032a Engineer" or "Coordinating Analytical Engineer of Device Integration and Exasperation",
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 payscale 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, dadaistic titles that seem to have saturated the industry, or worse, when they've been festooned with an inaccurate or absurd job title?
To make matters worse, many companies seem to take an almost malicious joy in altering common titles or inventing their own position titles which are almost impossible to interpret without lengthy summaries. As if tacking "analyst" or "specialist" to the end of a common job title wasn't irritating enough companies now have titles such as "Supercilious Senior Foobar/Spam & Eggs v69.032a Engineer" or "Coordinating Analytical Engineer of Device Integration and Exasperation",
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 payscale 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, dadaistic titles that seem to have saturated the industry, or worse, when they've been festooned with an inaccurate or absurd job title?
