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?"

Comments

Blame the PHBs...

[d3ik]

I think it's more about a manager trying to justify his position by "re-organizing" and "streamlining" positions and their descriptions. For instance, I'm a Java developer. You would think my job description would be "Senior Java Developer" or "Java Developer III" or something... no, I'm an "Information Design Specialist".

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.

Let's all face the truth....

[HiredMan]

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

Abuse of the term 'engineer'

[Gothmolly]

There's "Sales Engineers", and "Level One Engineers", and god only know what else. Level one is button pushing, they're TECHNICIANS - people with technical experience, who do what they're told. Then are the real ENGINEERS, who design things (the buttons that the technicians push). Then there are ARCHITECTS, who form all the stuff into a cohesive whole.

There is no "Systems Engineer II", or "Support Engineer III" - you are a technician. Push buttons, don't think.

Versatility is the key

[jbarr]

In my 20 years of IT experience, I have NEVER held a position that was limited to its job description. Every job required me to take on additional responsibilities outside my defined job description. And conversely, when I hired people, it was not based solely not on their focused skills, but for their versatility and diversity of experience.