We need to talk, guys. It’s about job titles in digital. There’s really no good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it.
Job titles in digital have become stupid. Again.
I know this is upsetting, but it has to be said. We’ve got Fashion Evangelists and Chief Happiness Officers and Ninjas and +1 Android Jedis and God knows what else. I mean, AOL has a Digital Prophet, and he looks like this. We’re talking about the same AOL your aunt Frieda still uses to “do the email.”
It has to stop. Not because titles like Chief Foodie or Social Media Sherpa or whatever aren’t fun. Of course they’re fun. After all, who wouldn’t want to be Chief Reddit Spelunker? Hell, we’ve been guilty of it, too. We’re not blameless. We know that.
But you’re playing a dangerous game. A dangerous, dangerous game.
See, we’ve been here before. 14 or 15 years or so ago, job titles like these were common. You were going to middle school in Iowa at the time, so I get that you might not remember. But trust me — job titles were just as face-punchingly stupid then as they are now. And do you know what happened?
They destroyed the economy.
It’s true. Dotcoms were collapsing left and right. Huge tent cities popped up overnight, filled with former Lead CSS Slingers and Relationship Synergists attempting to trade their worthless Boo.com stock options for squirrel jerky. Thomas Pynchon even wrote one of his weakest novels about it. And it all happened because of stupid job titles.
Don’t bother looking it up. Just trust me on that one.
But we don’t have to repeat our mistakes. We can change things. We can get it right this time around. We can stick to our job titles that convey function and seniority. There’s nothing wrong with being Director of Inside Sales, damn it. Stick to your guns. Don’t let them make you Rainmaker-in-Residence.
Remember what happened last time.
