
Title Inflation Emerges With A Vengence - DanielRibeiro
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/05/title-inflation-emerges-with-a-vengence.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+swombat+%28swombat.com%29
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reduxredacted
_I’ve never paid much attention to titles._

Thank you. Please, can everyone start doing this? It cuts both ways. I have a
friend who is one of the best people I've ever known. I also worked for this
person for a long period of time in a previous life. You couldn't imagine a
better boss. He was the guy who did everything to cut out the red-tape of a
large organization so that his employees could focus their time. He was also
great at honing an idea even when that idea wasn't something that he knew all
of the details about (I was a C# developer, he was big into php, perl, linux,
etc).

He thoroughly _earned_ a Director title at that company. Titles weren't
garbage over there. They were tied to bonus payout percentages and salary
scale (which determined the maximum that a person could make, not a minimum,
of course).

He's now unemployed due to circumstances beyond his control (yes, there's no
such thing as "beyond his control", he could have been interviewing before the
collapse that resulted in him losing his job, hindsight 20/20 I'm sure).

He'd take any job right now, manager or not and he's one of those rare folks
who has the skills required of a both a hacker and a good manager. When he
makes it past HR, it's usually because the shop doesn't have an HR department.
When he gets the interview, there's always concern expressed about his
willingness to handle a perceived downgrade. When they call his references
(I'm one) it's in the top 5 questions asked of _me_. They don't understand
that this guy would be as useful and work as hard as an _assistant to the
regional manager_ as he would as a _Director_.

Edit: fix some grammatical/emphasis problems.

------
angstrom
Head of Title Inflation

I don't care what my title is, just compensate my fair market worth. Granting
a title increase is just another cheap and easy way to keep wages down. "But,
you just got promoted, we can't jump your pay much further or you'd be paid
more than your title." Have heard this excuse more than once.

Since when does title confer ability? If my goal is to save/make the company
money and I'm accomplishing those goals, why not just pay me what I'm worth
and at the end of each pay period we call it even?

Titles are a lot like uniforms. To cite Richard Feynman:

 _"One of the things that my father taught me besides physics - whether it's
correct or not - was a disrespect for respectable... for certain kinds of
things. For example, when I was a little boy, and a rotogravure - that's
printed pictures in newspapers - first came out in the New York Times, he used
to sit me again on his knee and he'd open a picture, and there was a picture
of the Pope and everybody bowing in front of him.

And he'd say, "Now look at these humans. Here is one human standing here, and
all these others are bowing. Now what is the difference? This one is the Pope"
- he hated teh Pope anyway - and he'd say, "the difference is epaulettes" - of
course not in the case of the Pope, but if he was a general - it was always
the uniform, the position, "but this man has the same human problems, he eats
dinner like anybody else, he goes to the bathroom, he has the same kind of
problems as everybody, he's a human being.

Why are they all bowing to him? Only because of his name and his position,
because of his uniform, not because of something special he did, or his
honour, or something like that." He, by the way, was in the uniform business,
so he knew what the difference was between the man with the uniform off and
the uniform on: it's the same man for him."_

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jasonfried
It's a general trend in how we use language today.

These days we reach for words like genius, brilliant, incredible, amazing, and
unreal for even the most average things. The meaning is gone. We've used up
the language reserves.

Same for job titles when everyone's senior this or VP of that.

~~~
pasbesoin
I was surprised to learn that someone was a "Vice President" at a rather large
bank. Until I learned that every branch location (if I understood it
correctly) had one or more "vice presidents" of something or other. I guess
this would mean/imply some sort of executive authority at the level of the
branch location.

These things seem to go in cycles. And to come, inevitably, with expensive
consultants to tell us what is currently in vogue and that we should,
regardless, be "minding that gap".

~~~
dabent
I work at a bank and have worked with several banks as part of my previous
jobs. Banks often have a _lot_ of Vice Presidents. The one I'm at has at least
a dozen and it only has 400 employes. But it gets better: there are several
levels of Vice President - Executive VP, Senior VP, First VP, VP, and
Assistant VP. And that means we have dozens of people with "Vice President"
somewhere in the title.

The reason I heard is that a small bank would have a few VPs, but would merge
with a larger bank. As part of the merger, people kept their titles. This
happened over and over, so large banks have lots of VPs. Not sure if that's
true, but it sounds reasonable.

Of course, this might be as likely an explanation:

[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070206164512AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070206164512AAltwCd)

~~~
btilly
My brother worked at a bank in the financial services sector, and virtually
everyone was Vice President or higher. The reason was simple. They were
interacting with CEOs, and many CEOs would refuse to talk to anyone who was
not vice president or higher.

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nazgulnarsil
I foresee a backlash wherein people start putting things like "security" under
their names.

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lotusleaf1987
I know of a few companies where it's hard to find someone below the level of
director, dozens of AVP/VP/SVPs, and at least 10 C-level execs. I think it's a
way of attracting people without having to pay them more. This seems like a
societal effect of over-credentialization.

~~~
larsberg
There are also enterprise sales organizations where all members of the team
are given director or better titles because that has a real impact on whether
or not they can meet with the CTO/CIO-level potential buyers.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Perfect example of how non-costly signals become worthless. Somehow it reminds
me of how everyone is reluctant to accept check #1001 from a new account, so
now banks just ask where you'd like the numbers to start.

