Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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 website uses a dewey-decimal-like National Occupation Classification, 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>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
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.