“A title by any other name would stink as bad.” –Okay, it’s not Shakespeare, but it’s close.
After my little engineering diatribe, I’ve been thinking of new titles to that I can use besides engineer or rock star. Because rock star makes you sound pretentious. And I got really tired of waking up at 5 in the morning to feather my hair with a case of Aquanet. I shy away from terms like “architect” and “champion” because they may sound cool, but they convey absolutely nothing about what I do. So, I started making a list:
- Director of Bailing People’s Asses Out of the Fire
- Chief Google Search Officer (CGSO)
- Vice President of Explaining Things to People that Don’t Understand Me
- Executive Chairman of Just Buy What I Tell You and Don’t Ask Questions
- President of Throwing Salesmen Under the Bus
- Head of Deciphering TLAs
- High Priest of Unity/Exchange Voodoo
- Sergeant-at-Arms of Explaining Why Your Hair-Brained Idea Won’t Work
- Chief Caffeine Consumer
- Vice Regent of Solving Executive Problems RIGHT NOW!
- Owner/Operator of I Told You So, INC
I think I’m going to need to get bigger business cards..
Feel free to leave some of your favorite titles in the comments. Just make sure they are descriptive about what your job title is. And for the love of all that’s holy, DON’T put “engineer”.
The Networking Nerd 
In my team, we also use very sound names for work we do. For example I am “Senior Copypaste Specialist” – because that’s what I do most of the time. Pasting prepared configurations to routers. Then we have “Junior Network Architecture Validators” – those are people who check reality against Visio diagrams. Needless to say second most bori-*cough* important work right after “Asset Information Consistency Coordinators” = entering network devices information into databases. And don’t forget about “Out Of Band Security Deployment Specialists” – when changing modem dialup password every X months.
Some days I think my title should be changed from Network Security Engineer to Proover That The Network isn’t the Problem. The “Black Box” nature of networks make them a prime target for people to blame when there is a problem, so the task falls to me to provide proof that its not the network.
Awesome…. I would like to get your permission for Using some of the cool Title’s of yours…