Last week in the office we were talking about job descriptions and why adding “executive” to a job title is as meaningless as adding salt to concrete Sisyphus’ quest [I had to change the analogy as it caused quite a lot of debate over on facebook – ed]. It just sounds good and does nothing.
That, then, reminded me of an old Dilbert cartoon. From way back in time, 2008 to be exact. One that involves Wally trying to change his job title for something more “21st Century”.
To put it in context; this is a real code monkey. I know the feeling. I have been there, trying to get an algorithm to work with management lurking and asking stupid questions that make you lose your train of thought and, as such, putting that back a while until you get your head thinking through the problem. Normally from the start – again.
I would love to have “Code Monkey” or “Software Simian” on a business card. It would make talking to people at trade shows interesting. Especially if you are a “Software Simian”.
I have already whined about being a programmer and, sometime, the “lack of progress” for a project. This lack is mainly down to checking that what’s been input isn’t going to do anything nasty.
Back to job titles. If you have more than 2 words in your title, then it’s just a job not a career. It’s the same as having the word junior there. Manager is another one of those superfluous words that can be erased from a card and it will still mean the same thing. Senior is exactly the same. Meaningless!
If you’re in America, I’m sure it’s the same for Vice-President, VP, as there seems to be 100s of them. Every American company I have had meetings with seem to be with a VP of something or other. There are exceptions to this rule, PR people don’t tend to have such grandiose titles. Isn’t that just the same as the UK’s Manager?
