Re:Don't be a Coder, Engineer, or Developer ...
by makecheck on Monday October 05, 2009 @07:11PM
(#863050)
If I can see what a person is doing, I don't necessarily care what they call themselves.
However, in my experience, once a person has chosen to accept an overly-important title, their value to the organization is severely diminished.
What seems to happen is that people are first promoted to practical positions, like Manager. But after awhile, upper management figures out that they have too many managers. There's some unwritten rule that seems to prevent the layoff of managers. So they hold onto the over-promoted people; but out of some need to avoid bruising egos, they never suggest demoting them to where they would be the most useful. Instead, the managers are "reassigned", and a fancy new title is born.
But I've seen firsthand the big problem with this. After awhile, there are plenty of projects that require Just Programmers, and they are understaffed. You often have 3 or 4 figureheads (er excuse me, Chief Worldwide Technology Strategist Architect Artisan Leads), who you know possess the knowledge to help you, if they would only accept being Just Programmers. But they won't, because their job is some pointless paper-shuffling thing that keeps them far away from code.
If any of you is ever in a position where your title seems to be the most important part of your job, please do your organization a favor and either accept demotion gracefully or quit.
However, in my experience, once a person has chosen to accept an overly-important title, their value to the organization is severely diminished.
What seems to happen is that people are first promoted to practical positions, like Manager. But after awhile, upper management figures out that they have too many managers. There's some unwritten rule that seems to prevent the layoff of managers. So they hold onto the over-promoted people; but out of some need to avoid bruising egos, they never suggest demoting them to where they would be the most useful. Instead, the managers are "reassigned", and a fancy new title is born.
But I've seen firsthand the big problem with this. After awhile, there are plenty of projects that require Just Programmers, and they are understaffed. You often have 3 or 4 figureheads (er excuse me, Chief Worldwide Technology Strategist Architect Artisan Leads), who you know possess the knowledge to help you, if they would only accept being Just Programmers. But they won't, because their job is some pointless paper-shuffling thing that keeps them far away from code.
If any of you is ever in a position where your title seems to be the most important part of your job, please do your organization a favor and either accept demotion gracefully or quit.