
The Problem with Job Titles - carsie
http://blog.workshape.io/the-problem-with-job-titles/
======
arno_v
So instead of the ambiguous text 'Software Engineer' we now have 10 ambiguous
texts ranging from 'Analysis' to 'Data Science'. I don't really see how that
solves a problem, since these underlying concepts are also quite hard to
define consistently.

~~~
GordyMD
Thanks for your comments. Whilst we cannot remove ambiguity completely from
our solution - we can minimise it. The ambiguity of text really comes into
play in CVs and job descriptions. We attempt to minimise the ambiguity by
asking software engineers/anyone involved in software development to describe
their work in a uniform way and not relying up the traditional artefacts. So
whilst the terms have ambiguity to them, companies and people are answering
the same question and we are using those answers to match people so that they
can begin a conversation.

~~~
scrapcode
I've got a problem. I've been coding for 12 years, yet have zero professional
experience. How does your service rank me?

~~~
GordyMD
We don't do any ranking per se we just present how you want to spend your
time. So it does not factor it in. It is up to you to decide what level of
seniority the type of position you would consider going for.

It might be a bit misleading that we use Github for sign up right now, this is
mainly just to ensure only developers are signing up - as the service only
exists for them currently. We do not use Github for any number crunching.

------
mdc2161
Great underlying data, but sad to see it visualized as radar charts.

\- Each category majorly affects the reading of the category next to it, which
isn't helpful in non-sequential categorizations

\- The difference between two adjacent categories creates a unique angle and
shape that is purely extraneous information

\- The relative sizes are hard to read as the underlying quantities aren't
proportional to the displayed areas

Although not the prettiest possibility, a grouped column chart (maybe groups
for front-end, back-end, maintenance, culture, etc.) is a simple example that
avoids many of these issues and has very good readability at a glance.

~~~
GordyMD
This is a fair point and something we are actively pursuing. Right now the
radar plot represents a trade off between an effective interactive form of
visual input that is also compelling and provides an easy mechanism for visual
comparison (with the shapes overlapped).

Appreciate the feedback.

~~~
d23
Yeah, if you can come up with a way to give the viewer a "sense" of the person
at a glance it would go a long way. Maybe add colors? Or maybe consider that
some metrics are pretty related and could be represented separately. Frontend
/ backend could be represented as a continuum by itself. UI/UX are sort of
tied with front-end, so coming up with a way to link those together might be
nice. Perhaps you could use the data you have to see what tends to be linked
together and come up with 2-3 representations that communicate what you're
going for quickly.

~~~
GordyMD
An interesting idea - thanks!

As for the trends check out these links to see histograms showing related
aspects according to different job titles:

[https://www.workshape.io/infographic/frontendengineer](https://www.workshape.io/infographic/frontendengineer)
[https://www.workshape.io/infographic/backendengineer](https://www.workshape.io/infographic/backendengineer)
[https://www.workshape.io/infographic/fullstackengineer](https://www.workshape.io/infographic/fullstackengineer)

~~~
mdc2161
really cool data in those distributions, definitely spent way too much time
flipping back and forth from one tab to another. Maybe unsurprisingly,
javascript is every groups' most reported skill and full-stack engineers tend
to be more senior. It'll be exciting to watch as your data set grows

~~~
GordyMD
We will continue to share our data set and insights. When we have more
resources we will undoubtedly spend more time on analytics and infographics so
that we can share back with the community on our findings.

Thanks for the comment.

------
dkyc
I think the results have to do with your questioning. For example, I don't
want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high
quality software. So some people give testing a 0, because it's not something
you actively _want_ to do. And others give testing a 5, because they know that
whatever job they'll take, they probably have to test their code. I don't
really see much difference to the classic self-made bullet-point-list of
skills.

~~~
onion2k
_For example, I don 't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I
want to write high quality software._

Why?

 _Someone_ has to do the testing, obviously, but why does it have to be _you_
just because you want to write good quality software? Why can't you work with
a brilliant QA[1] team who can generate an awesome set of processes and tests
based on your specifications? You don't have to do the bit you find boring if
there's someone else around who loves doing it and will do a better job of it
because they _don 't_ find it boring.

Giving up parts of the development process is part of being in a team. A
_very_ important part.

Using the idea in the article along with good knowledge of what's needed in
the particular problem domain, it should be possible to use 'workshapes' to
put together a very suitable team of people for a project.

[1] Important note for the unfamiliar: Most QA teams are actually QC teams. QA
(quality _assurance_ ) has to happen from the very first stages of a project,
putting in processes that assure the right level of quality will be met. QC
(quality _checking_ ) happens at the end where someone goes through a project
and makes sure it's been done well. If your "QA" only happens at the end then
it's QC, and it's probably not helping you build the best product you're
capable of building.

~~~
lmm
When you start dividing responsibilities horizontally like this, IME you end
up producing worse software. Being responsible for testing drives you to good
design. Being responsible for deployment raises considerations you might
otherwise miss. When development and QA are separate it's all too common for
only one to have an understanding of the actual customer requirements.

Better to slice vertically. Everyone takes responsibility for a small piece of
functionality, end-to-end.

~~~
logfromblammo
If you have ever read about Carrot in Pratchett's Discworld series, you may
have a new understanding of laziness.

Carrot, you see, is so lazy that he exercises every day, because it is easier
to accomplish things in a fit body than in one that is fat and weak.

Testing your own code is that sort of laziness. You write automated unit tests
so that you will never have to look at or touch that particular bit of code
ever again.

Having that sort of laziness will also make you an expert in design, because
good design allows you to write concise, maintainable code, which makes your
job easier.

~~~
aaronem
That's not Carrot, that's Victor whatsisname from _Moving Pictures_.

~~~
logfromblammo
So it was. Victor Tugelbend. My memory is not what it once was. Or I assume it
isn't.

------
jqueryin
I'm not a fan of the WorkShape matching algorithm. The form isn't in regards
to proficiencies but rather what your ideal job function would be spanning all
proficiencies.

Realistically, one's experience isn't likely to match up with their ideal
working environment.

Trying to pair an employer's requirements to an applicants ideal job would
require an order of magnitude more users on both sides before you see
realistic matches.

------
VLM
1) Are people good at evaluating what they want? Its a liberal arts truism
that they aren't. Enormous piles of literature about non-technical topics
"love" "lifestyle" etc. I'd be shocked if humans are truly excellent at self
evaluation uniquely for technical topics.

2) (Only kinda kidding) Where's emergency fire fighting? Escalated customer
support?

------
lordbusiness
Interesting and thought provoking article. I wonder if this could take off as
a concept and change the way we define ourselves? I like the concept.

One thing that is lacking however is perhaps an understanding of what job
titles are today. I haven't formally been handed a job title in many years, so
long in fact that I honestly can't recall which previous employer was the last
to grant me a specific pigeon hole at the personnel level. (Yes, I
deliberately use the antiquated term for HR to illustrate how long ago this
may have been).

In this day and age job titles for me and my peers appear to be ultra concise
summaries of what capacity people are most recently working in, as opposed to
formally designated titles. Perhaps we're stretching the word title.

Regardless, the fact that these charts better represent the fluid nature of
how interests and activities change, this would be a nicer solution. Two
thumbs up.

P.S. I say this with no snarkiness, I wish people would proof read articles
they publish.

~~~
lordbusiness
P.P.S. I'd love to see the ability to add myself as a remote worker. I had to
choose my closest major city, which doesn't accurately reflect how I work.

~~~
GordyMD
We're in the process of considering a number of new input fields for both
organisations and users. This is one that we intend to add in the next few
days.

------
sparaker
A pretty good way to find people that you want to hire. Perhaps if we can add
some experience graphs along with these, we can get a good platform up that
actually makes head hunting really easy for small companies who do not have
the time or the money to do this properly.

~~~
hunglee2
thanks sparaker - its Hung, CEO of Workshape - thanks for your comment. Time /
money is what we want companies to save, not only at point-of-hire but also in
terms of hiring the right person for the opportunity. Its a blind match on
both sides, so we think both parties are able to trust the match more than
they would in traditional job discovery platforms.

As for experience / bio - we're probably pull in social data via an aggregator
at some point.

~~~
sparaker
I am surely looking forward to this.

------
ukigumo
So, first things first: Love the software and the concept of visualizing your
activity spread in a radar plot. Well done!

Now for the rant: I am an IT architect. There are many architects working in
IT but few of them do anything that is related to what I do. I see job
postings for Enterprise Sharepoint Architect and I cry a little, others for
CTO/Architect/senior developer and I question if they are maybe hiring for 3
positions and are just really bad at writing jobspecs. I often have VPs
working under my direction and govern the work of Project Managers and yet
people contact me and ask if I'm interested in a devops role.

Recruitment is broken and I hope companies like workshape.io are here to fix
it.

~~~
namdnay
If you think "architect" is too vague, think of the poor "vice-president" :)
As you say yourself, "I often have VPs working under my direction"

~~~
ukigumo
Good point, people and function managers get called all sorts of job titles,
VP, Head of, Team Lead, Manager, etc and its funny to see how multinational
(specifically EU/US) companies deal with this since there is a bit of a "dick
measuring" competition for nicest sounding titles among peers.

------
solve
So, let's plug these shapes into a regressor / ranker / classifier, along with
some possible target variables (career path, survival rates, yearly office
peer ratings, salary after 5 years,) for as many balanced samples as possible,
and see what predictive power these might have!

Or, I guess the graph itself could also be considered a resume differentiator
/ sales technique.

Edit: Oh, I see. They're heavy on the highly personalized matching angle.

~~~
qooleot
Yes, that would be interesting data. Most companies would output reports from
their HRIS systems in wildly different formats, and you'd have to adjust for
industry, geo/currency, year, gender/ethnicity/language, and all sorts of
things. But just getting that data and the sensitivity that goes with it would
be near-impossible unless you were a salary survey company. And then, they get
job-level data and not per employee. They charge serious money for the
services of analyzing this data and do not make their data available.

------
mnsc
It sucks that we are so three-dimensional in our thinking. This "Workshape" is
really a 10-dimensional world where we "wander" in our careers by spending
time/energy along some axis. Sometimes we actively pursue a direction,
"developing my back-end-skills/archictecture" and sometimes we are more/less
forced in a direction "this needs testing/documentation". The result is a
traveled path which is "my experience", and a direction which is my "desired
trajectory forward".

Matching would then be a spatial questions: Have you been [here]? Where are
you heading?

Stupid physical world.

------
suttree
Yes, job titles an CVs/resumes are out of date. People talk about the future
of work but for a lot of us it's already here.

This is great, although I have a different approach, namely
[https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com) and specifically
[https://www.somewhere.com/what-is-somewhere](https://www.somewhere.com/what-
is-somewhere)

~~~
_s
Just checked them out - but on a first glance I have trouble getting any
meaningful data from the first few user profiles I clicked.

Generally what I look for on a CV or whatever a potential applicant sends
over:

\- Where have they worked? For how long? And what did they do?

\- What did they study?

That's it - I have about 5-15 seconds to find and read that information. If
there's something there that I like, then I dive into the rest of what they've
written. Am I still interested? Now I'll start digging through their
portfolio, web presence etc.

What I am not interested in (until much later in the hiring process) is the
random blurbs / thoughts that make them who they are which I think
somewhere.com puts on the forefront. It is something I'd glance at to get a
feel for who they are as a person, but it really doesn't solve the "CV" delima
(if there is one).

~~~
suttree
Yes, absolutely.

Somewhere has a lot more of the between-the-lines information, and we're
getting into some of the more linear data now (see
[https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv](https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv)).

So that in that, finding people who fit your work style over matching specific
skills and experiences. However, you're spot on as both approaches need to
pass the glanceability test.

------
ommunist
Very good idea, and nice front end implementation. However, for the masses to
chew it, it has to be properly advertised. Otherwise you shall have to
physically wait until all 30-somethings HR managers and recruiting agents will
die and take their prejudice to their graves. (This is how process of
dissemination of new views on old things usually take place in science).

------
Peroni
It really was only a matter of time before Hung Lee created something like
this. He's one of a very small group of people that truly 'gets' hiring in
todays environment and I'm really not surprised to see workshape gaining
traction. We're still relatively new users but we have already arranged a
handful of interviews via the platform.

~~~
hunglee2
Thanks Peroni - appreciate your comment. We don't forget your early and
continuous support was critical to Workshape.io. Love to see how we can help
further - time for us to meet up?

------
MadManE
An interesting discussion on /r/AskEngineers:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried_about_job_title/)

This seems to echo what's been said here, for the most part, but the concern
of getting through HR is very real.

------
mordae
Sigh; the categories make no sense.

Seriously, someone is looking for RabbitMQ-something? I mean, do they _really_
look for someone who deeply understands RabbitMQ or do they look for someone
who can administer it or do they look for someone who can use it's language
bindings correctly after skimming through docs?

------
jamesdelaneyie
Oh now this is cool. I tried to do something similar for designers a while
back[0] but this is a much nicer system! Would love if you added a designer
version!

[0]
[http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie](http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie)

~~~
GordyMD
Like it! We are definitely looking to roll the service out to other verticals.
Designers will most likely be next considering the complimentary nature of
what you guys do! Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
Glad to hear it! Best of luck lads :)

------
bencollier49
This immediately identified a very good match for me. It's brilliantly built,
I'm very impressed.

They could do with a little bit of narrative to explain that you're now free
to converse with the potential employer, at the point where the conversation
thread opens up.

5 thumbs up.

~~~
GordyMD
Thanks - really glad it found a match for you. I'll note down your comment -
we do need to improve the UX in this area.

------
sklogic
And yet, all the variety within the given categories will only cover a bunch
of web developers. I cannot relate to any of the categories in the article,
but yet I think I'm a software engineer.

------
janee
I actually need to update my CV, glad I came across this. Think I'll add one
for work experience and another for current perception of 'How do you want to
spend your time'.

------
k__
I like their ideas, but the only thing that changed for me with the shapes is,
that I have a profile that doesn't match any job offering. So no win for me,
lol

~~~
hunglee2
Hey k_3, its Hung, CEO of Workshape.io here. Thanks for signing up and for
your comment. We know that the 'no match' screen feels like failure, even when
its anything but!

Its simply a case that no employer has seen the wisdom of designing a job
opportunity that meets your interest! And its highly likely to be a question
of scale i.e not enough companies on the platform.

In any case, we need to get better at that screen and are aiming to produce
analytics to describe job distribution (geography, tech stack etc) so that
users who see it will come away with better value.

Ping me if you have any more input!

~~~
k__
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't take this personally.

I just wanted to say that this is a bigger problem than you think. The
companies have some skills in mind when they want to hire and packing them
into a job title with description or a radar chart doesn't change anything.

I think everyone is fully aware that these titles doesn't mean much. I have
read so much different descriptions of one title, that I don't read the titles
anymore.

~~~
GordyMD
We aren't completely transfixed by job titles, this was just the blog post
headline and one component of current recruitment practices we dislike.
Unfortunately recruiters may not be so aware of job titles not meaning much -
it is still common practice to perform key word search on other platforms to
identify candidates. This is a behaviour we are looking to disrupt.

------
Ronsenshi
Fascinating approach to the matching.

"No CVs" sounds awesome, but I think companies would ask applicants for their
CVs in the end anyway.

Love d3 animations on the landing page.

~~~
hunglee2
We think so too, and that's ok. Workshape.io is an attempt to bring the
'sentiment match' to the beginning of the hiring process. We think if both
parties know that there's compatibility in terms of interest, then they should
be good to go further conversation. Its a de-risking tool, I think

[Source: I'm Hung Lee, founder]

------
bwzhou
All eye candies, no insight. It is a good idea to have more accurate match
between positions and people, but only if both sides are honest.

------
andrey-g
That's why we call ourselves back-end/front-end/ui/embedded (software)
engineers.

~~~
jghn
One problem I have w/ the back-end/front-end distinction is that at least to
me that implies one is working on a web or mobile application.

For instance, the product I work on daily has no UI (ok, it has a 2 page UI
used by an ops group) - is that "back end" when there's no "front end"?

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Your front-end is your 2 page report. It's not about size but separation of
concerns, nothing to do specifically with web apps.

~~~
jghn
Right, although to me "back end" implies "feeding the front end" which isn't
the case here, rather that 2 page report is more of a side channel and the
consumer is another data processing engine.

And apologies - this is a bit OT here and I'm not trying to be difficult nor
argumentative, I've just often wondered if the majority of people view
backend/frontend as specialized terms like I do or if it's really just a
generic term for "works on visualization/UI" and "works on the other stuff"

------
orenbarzilai
I would love to see potential candidates add this work shape for their CVs

------
Max_Horstmann
Finally, a Rorschach test for developers!

------
Coogle
Seems like some pretty cool concept. Love the visualisation - quite a
different way to think about job descriptions.

~~~
hunglee2
thanks Coogle! Our entire thing is that job descriptions actually don't do a
great job of the describing. Text is not the best way to describe human work -
its too ambiguous, too hard to make / read and entirely reliant on subtext /
context. We think the radar plot is a better way. Glad you like the product -
stay with us, a lot more to come from us

