Silly Job Titles

Many years ago I was on a programming project porting code from OS/2 1.x to NT. When I was there they suddenly decided to make a database of all people and get job titles for everyone – apparently the position description used when advertising the jobs wasn’t sufficient. When I got given a clipboard with a form to write my details I looked at what everyone else had done, It was a heap of ridiculous propaganda with everyone trying to put in synonyms for “senior” or “skillful” and listing things that they were allegedly in charge of. There were even some people trying to create impressive titles for their managers to try and suck up.

I chose the job title “coder” as the shortest and most accurate description of what I was doing. I had to confirm that yes I really did want to put a one word title and not a paragraph of frippery. Part of my intent was to mock the ridiculously long job titles used by others but I don’t think anyone realised that.

I was reminded of that company when watching a video of a Trump cabinet meeting where everyone had to tell Trump how great he is. I think that a programmer who wants to be known as a “Principal Solutions Architect of Advanced Algorithmic Systems and Digital Innovation Strategy” (suggested by ChatGPT because I can’t write such ridiculous things) is showing a Trump level of lack of self esteem.

When job titles are discussed there’s always someone who will say “what if my title isn’t impressive enough and I don’t get a pay rise”. If a company bases salaries on how impressive job titles are and not on whether people actually do good work then it’s a very dysfunctional workplace. But dysfunctional companies aren’t uncommon so it’s something you might reasonably have to do. In the company in question I could have described my work as “lead debugger” as I ended up doing most of the debugging on that project (as on many programming projects). The title “lead debugger” accurately described a significant part of my work and it’s work that is essential to project completion.

What do you think are the worst job titles?