-----Original Message----- From: Jimi Thompson [mailto:jimi.thomp...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 9:20 AM To: Jorge Amodio; Jeroen van Aart Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Finding content in your job title
On 3/31/10 8:14 PM, "Jorge Amodio" <jmamo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I agree with the misuse of the term "Engineer" in IT. I think it >> should only be used for the "official" protected title of civil >> engineer. Which I believe is a very respectable job. Sad but true, in >> IT too many people have some form of engineer in their job title but are >> almost totally clueless. > > [ X-Operational_Content = 0 ] > > Can't resist. > > When I read your message it brought back to my memory a nice guy that > used to work for me eons ago, very clever, smart and hands-on, he had > a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. > > One day, we had some sort of outage and I found him in the "computer > room" sitting in front of one of the racks with some routing gear, I > still have that image in my memory he looked like he was doing some > sort of group therapy with the routers, I couldn't resist and told him > "Hey Joey, Freud won't help you, get your butt off of the chair and > follow the default procedure, power cycle the damn beast". > > There were also several folks with various degrees in Physics, experts > on blowing up stuff. > > Again, IMHO, in this field a title may help or may provide others a > relative idea where you fit in a large organization, or help the HR > folks know how much to put on your paycheck or what kind of > benefits/perks go associated with that level, but I still believe that > substance is more important. > > Regards > Jorge > COOK > Chief Old Operations Knucklehead > >HAH! My self chosen job title is Chief Pest, Annoyer of Developers, and >Destroyer of Misconceptions. All in all, it's fairly accurate. Among other >things I manage a team of developers, I often have to disabuse management of >some silly idea or other, and > frequently have to play gladfly to enable >change. When I call a company and ask for an accountant, I get the companies accountant, when I ask for an account manager, that's what I get. That's what titles are, and that's why they are important. I know the type of person I need to talk to, but I don't know who it is I need to talk to. Its why standardization in titles is good, when I go digging through my pile of business cards looking for the Network Engineer/Architect at company X, I'll probably not notice a custom/weird title. It does not define you, it does not make you any less or more important, it does however answer the question of "Who is responsible for..." which I believe to be extremely valuable. Then again, I might be weird. ~J
