Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.
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@murpheous said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
My current title is IT Manager. Currently, the only thing I am managing is the infrastructure and all it entails.
LOL - When I started here, I called myself simply IT, then I changed it to IT Director, and now I'm the IT Admin.
IT Generalist would also be acceptable, as Scott has said, almost no one would know what that means. But calling myself IT Admin - almost everyone assumes pretty close to accurately what I do.
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@JaredBusch said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Pete-S said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
There is no question that job titles matter, but why do we even have them? Having bad titles makes us confused and unproductive. Having good ones doesn't help very much because few people understand them. In IT especially, even the department of IT, let alone jobs within it, have titles that mean nothing and often less than nothing to outsiders and even many insiders.
At Tesla, Elon Musk recently did away with his titles because they are useless. And Quartz suggests that job titles actively get in the way of knowledge workers getting things done.
Tesla’s Elon Musk is raising an important question about job titles
We discuss job titles here a lot, and we know that it is important not to have a bad one. But what if you didn't have one, at all? We know why getting it wrong causes problems, lots of them. But it seems like getting it right only prevents the problems caused by getting it wrong. Does having a good one provide any benefits over having none at all?
I struggle with this myself and my title has often been "Technical Lead" or "Technical Fellow", which is descriptive in executive or academic circles, but to most people means essentially nothing. They aren't even sure if I'm a tech. Or a manager. It's not clear to the general public. And maybe it shouldn't be.
When making business cards, we've talked about leaving titles off completely. Job titles tend to pigeon hole us, and add complexity that need not exist. Few people, in any field or company of any size, really do a single job that can be easily summed up in a job title. Even when I worked in fast food, hotels, or grocery businesses, my work was too broad for a single title to clarify. In business and IT, everyone seems to wear so many hats.
What if... we just didn't use titles anymore? What are they even for, anyway?
"Project Manager" for all does make sense though. That's a good point in the article.
I read it, but didn't find any reason for why they chose such a meaningless term. In fact, reading the article, it describes why people shouldn't have that title. Because nearly everyone works on projects and makes decisions - two things that project managers don't do. PMs aren't the decision makers, and aren't generally on "a project." They manage the project process itself, they are the one job that doesn't do the things that the article talks about.
So from the description, everyone should be "on a project" - instead of being a project manager. It sounds like some academic who didn't know what a PM was read that and then applied the story to a title that doesn't match what was being discussed.
There are heavy inflation in titles but Project Manager is pretty clear cut to me. It means you have a budget that you are responsible for, it means you have resources, it means you are responsible for the outcome and it means you are the decision maker for matters that are within the project mandate. The project manager should be the CEO of the project. So most people working on projects are not project managers. And some project managers are just project administrators, not managers.
PMs also needs domain knowledge. A lot if they are going to be successful.
That's not what PM means in PM circles. The PM field, the one in which you can get a degree or certification, are not decision makers. They are the lowest people on the project totem pole. They aren't the people who know what is going on, they aren't the ones with domain knowledge. They are the ones managing the process of the project. They don't manage the people, nor the decisions, nor really normally understand the pieces.
PM is a very specific title with very specific training and certifications. And a PMO is basically the opposite of what you are describing. They are important, but mostly for providing a standardized reporting mechanism to a business and doing loads of paperwork and interfacing with other projects to coordinate.
Look at a software project. The PM would be in charge of ensuring that everyone outside the project knows the status. Of running meetings. Of tracking process. Of ensuring standardization. Of fighting for resources, etc.
But the dev lead and the design lead are the ones who actually know what is going on and run the actual work that produces the end result. A PM is only useful when your business is so large that you need someone to manage the "politics" of it. In a truly healthy organization, a PM is practically useless. In the real world, they are super important. But if you have a good team in a normal business, the PM is a function for the "business people" and of little value to actually producing anything.
The actual definition of "Project Manager" is:
That's totally what most of us here do every day.
In IT, because there are generally few of us int he SMB.
Part of this is that we have to not look at titles, but look at the time spent. In the SMB, yeah, we all end up covering all the bases, even things really far outside of IT (like plugging in the microwave.) In that case, it's how many hours of PM work is done a year. The amount should be minuscule. If it's more than a few hours, maybe a day or two tops a year, you have to ask yourself "how do I need so much management with only myself to manage? What's wrong with what I am doing?"
In a one person organization, there is nothing to manage at all. PM work should be seconds. There is no reporting, no resources to manage, no people to oversee, no coordination to do.
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@JaredBusch said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Pete-S said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
There is no question that job titles matter, but why do we even have them? Having bad titles makes us confused and unproductive. Having good ones doesn't help very much because few people understand them. In IT especially, even the department of IT, let alone jobs within it, have titles that mean nothing and often less than nothing to outsiders and even many insiders.
At Tesla, Elon Musk recently did away with his titles because they are useless. And Quartz suggests that job titles actively get in the way of knowledge workers getting things done.
Tesla’s Elon Musk is raising an important question about job titles
We discuss job titles here a lot, and we know that it is important not to have a bad one. But what if you didn't have one, at all? We know why getting it wrong causes problems, lots of them. But it seems like getting it right only prevents the problems caused by getting it wrong. Does having a good one provide any benefits over having none at all?
I struggle with this myself and my title has often been "Technical Lead" or "Technical Fellow", which is descriptive in executive or academic circles, but to most people means essentially nothing. They aren't even sure if I'm a tech. Or a manager. It's not clear to the general public. And maybe it shouldn't be.
When making business cards, we've talked about leaving titles off completely. Job titles tend to pigeon hole us, and add complexity that need not exist. Few people, in any field or company of any size, really do a single job that can be easily summed up in a job title. Even when I worked in fast food, hotels, or grocery businesses, my work was too broad for a single title to clarify. In business and IT, everyone seems to wear so many hats.
What if... we just didn't use titles anymore? What are they even for, anyway?
"Project Manager" for all does make sense though. That's a good point in the article.
I read it, but didn't find any reason for why they chose such a meaningless term. In fact, reading the article, it describes why people shouldn't have that title. Because nearly everyone works on projects and makes decisions - two things that project managers don't do. PMs aren't the decision makers, and aren't generally on "a project." They manage the project process itself, they are the one job that doesn't do the things that the article talks about.
So from the description, everyone should be "on a project" - instead of being a project manager. It sounds like some academic who didn't know what a PM was read that and then applied the story to a title that doesn't match what was being discussed.
There are heavy inflation in titles but Project Manager is pretty clear cut to me. It means you have a budget that you are responsible for, it means you have resources, it means you are responsible for the outcome and it means you are the decision maker for matters that are within the project mandate. The project manager should be the CEO of the project. So most people working on projects are not project managers. And some project managers are just project administrators, not managers.
PMs also needs domain knowledge. A lot if they are going to be successful.
That's not what PM means in PM circles. The PM field, the one in which you can get a degree or certification, are not decision makers. They are the lowest people on the project totem pole. They aren't the people who know what is going on, they aren't the ones with domain knowledge. They are the ones managing the process of the project. They don't manage the people, nor the decisions, nor really normally understand the pieces.
PM is a very specific title with very specific training and certifications. And a PMO is basically the opposite of what you are describing. They are important, but mostly for providing a standardized reporting mechanism to a business and doing loads of paperwork and interfacing with other projects to coordinate.
Look at a software project. The PM would be in charge of ensuring that everyone outside the project knows the status. Of running meetings. Of tracking process. Of ensuring standardization. Of fighting for resources, etc.
But the dev lead and the design lead are the ones who actually know what is going on and run the actual work that produces the end result. A PM is only useful when your business is so large that you need someone to manage the "politics" of it. In a truly healthy organization, a PM is practically useless. In the real world, they are super important. But if you have a good team in a normal business, the PM is a function for the "business people" and of little value to actually producing anything.
The actual definition of "Project Manager" is:
That's totally what most of us here do every day.
In IT, because there are generally few of us int he SMB.
But, outside IT and even in IT in Enterprise, there are plenty of project workers, not project managers.
So you don't fully manage IT projects from start to finish according to that definition? I do that every day. Full planning and execution of IT related projects...
Example, business has a need to achieve a particular goal. I will plan and execute the entire thing from start to finish. The only thing that does not fully involve me is getting budget approvals from the Execs, and it's a collaboration of the "when" between myself, Execs, and my boss.
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But anyways, I am not saying I want or should have a project manager title. So I'm not arguing for it. Just trying to understand the article, but is starting to look like Scott described a bit above.
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@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
So you don't fully manage IT projects from start to finish according to that definition? I do that every day. Full planning and execution of IT related projects...
Planning and execution of the PROJECT, not the actual doing of it. No, none of us do that. It's rare, and unneeded. You are confusing the idea of doing the work, versus being a manager of the project process.
Example... building a new server.
The PM work of managing the project is like 60 seconds of work. The tech labour might be a day or two.
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There are two pieces with the PM thing...
- We don't do that many projects unless you are considering things like "resetting a password" to be a tiny little project.
- We don't spend any significant time managing the project versus doing the work of the project.
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I never understood why some have the engineer title. I guess times have changed but that used to mean one very specific thing and it had nothing to do with computers. Now programmers, network people, and just plain managers will have that title. It doesn't make any sense to me especially being so broad now.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
Planning and execution of the PROJECT, not the actual doing of it.
Ah, there it is. That's where the disconnect was. That's totally correct and I completely overlooked that.
So yeah, wtf is that person talking about then?
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@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
Planning and execution of the PROJECT, not the actual doing of it.
Ah, there it is. That's where the disconnect was. That's totally correct and I completely overlooked that.
So yeah, wtf is that person talking about then?
LOL, yeah.
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@jmoore said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
I never understood why some have the engineer title. I guess times have changed but that used to mean one very specific thing and it had nothing to do with computers.
And that one specific thing is what? I bet you can't get people to agree - there was never just a single kind of engineer.
As someone with a traditional engineering background, I can tell you that it was never just one thing or very clear.
And while it predated computers (by millennia), it also predated arches, screws, and other basics that almost every traditional engineer uses today. Engineers work with and on what exists at the time, so even engineering in the classical sense would mean computers too if applied today. The term hasn't changed, the tools of the trade have.
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a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering is the bit that applies to what we are discussing.
Software and systems are two branches of engineering. Along with things like civil, chemical, ceramic, mechanical, electrical, computer, manufacturing, manufacturing systems, industrial, petroleum, and so forth.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering is the bit that applies to what we are discussing.
Software and systems are two branches of engineering. Along with things like civil, chemical, ceramic, mechanical, electrical, computer, manufacturing, manufacturing systems, industrial, petroleum, and so forth.
We're all engineers while we drive a car, technically, according to #4.
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@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
We're all engineers while we drive a car, technically, according to #4.
That's correct. But not the same kind of engineer
That's engineer like we say "train engineer".
In Spanish it is "conductor". Which we also use for trains. But can be applied to cars or BigWheels or whatever.
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@JaredBusch said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
BigWheels or whatever.
Child engineer.
Junior Engineer. -
@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@JaredBusch said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
BigWheels or whatever.
Child engineer.
Be PC dude, they are called Juniors.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@Obsolesce said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@JaredBusch said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:
BigWheels or whatever.
Child engineer.
Be PC dude, they are called Juniors.
Fixed.
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And for the interns...
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I'm actually dealing with this right now. I was asked by my boss to come up with a better job title for myself since I am basically a system administrator, network administrator, server administrator, IT manager, among other things.
I think job titles are a good thing simply as a starting point descriptor of what a person's job role is. It shouldn't determine pay as much as all the line items that are listed in your actual job description. Of course, there are issues with a job title if you are someone with a ton of roles -- things that would be multiple roles at a bigger company, for example.
That said, I've landed on IT Administrator since it seems to encompass everything and sounds better than "IT Generalist".
