Fuck, yes to Calm! And the only time I cared about titles is when I was working with another company and they wanted to talk to “a peer”. During the dot com boom, I saw so many people promoted to directors and C-level who had no experience other than being college buddies with the “entrepreneur” whose trust fund backed the venture. They all kept floating up.
There's a very real "title trap" in corporate worlds where people are given titles as much for external appearances as actual seniority or expertise (why I mentioned banks and agencies, two of the biggest offenders). I mean...you'll more likely give your money to a banker if he's a VP right? Or take the recommendation of your marketing agency if you're talking to the SVP of Strategy even if they're less than five years out of school. It's part of what has totally taken the teeth and impact out of titles; you can't discern the ones that are manufactured and inflated from those that are earned through experience, so it devalues the entire construct.
Then you have companies like mine where a Director title is *huge* and hard to get but externally because of all that bullshit, it doesn't look as conventionally impressive on paper. Or you have ICs like me with 23 years of experience but no fancy title to show for it so people underestimate me ALL the time. The whole thing is a racket and it drives me nuts.
So true. I’d rather have a weird title or a banal one to sidestep the whole thing. My company is doing a salary analysis (to see about staying competitive and retaining talent) and titles are one factor their looking at because that’s what the data relates to. I think that’s a contributor to the problem.
Right. Because it's the only consistent (cough) proxy we have for defining and measuring that easily. Not pretending I have easier answers for what to do instead since so much of what I'd want is qualitative vs. quantitative and that shit is hard. But...sigh.
All my really impressive titles came because of some other fucker's bullshit. I earned my title as creative director and loved what I did. But then some fucker in the Houston office started calling himself a creative director, so they made me Executive Creative Director to keep me one up on him. Then, years later when the agency wasn't doing real well, they brought in some hotshot Chief Creative Officer fucker from BigAss Agency to help us build up the business. So, to make me feel better they made me SVP (I was already a VP) of Digital Communications. Turns out the CCO fucker mostly just got drunk and slept in his office. So, when I left and another agency brought me in to help with their clients, they wanted to know what title I should have. I told them I didn't care and we ended up calling me a Strategic Messaging Manager, which I think was made up but hey, fuck yeah, that's what I do.
Fuck, yes to Calm! And the only time I cared about titles is when I was working with another company and they wanted to talk to “a peer”. During the dot com boom, I saw so many people promoted to directors and C-level who had no experience other than being college buddies with the “entrepreneur” whose trust fund backed the venture. They all kept floating up.
There's a very real "title trap" in corporate worlds where people are given titles as much for external appearances as actual seniority or expertise (why I mentioned banks and agencies, two of the biggest offenders). I mean...you'll more likely give your money to a banker if he's a VP right? Or take the recommendation of your marketing agency if you're talking to the SVP of Strategy even if they're less than five years out of school. It's part of what has totally taken the teeth and impact out of titles; you can't discern the ones that are manufactured and inflated from those that are earned through experience, so it devalues the entire construct.
Then you have companies like mine where a Director title is *huge* and hard to get but externally because of all that bullshit, it doesn't look as conventionally impressive on paper. Or you have ICs like me with 23 years of experience but no fancy title to show for it so people underestimate me ALL the time. The whole thing is a racket and it drives me nuts.
So true. I’d rather have a weird title or a banal one to sidestep the whole thing. My company is doing a salary analysis (to see about staying competitive and retaining talent) and titles are one factor their looking at because that’s what the data relates to. I think that’s a contributor to the problem.
Right. Because it's the only consistent (cough) proxy we have for defining and measuring that easily. Not pretending I have easier answers for what to do instead since so much of what I'd want is qualitative vs. quantitative and that shit is hard. But...sigh.
All my really impressive titles came because of some other fucker's bullshit. I earned my title as creative director and loved what I did. But then some fucker in the Houston office started calling himself a creative director, so they made me Executive Creative Director to keep me one up on him. Then, years later when the agency wasn't doing real well, they brought in some hotshot Chief Creative Officer fucker from BigAss Agency to help us build up the business. So, to make me feel better they made me SVP (I was already a VP) of Digital Communications. Turns out the CCO fucker mostly just got drunk and slept in his office. So, when I left and another agency brought me in to help with their clients, they wanted to know what title I should have. I told them I didn't care and we ended up calling me a Strategic Messaging Manager, which I think was made up but hey, fuck yeah, that's what I do.