Job titles

[stewamax]

Apropos of the Political Editor post, there are many other job titles that 'understate' the importance or ranking of the job.
Brunel, for example, was The Engineer on his projects; a job we would call Project Director (although Brunel did a lot more than that!)
And when I was on a vacation job as a gofer installing old-fashioned telephone exchanges, the boss was The Installer

[tjh290633]

When I was running a construction site in 1958, my job title was "Erector".

Others might have called it Site Manager.

TJH

[tea42]

The bloke who was flying that plane was a Gas Engineer! (= Plumber?)

Why oh why did I do a 5 year Student Apprenticeship with the Ministry of Aviation at the RAE, and then get 5 years Professional Experience before I could call myself an Engineer? I could have done 6 months with British Gas and got that Penguin to summon me with his App.

[stewamax]

When many years ago I worked in Switzerland and Germany, I was - when introductions were being made at least - referred to as "Diploma Engineer Stewamax" because I had 'Chartered Engineer' on my business card.

[UncleEbenezer]

I was never a chartered engineer (though I was briefly a chartered mathematician - by that time a bigger misnomer).

But when I worked in Germany I too was treated as Dipl. Ing.

[johnstevens77]

And where have all the cooks gone? Anyone working at a stove now is called a chef, surely that is wrong, a chef is a head of department and has to have someone to supervise or else they are cooks working under a chef.

john

[bungeejumper]

I've always fancied being a facilitator, personally. Or an empowerer. Or a Chief Visionary Officer. Or maybe a sensei?

Sadly, all of these job descriptions really do turn up on LinkedIn. Not to mention all the self-described Thought Leaders who I've had to work with over the last twenty years. Whose collective wisdom could probably be summarised as "let's push this trial balloon up the envelope and see who salutes it"

BJ

[Generali]

I worked briefly at Eurodisney when it first opened in Paris and they employed many Imagineers, people that were employed to think up cool stuff for others to make. I always thought that sounded like a great job.

The people that dress up as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc. are known as Face Characters. One of the Donald Ducks was the girlfriend of one of the Mickey Mice.

[csearle]

I too was an Ingenieur in Germany with all the respect that came with it. The cleaners, Putzfrauen (and Männer) were mainly from Czech and several of them had Ph.Ds. I only found out about this because they liked to practice their English with me (and I often worked late to get the software to a good leavable state).

Chris

[Rhyd6]

OH has two degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and one in Computing, when asked what he did before retirement he always says he was a "leccy". This is how he introduced himself to me, when I finally found out his secret and asked him why he did this I was informed that it's better that I'm known outside of work as just a regular guy not be seen as some know it all.

R6

[stewamax]

OH has two degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and one in Computing, when asked what he did before retirement he always says he was a "leccy"

Very sensible too. Confessing to have professional knowledge of computing is, like admitting to being a (medical) doctor, just inciting the other party to divulge "I've got this problem ..."

[stevensfo]

OH has two degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and one in Computing, when asked what he did before retirement he always says he was a "leccy"

Very sensible too. Confessing to have professional knowledge of computing is, like admitting to being a (medical) doctor, just inciting the other party to divulge "I've got this problem ..."

That's why people with PhDs who can use 'Dr' before their name rarely use them outside their professional life. It takes them a while but they soon realise that being woken up at 3am to deliver their neighbour's baby is not a lot of fun.

Steve

[stewamax]

That's why people with PhDs who can use 'Dr' before their name rarely use them outside their professional life.

This may also be a (sensible) British trait. When I worked in the US, post-nominal qualifications were legion. Any writer who was also a medical doctor would have at least an MD after their name, even when the context was non-medical. Here - and in a medical context - the most a writer would prepend would be Dr (or since surgeons are, by convention, Mr/Mrs/Ms, they would append FRCS or whatever instead); anything more would look pompous and a breach of traditional British understatement*.

* which Americans do not understand. I found out the hard way: our 'not bad' for example translates as 'terrible'!

[Lootman]

OH has two degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and one in Computing, when asked what he did before retirement he always says he was a "leccy".

Modesty becomes everyone. I started my career in insurance and my mentors were two senior people in the underwriting department. The one with the bigger head described himself as an "Underwriting Executive". The one I liked more referred to himself as an "Insurance Clerk".

They both did exactly the same job and were peers.

[swill453]

I worked for a big US company, and one of the senior staff came over for a meeting. She referred to an event she'd just been to "with over 100 of our vice presidents".

In fact I just googled* and Goldman Sachs (not the company I worked for) in 2011 had over 12,000 vice presidents out of 33,000 staff. Talk about devaluation of a title.

* https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-e ... -promoted/

Scott.

[scotia]

In the traditional Scottish Universities the University Secretary is the overall senior administrator. There are Assistant Secretaries, in charge of various areas, and of course, each of these has a secretary, and frequently this secretary has an assistant. So such an assistant is the Assistant Secretary's secretary's assistant.
(I hope I've got my apostrophes correct or I fear a report to pedants' place).

[Rhyd6]

Apropos of job titles and job importance my youngest daughter went to her school year reunion last August. There were four doctors, a vet, teachers and other similarly qualified along with brickies etc. but the most popular man of the evening with all the women rushing to get his phone number was the guy who announced that he was a washing machine and dishwasher repair man.

R6

[AleisterCrowley]

A relative of mine was a 'company secretary' - It was only when he retired that I realised it's quite a senior position...
Likewise an aunt - I knew she 'worked for Boots' , but didn't realise she was actually a research chemist...


I'm an engineer. Full stop. A keyboard-bashing grunt. A small cog in the big machine.

[ten0rman]

Many years ago, I met a man who described himself as a road builder. It wasn't until we were passing some rather posh houses and he casually remarked that the company put him and his wife up there (does that make sense?)when he came back from abroad that I suddenly realised that he wasn't just a a road builder, ie a pick & shovel man. He was in fact, the chief site engineer on quite a number of large infrastructure projects, eg the M62 from Lancashire into Yorkshire, part of the Sellafield complex, and various projects abroad.

And a very nice man as well. It was a great pity that dementia eventually got the better of him.

Regards,

ten0rman

[oldapple]

Out of curiosity I watched an episode of "Botched' over the weekend. One poor soul, addicted to endless plastic surgeries, was described as "A man of the World". The cruel streak in me thought this strange-looking creature was neither of those things.