Network Administrator I- Discussion
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As far as I know, the most typical use of office manager today is for a "pool" person, not a dedicated secretary. Very traditionally, the secretaries were assigned to someone, they controlled their lives (the secretaries controlled the boss' life.) But the "typing pool" was the "get coffee and type this up for me" types. And that's what, from what I have seen, has evolved into what is typically called an office manager. A shared person that everyone in an office uses for whatever tasks they need assistance with. Closer to receptionist than to what a secretary should be.
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OK that makes since.. but then I'd say the title secretary has been almost completely replaced with executive assistant.
While I don't read job search sites or want ads, what I am exposed to, I rarely see anyone looking for a secretary anymore.
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@Dashrender said:
OK that makes since.. but then I'd say the title secretary has been almost completely replaced with executive assistant.
In the case of EXECUTIVE assistant, I'll agree. But the more general personal assistant title often doesn't imply that they are very personal. At least that I have seen.
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I'll agree that an 'assistant' is the same as what you know as the office manager. Though I can't say I've ever seen anyone with that title, office manager, personally.
For example, there is a woman who 'runs' the teachers desk area where my wife teaches. She makes the copies, types the papers, answers the phone for the whole group, though you would never catch her dead getting coffee for someone, that's beneath her. I guess I would call her the office assistant.. I'll ask my wife if she knows her actual title.
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@Dashrender said:
I'll agree that an 'assistant' is the same as what you know as the office manager. Though I can't say I've ever seen anyone with that title, office manager, personally.
For example, there is a woman who 'runs' the teachers desk area where my wife teaches. She makes the copies, types the papers, answers the phone for the whole group, though you would never catch her dead getting coffee for someone, that's beneath her. I guess I would call her the office assistant.. I'll ask my wife if she knows her actual title.
That's one of the things that sucks, titles used to be more clear. Now in an attempt to rebrand jobs that the people doing were embarrassed by they start calling them all kinds of silly things. Soon fast food workers will demand to be called culinary engineers and customer service culinary liaison.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I'll agree that an 'assistant' is the same as what you know as the office manager. Though I can't say I've ever seen anyone with that title, office manager, personally.
For example, there is a woman who 'runs' the teachers desk area where my wife teaches. She makes the copies, types the papers, answers the phone for the whole group, though you would never catch her dead getting coffee for someone, that's beneath her. I guess I would call her the office assistant.. I'll ask my wife if she knows her actual title.
That's one of the things that sucks, titles used to be more clear. Now in an attempt to rebrand jobs that the people doing were embarrassed by they start calling them all kinds of silly things. Soon fast food workers will demand to be called culinary engineers and customer service culinary liaison.
ROFLOL - nice... sadly you're probably right. Everyone is so worried about everyone getting a trophy today that we don't really live in the real world anymore.
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Government (Local & State) went from Secretary to administrative assistant and now they are calling them Administrative Executives. Because it sounds fancy, and the Execute things they are told to do by Administration.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I'll agree that an 'assistant' is the same as what you know as the office manager. Though I can't say I've ever seen anyone with that title, office manager, personally.
For example, there is a woman who 'runs' the teachers desk area where my wife teaches. She makes the copies, types the papers, answers the phone for the whole group, though you would never catch her dead getting coffee for someone, that's beneath her. I guess I would call her the office assistant.. I'll ask my wife if she knows her actual title.
That's one of the things that sucks, titles used to be more clear. Now in an attempt to rebrand jobs that the people doing were embarrassed by they start calling them all kinds of silly things. Soon fast food workers will demand to be called culinary engineers and customer service culinary liaison.
ROFLOL - nice... sadly you're probably right. Everyone is so worried about everyone getting a trophy today that we don't really live in the real world anymore.
And at least my reaction to it is just like in IT, if you do job X but have an inflated title Y I assume that you failed to be able to be paid adequately and in order to get you to be happy below the normal level you get a fake title to stroke the ego instead of money or responsibility. So my assumption is, the fancier the title the more they are making up for the position being lowly.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Government (Local & State) went from Secretary to administrative assistant and now they are calling them Administrative Executives. Because it sounds fancy, and the Execute things they are told to do by Administration.
Case in point
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a bad side effect of these BS titles, when you list them on resume's for future jobs... you might be considered over qualified for them if they don't use the same messed up titling.
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@Dashrender said:
a bad side effect of these BS titles, when you list them on resume's for future jobs... you might be considered over qualified for them if they don't use the same messed up titling.
Places that take the titles at face value, yes. And places that consider it conceited, lying or see it as covering up for the job being far more junior than you were willing to admit might write you off for the opposite reasons.
Fake titles always create risk in future hiring.
Likewise, I removed my "Director" title that I official had in 1999 - 2005. I was the senior director and had over a hundred reports including the junior directors and COO. But the company was small enough that I don't want to try to justify being called a Director, even though I was the third highest person in the company and the only person to ever fire another Director (the former Director of Ops.) With only about one hundred people under me, that was really a fake title. I took it off of my resume.
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WOW.. how many reports do you consider is needed to be considered a director?
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@Dashrender said:
WOW.. how many reports do you consider is needed to be considered a director?
That's a hundred people "under" me, not one hundred directs. I consider a director should only have managers reporting to them, not normal staff (there are special circumstances that are separate, but more or less.) At a bank, it is common for a director to have nothing reporting to them except for Executive and Senior VPs, as an example. The only time someone as low as a VP would report to a Director is if they are a specific technical adviser that is needed for some reason.
That is extreme for an SMB, but an SMB should not use titles that they aren't big enough for either. SMBs can be big enough to have directors, of course, but many SMBs aren't that big. A director should really be a director. If you have only one IT person and they are desktop support, they should not be called a director or a manager - who are they directing or managing? A director should be the head of a department or higher. There is no hard and fast rule, but if you've ever seen a director in an enterprise, it's pretty easy to tell when the title will reflect poorly when used for something other than a very senior manager of managers.
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One hundred people in a director's own department is definitely enough to be a director. I was the senior director, so was over all other directors (indirect) and all their departments too. So I could hire and fire anywhere in the org short of the president and vice president.
But I was doing engineering work. My day was not totally managing people (manager) or managing managers (director) so either of those titles would have been misleading. I had a lot of authority but my actual job role was still engineer. It's a grey area as to engineer / manager title as I was doing both in a blended role, which is common in SMBs. So a manager title would have been okay or an engineering title. But I was doing way, way more engineering than managing. So it was pretty clear what my title really should be.
That internally I was listed as a Director was fine because it was important to have me over the Director of Operations and below the VP. So it was used as a designation of authority. But for my resume, it would not be appropriate to use it there.
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hmm... I've seen Director used in exactly the opposite way that you have.
West Corp, Fortune 1000, uses directors directly over managers. i.e. employee, manager, director, VP, EVP, CEO.
I've definitely read about directors being at different levels, but have no experience with that.
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@Dashrender said:
hmm... I've seen Director used in exactly the opposite way that you have.
West Corp, Fortune 1000, uses directors directly over managers. i.e. employee, manager, director, VP, EVP, CEO.
I've definitely read about directors being at different levels, but have no experience with that.
Ah, you mean the opposite of the bank. Yes, that's totally fine and common - director is sometimes over the VP line, sometimes under it. Goes both ways. Nothing wrong there. There is no "rule" or even common thing there. But you will notice that it is over manager, that's the important part. And notice that where I was a director (right or wrong) I was over the managers (yes there were managers under me, but not enough to warrant my title) and under the VP. In banking I seem to have seem the VPs under the Directors more commonly but I know bank to bank it varies.
It's never nothing strict. But that directors manager managers is the "universal" assumption of the title (anywhere that is not using the title in an inflated way) and that they are not direct technical contributors (not desktop techs doing some management on the side.)
Pretty universally, from what I have seen, Directors are the ones over departments. The question is whether VP, AVPs, SVP, EVPs are assigned to a department (under directors) or oversee many departments (over directors.)
Also, generally a managing director is the position over a director, if that layer exists. NTG only has one "directory" but the title is never used because it would be silly. But there is someone with that "authority" level and Danielle is the MD (managing director) which is sometimes used in businesses of any size as an equivalent to president / CEO. Especially in smaller companies where a title like CEO seems silly, but isn't technically wrong. Having an MD at the top makes it seem more natural not to have a layer of VPs and Directors running around everywhere
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I am going to delete this post in a few hours. It got way off topic and has de-valued the original post.
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@IRJ said:
I am going to delete this post in a few hours. It got way off topic and has de-valued the original post.
But it is full of valuable discussion. Why is being "off topic" a bad thing? And it really isn't off topic, it's a natural progression of discussion. I don't see how it is off topic nor bad.
And really, any job posting should expect a bit of discussion. In sites like Monster or Newspaper ads only avoid discussion by not allowing it. But these are the thoughts that people have around postings. This should be super valuable feedback to HR and the managers who wrote this up so that they can understand what their descriptions, titles, decisions, etc. mean to the people that they want to hire and how their job listings represent them to the outside world.
In fact, I'd argue that aside from finding employees, this is the best value and completely on topic. This is needed education and insight for the people who write job descriptions.
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Maybe it as increased the value of the original post. Tons of thought has gone into feedback. Did as much thought go into the writing of the job description? One hopes that companies take the acquisition of their staff to be a very important function. At least one being hired by those companies.
I can't imagine what kind of posting would be better or more on topic, really.
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As much as I often don't see eye-to-eye with Scott on many issues (but certainly not all of the time!), I think this discussion was quite useful. It may not have been very flattering to the original post, but it did beg some questions to be asked. And I think the real issue is the lack of, well, honesty and consideration that goes into many job titles, when the actual job is described. Not a personal issue, but an industry-wide deficiency.
