Title of the day

New Years Hat Designer

2009-01-05T14:25:00.001-08:00

Frustrated with the boring hats Party Depot was offering us we bought some paper and spent two days making hats for our New Year's Eve Party. This convinced me that their is some custom design needed, best done by a New Year Hat Designer --

This post means I am back!! We might see a posting every week if I get to it:-)

Monkey Patcher

2008-10-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

I like everything with monkeys so when I ran across that I thought it would neatly fit in here:

"Monkey Patching is the ability to hack out a solution over someone else nice code. Interpreted languages like ruby or php always get this, since you get the source, not a binary. Now there are lots of bad things about Monkey Patching, but it's really useful when you need it. Now I understand that if you don't have source, Monkey Patching is not so practical."

Computerized Genius

2008-09-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

After the big Apple event yesterday we have some new title: The Computerized Genius analyzes your music library and dynamically creates playlist of songs which go well together. Previously this was some menial human task, maybe working for days to create the perfect mix-tape to impress somebody -- now we get that at the click of a button. Progress? YES!! Mixtape 2.0!!

I know I have gotten lazy and reduced the posts -- but no time is better than the present to check out vintage posts...

Chief Awesome Switch Guard

2008-08-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

We know if our company would do X -- that would be AWESOME. However the Cjief Awesome Switch Guard will be at the lookout and usually shoot the idea down with comments "not enough resources", "not enough revenue possible", "other things are more important". If it's one of the better companies it will be recorded in some system and buried under some rocks to be nowhere found.

How do people make those decisions? Since they are guards they base their decision on the same criteria some zoo guard is not allowing you to pet an animal in the petting zoo. Are ideas really researched or even important for the business? Probably not -- otherwise we wouldn't have a gurad for the awesome switch.

Productivity Coach

2008-08-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

Because with all the things going on and the GTD movement going strong becoming more efficient is the goal. Besides the moral dilemma that if you get your work done early all that awaits you is more work I am willing to share some of my tricks:

Get a Macbook Pro. Live is too short to work on bad computers and while you are waiting you are not productive.
Get at least two monitors -- bigger screens make you more productive
Use Sandy -- you know you need an assistant and make sure to read the e-mail digest of your day before it starts so you can prepare
Use twitter, twittd and ubiquity to talk to Sandy -- so she's only a click away
Use GTD to order e-mails into Follow-up, Hold, Archive
Use Gmail or AppleMail and tag mails with your projects
Get a smart phone

Berry Economist

2008-08-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

Tim Hardford, one of my favorite authors, wrote a new article on incentive schemes (see http://www.slate.com/id/2197735/). I strongly believe that incentives need to be somewhat aligned with the goal of the company so I really liked how they did it and how the right incentives trump nepotism.

But as with all incentive schemes I got some criticism from my co-workers (I might add that none of us is in the position to implement any of them):

"...making sure nobody picked too quickly...
talk about a race to the bottom
wow that is really interesting
it makes the workplace a free market then"

Bouncy Castle Economist

2008-08-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

Whereas my company with it's about 300 employees deploys only one bouncy castle at our company picknick another company with about 7,000 people deploys eight bouncy castles at their picknick.

Is there a magic bouncy castle ratio which hints at the success of either one company? I am pretty sure that it has to say something but I am not willing to do the research right now. So if one of my readers needs a PhD in economics he or she might want to look into that:-)

Software Metric Illusionist

2008-08-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Because Software Development ceased long ago to be an art, a science, or something else of that sort it is widely considered to be some engineering task. As we probably know everybody from a pizza delivery guy to a garbage collector fulfill engineering tasks -- the good thing about engineering is you can measure. How many garbage cans did get picked up? how many pizzas delivered?

A wise man said "anything that can be measured can be improved". I am a long proponent of bottom line. It is conceivable that if you deliver more pizza in a shorter period of time you have more money; it is also conceivable that if you spend more time with customers they might order again -- I don't know and it might be different in different markets. Fortunately most people are smart and can figure out what makes them more money.

Because people want to be paid regardless of their impact on the bottom line (you can write perfect software but your marketing sucks) certain metrics got invented to decouple the task of engineering software from the bottom line and allow certain improvements. An early metric was lines of codes which obviously just lead to bloated code.

Fast forward to today where most metrics are quality oriented automatically generated ones like the likelihood of having a bug based on heuristics instead of (a more meaningful) how many bugs QA or the customer actually found and so on. The other big component is hours spent on some tasks (nowerdays called velocity).

But can software be reallyd eveloped in such a context? A better algorithm often is 200 times faster. The difference between a good programmer and a bad one is at least 1:20 -- does this sound like your electrician or more like an artist? Well, even in the art world you have extraordinary artists who can't be measured and artists who copy other artists work in big factories. So it all boils down to if you want an original painting in your house or some copy. When you look around successful and rich people buy originals and not so successful and rich people buy copes.

The Software Metric Illusionist tries to convince you that turning your software department into a collection of copy-and-paste technicians will not only save you money but also make your company better. It is up to you to decide if you need an also-run software department or people whoc can take it up with the Google's of the world. Now watch out the double illusion: if you need an also ran why don't you just outsource the whole department? That would be bad for the illusionist so he convinces you despite having an also-run software department it is core enough to your business to keep it in house.

That contradicts GE's metric -- if you can be number one or two get out of this business.
So metrics are all smoke and mirrors? Or things draftet by clever illusionists to fill their own pockets?

Profession: Son

2008-08-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Apparently somebody made an iPhone App which costs $1,000 and all it does is to reassure you that you are rich and you can show the app to your friends to show them that you are rich.

Who would fall for something like that? High School boys! Check out http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/08/high-school-stu.html to learn more about the app and the high school boy. The article asks "Where di he get his money from" and without any research I would guess from being a son of somebody who has $1,000 to blow.

To understand what is going on I will tell you about a guy I know. A normal student, standard stipend, but owning some Porsche Carrera -- which is a hand-down from his dad who just gave hime the car when he didn't need it any more. Well, when he married he got as a wedding gift a Prius because gas prices are not really encouraging commuting ina Carrera. What's this guys major source of income? Being a son -- and go over the campus I have never seen so many luxury cars...

Software Insultant

2008-08-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

The softeare insulatant keeps a software company and to some degree the software industry in check.

Be honest. If some other team sucks don't say "What's the status?" or "This is terrific work -- now can you add some more features" (which would be the ones we actually wanted three weeks ago). Honesty in that case is to make no secret of your opinion, that they suck, and you are really puzzled that the company still keeps them on payroll...
Be honest. The truth hurts, the truth is insulting -- but you are not there to put make-up on the pig. If something is ugly say so; if the company lacks strategic vision, uses the wrong processes, say so -- that might cost you a promotion but let's you sleep at night.
Be honest. Be not a team player. Don't follow company line. Stay honest! if the CEO ask you why your department is not performing. State your opinion. Don't be vague -- be precise and concise. You are not here to be a diplomat -- if people would do good work there wouldn't be questions like that. It's not you it's them.
Always have an exit strategy (like writing a blog). Live is about politics and about being diplomatic. Insultants only have job security as industry analysts or strategy consultants.

Chief Star Wars Minister

2008-08-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Check out this piece from the Geek Dad - an original Star Wars wedding with what it seems a Star Wars minister (my research didn't extend beyond looking at the two pictures). As we know not everybody and his dog can conduct a wedding -- you need some special certificate or license which you probably can buy somewhere on the net -- or you can join the Jedi Church in Wales.

May the force be with you!

Twitterer

2008-08-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

After a light week we present our new Web 2.0 title: Twitterer, a person who uses Twitter as a journalistic outlet or keep others informed about themselves (see Internet Famous).

Let's focus on the journalistic aspects of Twitter -- usually posting from political campaign speeches and giving constant updates like a Live Historian -- so what makes Twitter special? The restriction to 160 characters and the encouragement to post more often, so people know "What are you doing?" Sounds a little bit narcissist -- so maybe it's for people who think they are Internet famous?

Copy and Paste Technician

2008-07-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

Several jobs heavily rely on the mastering of the copy and paste function in several softwares.

For instance in web development often certain lines need to be copied and pasted and only marginal changes performed -- a good example is the title of a web page -- rarely somebody wants this to be inconsistent so often it will read "ACME Corp - About", "ACME Corp - Home", etc. -- so having "ACME Corp" in your clipboard might speed up things dramatically...

When writing studies, offers, or proposals I found the copy and paste functionality of word quite helpful, too -- often bigger companies create gigantic repositories of copy and paste sources and call that "Knowledge Management"

Senior iPhone Developer

2008-07-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time since educational institutions would offer classes to become a "Senior iPhone Developer". I would have expected something like tham from say ITT or similar fray but surprisingly Stanford will teach iPhone programming -- is there any connection to the iFund? Only future will be able to tell...

Internet Famous

2008-07-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Given that people draw a living out of being famous on the Internet it probably qualifies as a title. Wired has a little how to on how to do it. So check it out and link to my blog:-)

Senior Clover Engineer

2008-07-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

As an owner of a Pavoni (I got it years ago when coffee machines were still affordable) coffee has always been at the center of my interest. Though I prefer cappuccino and espresso over more normal blends I appreciate a good French pressed kind.

However making the perfect cup with a French press quick becomes cumbersome, so some Stanford engineers invented and hand build a new kind of coffee maker - the Clover (see video here). Essentially you can control the temperature and some other brewing cycle parameters and given it's price tag it makes only sense to use it with high quality beans.

From the video I learned that you turn yourself into a Senior Clover Engineer and brew the coffee at your liking. I think you need to be senior because at $8 a cup you better know what you are doing...

University Coursework Consultant

2008-07-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

A recent Slashdot calls for a new title:

"Students studying computing in the UK and US are outsourcing their university coursework to graduates in India and Romania. Work is being contracted out for as little as £5 on contract coding websites usually used by businesses. Students are outsourcing everything from simple coursework to full blown final year dissertations. It's causing a major headache for lecturers who say it is almost impossible to detect."

(Source: Slashdot)

Chief Bagel Economist

2008-07-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Studying Bagels unveils a lot about a company. If a company has a box of bagels and a locked box to pay for them charting the number of bagels stolen in the executive floor (aka. not paid for by putting money in the locked box) tells you everything you need to know about that state of ethics in that company. You don't need expensive reports on governance -- you just know by the bagels.

Some companies provide each Friday free bagels and donuts to their employees. The ratio of donuts to bagels might give you an idea how serious health issues are taking at that company but this is a topic for another post -- so just monitoring closely the number of bagels will tell you about the economic outlook for that company. It's pretty easy to call up the bagel man and say " we are trying to cut back, so from now on bring only two boxes each week". Given that any decline in bagels willt ell you if the recession hit your company or not -- and getting that information from friends at other companies might be useful investment information. Jut be careful to not be caught with insider trading because bagel number are very confidential.

In a professional setting the Chief Bagel Economist employed by some investment bank will monitor closely the amount of bagels ordered/stolen to give advise to institutional clients...

Digital Underwriter

2008-07-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Everybody probably encountered an underwriter -- somebody who underwrites an insurance, a loan, or whatever. But are those people really signing papers all day or are they using digital signatures? The search on Google (the new authority on everything) returns 406,000 results for the term "underwriter digital signature " -- so they must do it that way. Now, who is sure that his underwriter is a real person and not some computer system?

Mark-to-Market Marker

2008-07-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you own a car you can go to Kelley Blue Book and figure out what your car is worth -- but can you actually sell it for that price. What if you have a hummer? In that case a guestimator comes in and figures out the fair market value of your car -- so if you are a rental company you do that every month and have what people call the "book value" -- that's what all your cars are worth -- because this is kind of silly the most businesses use deprecation (like a car is loosing 10% of it's value each year).

Now enter Jeff Skilling from Enron: What happens if after deprecating over a couple of years it turns out you did a good purchase and your car is worth more than you have on the books? Some lesser executive who came in after you might reap that windfall and get a gigantic bonus. That's where mark-to-market was invented to figure out what's going on right now and to prevent lesser executives from reaping fat bonuses.

Bonuses -- they are paid on Wall Street and so mark-to-market is an important measure there. But what happens if your boss looks at the dealer price to buy your car instead of the dealer price to sell it -- your bonus might be much smaller. So this is all up to interpretation and depneding on who you ask mark-to-market is a different value. In comes the marker (usually employed by one of the big-4-accounting firms) who determines a definite value based on the current political climate (so people with weatherman experience preferred). So one day Fanny Mac is capitalized ok and if you add up some different numbers they look bankrupt. One day your Hummer is worth $40K and the other $20K -- depending which dealer you are shopping it to and what new car you are gonna buy...

Stanford MBA

2008-07-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

[to have a successful startup] "you hire a CEO with a Stanford MBA" (Javaposse #195 - not the website but in the podcast)

That sums up how things are -- if your CEO is not from Stanford you gotta switch companies...

Avatarist

2008-07-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

he, who adds 3d chat to his web site, blog, or anything. An avatarist used Google's Lively or similar technology to add 3d chat capabilities to web sites. This title is related to the Online Cartographer and often the same person has both titles.

Senior Free Ticket Give Away Manager

2008-07-08T14:41:00.001-07:00

Just won a free ticket to NFJS -- a courtesy of Altlassian (they once gave me free beer at ApacheCon). I am really excited and so I started thinking about the people giving away free tickets. This needs to be organized, budgeted, accounted for, and so on -- so it's probably a management position to give away free tickets and you probably need some marketing reps forging partnerships with all the conferences you wanna give free tickets to go to. Throw in some evangelists, a marketing strategist, somebody from strategic planing and the whole thing is getting big.

So, yea, it needs a manager to handle that:-)

Student Group CEO

2008-07-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Any organization has a president, a treasurer and a secretary -- those are the ones who have the authority to sign contracts, checks, or anything. A CEO is some kind of fantasy title which does not have any legal meaning nor any authority -- that's why in most corporations the CEO is also the president (or the president acts as the CEO) and some corporations have fantasy titles (I still prefer King)

Usually a student group has a president to stay in line with how things are in the real world. But some students feel it gives their resume more cachet if they are the CEO of a group -- especially business plan competitions call their head honchos CEO in the hope this will help them to sway more influcence in the venture scene. This just confuses from the real issue -- who is calling the shots - who is the president?

By the way I am the Chief Blogging Officer, King, CEO and everything else of titleoftheday.blogspot.com -- if I would add that to my resume would you hire me? So why are you going after some CEO of some student group to better cafeteria food?

Serialized Entrepreneur

2008-07-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

In business a serial entrepreneur is somebody who starts a lot of businesses (Wikipedia) -- a serialized entrepreneur is somebody who submits his business plan to as many student business plan competitions as possible. You have a cousin at South Dakota State? Add him to the team, submit your plan, and split the proceeds...

Usually adding somebody from a top-notch business school (see out upcoming article on Harvard MBAs) gives the submission more credibility and glamour and ultimately increases your chances. So a good serialized entrepreneur will add also some cousins from Harvard and MIT to the team -- just to make sure...

Public Entrepreneur

2008-06-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

A public entrepreneur uses public funds (e.g. research grants) to create a start-up inside his lab preferably with a University mailing address (come on, even virtual start-ups can have some non-university address). Whereas a normal entrepreneur usually risks to end up with a pittance for working a couple of years on a start-up the public entrepreneur's worst outcome is that he is made fun of at my web site.

A recent example reached me by e-mail today announcing that SciVee (some myspace for researchers) won the third place (aka $10,000) in UCSD's Entrepreneur competition (second place were some MBA's). But let's focus on SciVee: At the bottom of the web site you will find the NSF logo which indicates that they might be working of a grant from the NSF. Next to it you see two other logos of public institutions. The mailing address (notice the mail code) is at UCSD and the people running it are tenured professors with some staff. Though this is wild speculation I am pretty sure they are also leeching of bandwith and servers from the University computing center (otherwise they would be hosting their videos on youtube:-) and/or are paying their staff from that grant.

I can understand the need for the NSF to fund a myspace for research and setting it up at some research institution. But I wopuld have preferred if it would have been a research project and instead of founders there should have been principal investigators. Assuming this is the case for SciVee calling it a start-up would be a big stretch. Keeping that assumption I am particularly disappointed about this competition handing out $10K to an already funded project -- and I will honor it with a new title the "Public Enterpreneur".

Chief Fun Officer

2008-06-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Usually after a while my niece says "adults are no fun" and similarly an Indian company thought that working is no fun -- enter the Chief Fun Officer or CFO. From the article:

"The CFO will be charge of all the fun and will not have to rack his brains with the usual pressures of the outsourcing industry. He has been entrusted with the responsibility of keeping employees happy. He will also be in charge of organizing office parties.[...]

The Chief Fun Officer will also be in charge of organizing weekend outings for the employees. The basic task of the CFO will be to keep the employees happy. During the week he will have to organize games and short parties for the staff. The idea is to provide frazzled employees with stress-busters. The fun includes dancing, singing, various competitions and games, et cetera."

Sounds like a fun job and hopefully a fun place to work -- if work is no fun anymore our CFO will get parachuted and replaced with a new CFO -- let the fun begin

MBA

2008-06-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

"Bogged down for more than five months by a controversy surrounding a master’s degree improperly awarded to the governor’s daughter, the president of West Virginia University announced Friday that he would step down in September.
[...]
The controversy on campus began in late December after a reporter for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called to confirm the academic credentials that Mylan had listed for Ms. Bresch after her promotion to chief operating officer."

(Source: NYTimes)

Commentary: This again shows the importance of an MBA for somebody's career. Though I am not familiar with the circumstances I wouldn't be surprised that an MBA would have been a necessary credential to become COO - so she went to West Virginia University to get some. She probably didn't have time to do the necessary coursework so she got behind but the university awarded it anyway -- what went wrong? Ms. Bresch should have gone for a Harvard MBA (a title I will look at another time) and not wasted time on an inferior MBA - then she still would have her job...

Baby Engineer

2008-06-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Check out http://xkcd.com/441/ and you will see what I mean.

Everything can be engineered and everybody can be an engineer but baby engineer is kind of a novelty. But if you look closely what a reproductive specialist does you will find many parallels to the engineering discipline -- and baby engineer is one of the titles which tells you what the person does holding the title.

Missing Manual Editor

2008-06-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

My grandfather in law swears on missing manuals for his eMac and if you have unpacked some Mac recently there usually is no manual at all. Other devices are the same and so in an entrepreneurial move O'Reilly picked up the task of delivering manual to the people so they could use the gadgets they deserve -- and with most gadgets made oversees it makes perfect sense to insource the manual production by outsourcing it to O'Reilly to avoid expensive and for the customer confusing translations of manuals which make perfect sense in their original language...

The latest addition "Your Brain: The Missing Manual" actually prompted this post. This really needs entrepreneurial spirit to extend from gadgets to everything without a manual -- now they are really on to something and I am waiting for the competition catching up with "My Brain for Dummies" and the "Idiot's guide on using your brain"

"Saftschubse"

2008-06-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

After a short break we continue with our first international title of the day. "Saftschubse" is a German title which translated means "juice pusher" and is derogatory for stewardess. This title is actually a good example for a title which describes what people actually do -- which is pretty rare. Most often a title instead of describing what somebody does ornaments somebody and even makes dull jobs look pretty interesting (our previous title Food Transportation Engineer comes to mind)

The Title of the day team is taking a short break to collect new and even more interesting titles. We might be blogging on and off for the next ten days but return to our daily schedule on 6/24. Stay tuned!!

Online Cartographer

2008-06-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

And here comes our second Web 2.0 title of the day: An online cartographer uses Google maps to essentially map trips, hiking tours, etc. (see an example here)

Senior online cartographers use special devices to upload images right from their camera to the Internet to create a map of their trip right as they go with annotated pictures. This allows their friends to see where they are right now --

The first kind is very useful Publish Postfor planning a trip -- see how it looks different places.

Live Historian

2008-06-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

With WWDC going on right now we are putting the many people in the spot light who report on history right when it's made; the bloggers in the auditorium who deliver pictures and instant analysis to millions of people's web browsers -- the CNN reporters of the now.

On a related note twitter ,limited their service to make sure they could handle the WWDC blogging... this is really big and once you read it it will be small. History is moving so fast...

Chief Food Officer

2008-06-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

I asked once a recruitment guy from Google "so, tell me more about the food" and the answer was around the lines "well, we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner... let me think yesterday we had bacon and eggs, baby back ribs..." anyway you will get the idea.

To keep all those meals coordinated you will need a Chief Food Officer or CFO and to show the importance of this position for the stock price Google let him present in one of the quarterly conference calls (here). Because this person is critical for the success of any company it made a big splash when he moved on to facebook:

"THE most telling indicator of the prospects of Silicon Valley's technology firms is now clear. It is the cooks. The insightful few on Wall Street who understood this in 1999 are now rich. That year, Google, which had just 40 employees at the time, held a cook-off to anoint its “chief food officer”. Charlie Ayers, who had once fed the Grateful Dead, won. Over the next six years, he led Google, which was also dabbling in web searches and online advertising, to dominance in its core competency: ample, free, organic and exotic food."

(Source: The Economist, "Poaching")

Piled higher and Deeper

2008-06-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

or short PhD -- a title popularized by the entertaining PhD-Comics. This is a title which doesn't come with a job and can therefore be earned and used as long as you live. But be careful not all PhD are equal. A common distinction is between Tier 1, Tier 2 and even Tier 3 institutions. The third tier specializes in accredited distance-learning (derogatory "mail-order") PhD's for instance (an example institution here), whereas the second tier only qualifies you to teach in the third tier -- which means what you really want is a Tier 1 PhD.

Usually public (e.g. government) positions don't distinguish between the different tiers and just pay you more if you have any PhD -- but sometimes people don't even have the time and dedication to finish a mail order PhD so a fake-Phds from non-accredited institutions might come in handy. So from time to time you will read stories of high up government officials being outed as having no real PhD.

Food Transportation Engineer

2008-06-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

AKA pizza delivery guy. One of my favorite blogs recently ran a story on this line of work -- which believe it or not is "the 4th most dangerous job category in America, right up there with fishermen, timber workers, and construction laborers."

Q

2008-06-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

Q is an unofficial title used for the MIT trained gadget man of homeland security (see the NPR article here) There is a long history of using titles from movies in real live and vice versa. Q or "Quartermaster" is besides Bond the most interesting character in those movies (or do you care for M?) -- always blowing stuff up...

Press Release Grader

2008-06-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

In an open organization you can't just have control over every press release. Some branch manager might want to release something to the local paper, somebody might have a blog, etc. -- so you can't control what gets released but for sure you can grade it. Better yet, have somebody on staff whose job is to grade press releases. And use the usual grading scale:

A - overAchiever
B - Better next time
C - needs Counseling
D - Demote
F - Fire

If you don;t have the budget to have a professional grader or you are about to put something out there is always pressreleasegrader.com

Chief Beer Officer

2008-05-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

Before we go for the weekend let's finish with the obligatory C-title on Friday: Chief Beer Officer -- I heard first about it on NPR (check here) and the job really encompasses getting paid to drink beer. From the article: "You read that right. It's an actual job. The Four Points by Sheraton hotels chain created the position because it wants to market so-called craft beers as one of its specialties."

And on that note get out for an happy hour and do some networking:-)

Director of Skunk Works

2008-05-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

From the announcement e-mail:

"The purpose of this group is to prototype new technology that’s going to support our products and initiatives. It will be a small team of a programmer, an artist and a few designers. They’ll be working on special projects that we’ll launch in conjunction with new products, or big new initiatives. The Director of Skunk Works is going to be reporting to the CEO, and just about every group within the company is going to be working with Skunkworks in some capacity or another. Why the name? Well… the idea is to keep it small and focused on new ideas that will help look towards the future in this business and lead the pack, not follow other people’s ideas."

Leaving the obvious issues with institutionalizing skunk works aside (is it still skunk works if it's official?) this clearly is a dream job and very smart to encourage for every company. For instance the Miata convertible was a product of skunk works and Motorola's Razr was developed in a skunk work fashion -- I never heard of failed skunk works projects so it must always lead to great results(?). Let's turn everyhting in skunk works then -- be all skunk workers...

Diversity Coordinator

2008-05-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

A public university is always a good source for strange positions. To make things more interesting public institutions give you two titles: a payroll title to determine your pay and a more fancy one to put on your business card. Diversity coordinator is the later one and from what I have been told the major goal is to promote growth of historically underrepresented populations among campus groups which is kind of hilarious.

The complete description from the web site:

Coordinate programs and initiatives promoting growth of historically underrepresented populations among campus groups and student organizations, including the development and implementation of a strategic plan for diversity in line with the Office of the President’s strategic plan to increase diversity among the UCSD graduate student population.
Serve as a GSA representative to the UCSD Diversity Council or appoint, subject to GSAUCSD Council approval, a replacement.
Advise the VP Internal on the appointment of GSAUCSD representatives, subject to GSAUCSD Council approval, to diversity committees: Affirmative Action and Diversity Committee of the Academic Senate, Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, Chancellor's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women, and Women's Center Advisory Board.
Work to promote diversity in the body of students participating in GSA and sponsored events including the All-Grad Symposium and the annual statewide Students of Color Conference.
Organize an annual meeting between the diversity coordinators of each department and OGS staff to share best practices of recruitment and retention of minority students.

Web Urbanist

2008-05-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

I ran across this the other day and from their web site: "from urban design to subversive art and strange architecture. We scour the net to find neat new stuff then boil that information down and pack it into an article with relevant images and links, as exhaustive as we can manage on a single subject area. Our team is comprised of web designers, bloggers, architects and other curious urbanists."

Chief Disambiguator

2008-05-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

Friday is the day of C-level titles and the Chief Disambiguator is one if not the most important function in any corporation. With all the ambigious information coming in from business intelligence, strategy consultants, customers -- there has to be somebody to paint a coherent picture of the situation and make the right decision. Unfortunately a lot of people int his job rely solely on their gut to make the calls -- not a good basis for disambiguating and you see the results daily in the news.

In a related function each software project needs a chief disambiguator who dissects ambiguous definitions in the specification and makes the right calls what the customer actually meant (a novel concept asks for actually asking the customer). Given that roughly 50% of software projects fail it seems that disambiguator there also rely to much on their gut than on reality -- or could easily be replaced by flipping a coin with the same outcome.

In the financial industry Chief Disambiguators are often called Chief Risk Officer or Chief Economist - Ben Bernanke or Helicopter Ben for his friends for instance is a classical example of a chief disambiguator: should he raise interest rates, keep them the same, or lower them. There are reports and number who support either direction...

Because we only report on titles each workday we will be out until Tuesday.

Code Archaeologist

2008-05-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

It is absolutely no coincidence that we are looking at that title the same day as the new Indiana Jones starts. Similarly to the man with the whip chasing cradles and skulls over all seven continents a code archaeologist is chasing source code over all seven source repositories - always in a race against time and exposed to the treacherous source lines of past civilizations. Changing a character here can make the whole temple ahem program explode with our archaeologist stuck in the middle. Sometimes literacy in ancient languages (Cobol comes to mind) is as necessary as Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some code archaeologists had some success with using mythical weapons like unit testing and extreme programming. However as most archaeologist in real life are still looking for the holy grail our code archaeologist is still searching, too.

Titles describing similar functions are legacy code explorer, Cobol developer, deep code diver, and of course code gerontologist or proctologist.

Computational Theologist

2008-05-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

I couldn't believe it when I fist saw this title at http://blogs.sun.com/gbracha/resource/JAOO2005.pdf -- what does a computational theologist do? Figure out if god is a computer?

Here is how Gilead, now a computational theologist emeritus, describes it himself:

I no longer work for Sun, so I’m now Computational Theologist Emeritus

(Source: http://bracha.org/Site/Theology.html)