Lies, damned lies: What a job title says vs. what you really do

Lisa Vass, formerly of eWeek back in the day wrote this piece about title inflation and just plain outright lying about job titles and responsibility. Always enjoyed her sense of humor. Link below is worth reading and a good primer if you are out of interviewing practice. Particularly enjoyed the remark about "unglazing your eyes".

Lisa wisely points out some of the ridiculousness surrounding security positions in general.

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/lies-damned-lies-what-a-job-title-says-vs-what-you-really-do-1804.html?jumpid=em_nci3fbjkrp_aid-510366305&dimid=EMID_32F7988E491B9006E64B99685C08DCF5

Internally I just tell people my title is "security" and skip the actual title as its meaningless outside of comp discussions.

- b/eads

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Comments

Danielm7

Great article. I do the same with security. We get on giant conference calls and everyone likes to go around and flaunt their titles, I just say "oh I'm in security for X organization" They get to sound all proud of themselves, then they find out I'm in charge of the project. I find the titles in security to be so goofy, 95% of the listings are for analyst or engineer, but they describe a ton of different potential jobs.

I love that the article leads off with the data scientist reference. I got an internal email last year from someone know I who can barely navigate Excel, her signature said "data scientist". What did she really do? Mostly customer service and updated some customer pricing with data that someone else generated. She left shortly after, I always wondered if she went off to become a data scientist somewhere else.

BlackBeret

Wait, are you guys trying to invalidate my title of Lord of Cyber Threats? I'm not a fan of this conversation... /s

I don't care about the title of the job when I'm working, I care about what I'm doing. The difficult part for me is if I start looking at the job boards. I end up just searching "security NOT guard" and hope the Boolean logic for the search engine works well. Also, as much as I hate buzzwords, I've started trying to search for "cyber" as well.

Nutsy

On the whole job titles are BS. However, they directly into HR, and compensation. So, fancier title, better comp. Also, even if you are doing the work of the most seasoned professional, but your title is, "Junior IP Address Hander Outter" this can screw you down the line. Companies will filter people out off of title, and say they couldn't be doing anything remotely at your level.

Your goal should be to have a title that reflects your level, and duties. Bottom line is 90%+ of managers/HR don't want to really think when it comes to hiring. They want to read a resume and see: candidate has X level of education, has cert(s) XYZ, has been at X job level.

As a corollary, when you are interviewing and they start asking about what work you have done. Bring up a project you worked on and explain all the business/technical factors that lead to a decision. If they act professional and then lead into what's happen at their company, and maybe they went a different way, that is a good sign. (Shows maturity, and acceptance that there is more than one way to attack a problem.) I have been on a number of interviews that when I talked about what happened in the past at a different company, they immediately get threatened, and defensive. (Big Red Flag.)

EANx

I remember getting an offer from a bank as the "Ass't VP for Information Operations" with a salary that was more like a junior sysadmin (I had been doing a bunch of conversion work for them as a contractor). I talked to a mentor and he explained how banks like to pay in titles. I asked if I got a car loan through them, would they accept the title as a monthly payment?

--chris--

Good read, thanks buddy!

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"Security Analyst" here, job ad described a primary focus on managing internal vuln assessments & coordinating remediation. I spend 5% of my time doing that, 70% splunk (not even mentioned in the ad) and the rest attending meetings for change approvals, emails, random other tools...

thedudeabides

BlackBeret wrote: »

Wait, are you guys trying to invalidate my title of Lord of Cyber Threats? I'm not a fan of this conversation... /s

I don't care about the title of the job when I'm working, I care about what I'm doing. The difficult part for me is if I start looking at the job boards. I end up just searching "security NOT guard" and hope the Boolean logic for the search engine works well. Also, as much as I hate buzzwords, I've started trying to search for "cyber" as well.

Lord of Cyber Threats is a great title. I would use that if I didn't think it would attract a lot more attacks.

Basic85

Welcome to the real world! Employers lie like crazy but yet they expect candidates to tell the truth, lol.

UnixGuy

--chris-- wrote: »

Good read, thanks buddy!

<
"Security Analyst" here, job ad described a primary focus on managing internal vuln assessments & coordinating remediation. I spend 5% of my time doing that, 70% splunk (not even mentioned in the ad) and the rest attending meetings for change approvals, emails, random other tools...

Scary number of 'security' jobs are essentially just Splunk!

Ertaz

Lol. Vulnerability management engineer here. Spend most of my day coordinating scan times, creating, testing data feeds for GRC and reconciling unmanaged devices.

Squished

I shared this on my LinkedIn the other day. People in the industry are getting a kick out of it. Job titles in IT are such bullshit and job descriptions are even worse. Job description's can be three lines these days, the name of the company, the bullshit title of the position, and the the phrase "other duties as required"

LordQarlyn

Yeah I saw a job posting for "IT Manager", when I applied it was barely a network admin job, not even a network engineering job. Yet the title was IT Manager.
It was a DoD contract job so my guess was they used the title to get a higher billable hourly rate from the government.

Squished

Goverrnment is real good about that. Keeps our taxes high overpaying for services!

chmod

I have been on both ends, a shitty job title but i was doing what my former boss should have done.

And i have been a glorified L2 Help desk(in regards of my day to day duties) but with a sr sys admin title.