To think job titles have become very complicated

[user1485342611]

I was watching an old episode of a quiz from the 1980s and when the contestants were asked what they did for a living I understood immediately what their jobs were: an electrician, a librarian, a nurse and an chef.

Nowadays, on programmes like Location or Eggheads I haven't a clue half the time what the participants do: 'A customer service analyst', 'a retail designer', 'a systems co-ordinator'.

Nope. No idea. What do you actually do?

AIBU to wish we could do away with these silly job titles?

I'm a bit on the fence about the job hunting thing - on one hand yep no harm in requiring a bit of effort from candidates but on the other hand faced with 100's of job ads that you don't know what most of them mean how do you even narrow down which are worth looking into? I don't know what that is so I probably can't do it used to work as a strategy as it meant technical language in a title directly related to the field e.g. medical terms in nurse or doctor recruitment and you know if you are a nurse or not then within that know what your specialist field is. Now there is a sea of wooly job titles across unstated industries and its hard to know where to start. Does an insert a few random words here manager require actual managerial experience? Are they managing people? Managing projects? Or being given a pompous title when they don't manage anything?

"Surely they can't be that serious about the job if they can't Google it." how do you know if you are serious about a job or not if you have absolutely no idea what it entails? Is it admin based, IT based, medical, scientific? A junior, entry level role or a very senior one? Often its almost impossible to tell!

how do you know if you are serious about a job or not if you have absolutely no idea what it entails? Is it admin based, IT based, medical, scientific? A junior, entry level role or a very senior one? Often its almost impossible to tell!

There's usually a description, isn't there? Often requirements are stated.

As bananafish was saying, inside a sector you're more likely to understand what it means than outside. And like I said, if you're just watching people on Pointless you can't expect to know what their jobs mean

I think if I was intrigued by the job description or liked the look of the company etc. I'd be willing to Google it at the very least. That should give you enough information to know if it's worth taking further.

Banana
I' m intrigued about a scrum master now - I still don't know what they do.
You say they are delivery manager (that could be the job title surely?) but they don't lead/manage a team and don't project manage as the teams do that themselves. They are trained in scrum.

But what do they actually do? Once they got to the office and turned on the computer what would they physically do?

You seem to do all aspects of marketing both on and offline and web dev which still slots into marketing. I think looking at your scope you’re probably the only person in the marketing department, so I would go with (drum roll) Marketing Director.

Interesting - I might add that to my job title. I still need something that also describes the graphic design and product design bit though. Right now I think it says something like Online Design and Marketing Specialist but that totally overlooks the fact that I also do print and product design. But maybe that doesn't matter...

But what do they actually do? Once they got to the office and turned on the computer what would they physically do?

whatis.techtarget.com/definition/scrum-master

My DP had a job sorting and delivering post for a company. So he was basically the company's postman.

His title was "Communications Operative". He got promoted to run the post room and his title changed to "Director of Communications Operations"

Banana
I' m intrigued about a scrum master now - I still don't know what they do.
You say they are delivery manager (that could be the job title surely?) but they don't lead/manage a team and don't project manage as the teams do that themselves. They are trained in scrum.

But what do they actually do? Once they got to the office and turned on the computer what would they physically do?

Run stand ups
Run sprint planning and retrospective sessions
Work with the product owner to prioritise and groom the product backlog of user stories
Work with different people within the business to understand their requirements to shield the delivery team and let them get on with doing their work
Track sprint velocity and burn down
Make work visible to the rest of the business

Here's some example weekly calendars for a scrum master

agilevelocity.com/scrummaster/what-does-a-scrummaster-do-anyway/

Thanks banana
Sounds like a project manager to me - with new jargon.

Semster - thanks
Half way through the jargon filled video. Thinking the job is project manager/facilitator.

Half way through the jargon filled video. Thinking the job is project manager/facilitator.

You can't really call it jargon because it isn't understandable to you or someone with little knowledge of the field ...

It really doesn't sound like a project manager.

It's different to a project manager

But it's technical specifics of working agile, which is a completely different way of working.

So yeah to someone who is outside the industry, call it a project manager for simplicity

But to call it that on a job description would be ridiculous as it would get the wrong candidates and wouldn't say what the actual job was. You'd waste your time opening LinkedIn specs to find the ads were for a completely different kind of job than the one you thought it was

Job roles don't need to make sense to people outside the industry - they just need to make sense to the people who actually work in and with organisations in the sectors where it's relevant!

www.codeenigma.com/community/blog/scrum-master-not-project-manager

Well yes it is jargon when it's the specifics of the job? Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's irrelevant

Dictionary definition of jargon: special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

I don't understand chemical engineering or artificial intelligence but their terminology is relevant to them and not to me. It's relevant jargon to their industry.

special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

I think she meant "jargon" more in a disdainful way. Otherwise she'd literally just be saying "yeah, I have no idea what this job entails", rendering her point kind of baseless.

Zofanjo

^

Well said.

The local council seem to be the worst locally for convoluted job specs,I always assume it's to deter anyone from outside the council who would have a hard time discerning what the hell the job actually involved,from applying as the job has been earmarked for someone already.The rule of thumb seems to be the more grandiose the job title ,the less you have to pay . And obviously for any job application you have to state how passionate you are about the job,how excited you are ,how you are looking forward to developing a career in whatever the job is -crap ,you just want a job what a pity you're not allowed to just come right out and say it !

Banana & Roses
I class terms such as daily scrum, sprints, pigs, chickens and roosters as jargon. Daily scrums were called huddles when our office started using Lean.
Anyway, I'm thinking of a project manager say in the building industry - they are the facilitator between the different trades etc. Keeps an eye on the budget, deals with conflicts between the, say, architects and engineers, produces the progress reports. It sounds similar to a scrum master.
I will keep reading the info people have posted.

As someone once said “The longer the job title, the more menial the actual role.”

What irks me most is that hardly anyone is self employed anymore - they're an "entrepreneur."

Zofanjo I’m not having a go, but it is ‘Associate’ rather than ‘Accociate’. Good luck in your job though, you seem to be doing really well. As is sometimes the case with the written word, I feel that I need to clarify that this is NOT sarcasm. It’s genuine.

I work as a barista. I can't tell you how many people (all over 60) have told me that job role didn't exist when they were growing up. They're always the same people who complain about lattes, americanos etc and the fact there's no such thing as "just coffee" anymore.

To be fair I can never understand why they go into a coffee shop in the first place if they're just going to whinge about the menu.

I used to be a nursery nurse. Now I’m an early years practitioner 😂

I class terms such as daily scrum, sprints, pigs, chickens and roosters as jargon. Daily scrums were called huddles when our office started using Lean.

But working lean isn't the same as scrum. Having a daily huddle is just that. It's a team catchup.

Scrum is a specific setup of a product delivery team to build and ship digital product. It's about making code. You can call a sprint hens and chickens, but JIRA and other standard development tools are all based around time boxed periods that everyone else calls sprints. And your development partners will work in sprints.

If you don't know what a scrum master is, then it sounds like you don't work in digital product and software development. So you wouldn't be working scrum, and wouldn't have a daily scrum. I'm not sure why you're so keen to dismiss a very well established set of working practices for an industry that it seems you don't work in?

You don't need to understand these terms if you don't work in digital product development. I don't understand the terms in most professions. But I don't need to. But just because you don't know what the job is doesn't mean they should change the job title!

There always has been industry specific jargon and I'm sure there always will be (and yep scrums belong in rugby as far as I'm concerned) the simple "if you don't understand it you can't do it" rule would apply. The problem is with jargon filled waffley job titles that aren't industry related but are used to deliberately obscure what could be perfectly clearly titled. I've had half a dozen permanent jobs in my life they have all been in wildly different industries but my job title has been broadly the same throughout. If you were a new graduate without an industry how to you quickly and easily identify the jobs it is worth applying for when some job titles are full of false jargon?
As a new graduate I arrived for an interview for what had sounded like graduate level office job but turned out to be walking the streets banging on doors trying to flog restaurant discount cards - not only that but there wasn't even an interview they expected me to hit the streets. I told them where they could stick that. It would have saved my time and theirs if the job title and description had made that clear.

Banana - no I don't work in software development.
I'm not dismissing anything - I'm trying to understand what the job is.
I've learnt what agile is now after reading the links so that's been worthwhile - I've seen that mentioned in a few job profiles.

@Floral

You say they are delivery manager (that could be the job title surely?

No, because that is a job of its own. I work in IT Delivery, but am not, and could not be a scrum master as I wouldn’t have a clue! They are distinctly different things, and certainly not traditional Project Managers.

We follow an agile delivery model, but we’re not a dev team so we don’t work in sprints, and don’t have scrum masters.