4 ms·

> It's hard to gauge experience I think this could be solved by coming up with a more common vocabulary of tech job titles. In medicine you have technicians,

> It's hard to gauge experience I think this could be solved by coming up with a more common vocabulary of tech job titles. In medicine you have technicians, orderlies, surgeons, general practitioners, anesthesiologists, physician-scientists, nurses, physicians' assistants, teaching physicians, and so on. Not to mention all the hospital administrators. They're not all "medical engineers". They don't (at least not to the same degree) require a combination of CV parsing and oral exams to figure out what their experience actually entailed. There's some movement to create separate career paths for DBAs, SREs, etc, though the day-to-day responsibilities there vary quite a bit. I'd like to see specificity in job titles going forward. Someone who assists designers in creating brochure websites probably needs a different job title than someone designing lockless data structures from scratch. And someone who evaluates different production databases and picks the one to ship to production servers probably needs a different job title.

philipov 9y ago
I was top of my class at the seminary, and I just don't understand why I never hear back from these jobs seeking a technology evangelist!
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Good example! More of this, basically.
- itronitron 9y ago
  someone who excelled at their seminary would probably excel as a technology evangelist as well
wpietri 9y ago
Stability in titles requires stability in human labor. But our whole job is automation, meaning turning stable labor over to machines. So much of our work is defined by our current perspectives, our current constructed tools; those naturally change too. I think it will be quite a while before things in our field settle down, if they ever do. My dad made software for decades until he retired. My brother and I have been working in tech now for decades ourselves. The taxonomy of job titles keeps changing. If tech people had allowed ourselves to be pigeonholed by some older taxonomy, then a) we'd mostly be unemployed, and b) there wouldn't be many people around to do the new class of jobs. So at least for the rest of my career, I expect hiring will be not about getting an off-the-rack person who fills a highly specific title, but by finding somebody whose past experience is a good match for the current challenges.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I agree with all that. I think it's already happening, too. You can be a "test engineer" or work in "quality assurance" and get pigeonholed easily. But one person's pigeonhole is another person's dream 9-5 job. I don't see a harm in labelling the expectations that are already there. I think there's wisdom in waiting for established roles before defining them. "Container engineer" is too specific or at least too early. But "Relational database administrator" (or something) has been around for decades and will be around for some time to come. Maybe the DB vendors and tools will change, but experience in data migrations and transactional thinking is valuable regardless.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    If something seems stable enough to try to make a career around, sure, nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying there's very little for which that is true. 40 years ago was 1977. You can find the help wanted ads here: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/10/23/issue.html https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/10/23/iss... (p 370-395 or so) The ads I can find there include Computer Console Operator ("must be able to operate 370/145 and 370/418 under DOS/VS with power"), Network Control Analyst ("3 yrs exp troubleshooting lines, modems, and multiplexors"), Keypunch Operator. Programmer and Programmer Analyst positions requiring COBOL, RPG II, Fortran IV, and a lot of assembler. And IBM was its own job category. And relational DBA is a great example. That used to be a serious job, one with prestige and promise. People were even specific about vendors; one was an Oracle DBA or a Sybase DBA. But now that's in decline. These days programmers are supposed to understand data migrations and transactional thinking. The notion of submitting requests to the DBA department worked in the days of 6-18 month release cycles, but not today. Relational databases themselves are commoditized, going from a central technology to a peripheral one. Does Google even have a relational database running anywhere these days? Basically the only job title that has lasted is programmer, and even that has changed almost beyond recognition. Maybe we've now plateaued, and jobs will be stable for the next 40 years. But I doubt it. "Virtual server" is a phrase like "radio with pictures" or "horseless carriage". Its a sign that we know things are changing, but we don't know where they're going yet.
tyingq 9y ago
>I think this could be solved by coming up with a more common vocabulary of tech job titles. That's a good point. I think that mismatches in salary expectation are often driven by this. I can find jobs that feel very similar, but ask for "Senior Developer", "Software Engineer II", "Lead Software Engineer", "Tech Lead", "Software Architect", "Programmer Analyst". Then, the varied use of "Junior, Senior" vs "I, II, III", etc.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  that seems to be just noise, all the jobs are 'devops - work on what we think we need today'
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    I regret I only have one upvote for this.

philipov 9y ago

I was top of my class at the seminary, and I just don't understand why I never hear back from these jobs seeking a technology evangelist!

humanrebar 9y ago
Good example! More of this, basically.
itronitron 9y ago
someone who excelled at their seminary would probably excel as a technology evangelist as well

wpietri 9y ago

Stability in titles requires stability in human labor. But our whole job is automation, meaning turning stable labor over to machines. So much of our work is defined by our current perspectives, our current constructed tools; those naturally change too. I think it will be quite a while before things in our field settle down, if they ever do. My dad made software for decades until he retired. My brother and I have been working in tech now for decades ourselves. The taxonomy of job titles keeps changing. If tech people had allowed ourselves to be pigeonholed by some older taxonomy, then a) we'd mostly be unemployed, and b) there wouldn't be many people around to do the new class of jobs. So at least for the rest of my career, I expect hiring will be not about getting an off-the-rack person who fills a highly specific title, but by finding somebody whose past experience is a good match for the current challenges.

humanrebar 9y ago
I agree with all that. I think it's already happening, too. You can be a "test engineer" or work in "quality assurance" and get pigeonholed easily. But one person's pigeonhole is another person's dream 9-5 job. I don't see a harm in labelling the expectations that are already there. I think there's wisdom in waiting for established roles before defining them. "Container engineer" is too specific or at least too early. But "Relational database administrator" (or something) has been around for decades and will be around for some time to come. Maybe the DB vendors and tools will change, but experience in data migrations and transactional thinking is valuable regardless.
- wpietri 9y ago
  If something seems stable enough to try to make a career around, sure, nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying there's very little for which that is true. 40 years ago was 1977. You can find the help wanted ads here: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/10/23/issue.html https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/10/23/iss... (p 370-395 or so) The ads I can find there include Computer Console Operator ("must be able to operate 370/145 and 370/418 under DOS/VS with power"), Network Control Analyst ("3 yrs exp troubleshooting lines, modems, and multiplexors"), Keypunch Operator. Programmer and Programmer Analyst positions requiring COBOL, RPG II, Fortran IV, and a lot of assembler. And IBM was its own job category. And relational DBA is a great example. That used to be a serious job, one with prestige and promise. People were even specific about vendors; one was an Oracle DBA or a Sybase DBA. But now that's in decline. These days programmers are supposed to understand data migrations and transactional thinking. The notion of submitting requests to the DBA department worked in the days of 6-18 month release cycles, but not today. Relational databases themselves are commoditized, going from a central technology to a peripheral one. Does Google even have a relational database running anywhere these days? Basically the only job title that has lasted is programmer, and even that has changed almost beyond recognition. Maybe we've now plateaued, and jobs will be stable for the next 40 years. But I doubt it. "Virtual server" is a phrase like "radio with pictures" or "horseless carriage". Its a sign that we know things are changing, but we don't know where they're going yet.

tyingq 9y ago

>I think this could be solved by coming up with a more common vocabulary of tech job titles. That's a good point. I think that mismatches in salary expectation are often driven by this. I can find jobs that feel very similar, but ask for "Senior Developer", "Software Engineer II", "Lead Software Engineer", "Tech Lead", "Software Architect", "Programmer Analyst". Then, the varied use of "Junior, Senior" vs "I, II, III", etc.

convolvatron 9y ago
that seems to be just noise, all the jobs are 'devops - work on what we think we need today'
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I regret I only have one upvote for this.