Big Galoot Diatribe - What’s in a “title”?

November 13th, 2007 Drazen Drazic Posted in Big Galoot Diatribe, Industry Specialists Talk, WTF |

The rantings of Craig Chapman, Computer Forensics Geek.

Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your seats while I tell you this. A technology ‘evangelist’ has arrived down under - to save you and I - the apparently hopeless and needy technology sinners of the world, at long last.

An invitation arrived in my inbox to a presentation by a bloke from the States whose title was “Lead IT Security Consultant, Information Security and Risk Management Evangelist”…….That’s right - “Evangelist”. To which you would be well entitled to ask as I did, “WTF”?

Now call me old-fashioned, but when I think of the word ‘evangelist’, I don’t usually imagine anything remotely IT related. And, I certainly don’t feel an overwhelming need to be saved from myself by anyone brave enough to describe themselves a technology risk management “Evangelist”. Oh my Lordy, no.

‘Evangelist’ for me conjures up scenes reminiscent of The Blues Brothers - a Pentecostal church, a beam of intense white light & Jake & Elwood Blues back-flipping down the isles, encouraged by the Reverend Cleophus (Jame Brown) and his choir. And there’s not a single IT person, or a Cisco 1800 router, in sight.

You may laugh as I did, but its far from the only example of incredulity spreading into IT job titles. Just the other day for instance, I saw another one;

IBM apparently has, get this, a “Vice President of Development for Emerging Business Opportunity in Digital Convergence”.

What a mouthful! And a rather embarrassing title, if you ask me. Leave aside for a moment the momentous extra printing costs in additional ink required on their business cards. Just imagine for a moment - coming across Mr or Ms VP, D.E.B.O.D.C, IBM (even the acronym is lengthy) at a weekend bbq, while attempting to make polite conversation (in between mouthfuls of sausage sandwich), you unwittingly ask them what their full job title is. By the time they’d have got half way through telling you, you’d have quietly slipped away to find the nearest beer fridge and a far more stimulating conversation, like for instance, knitting.

I would be interested in hearing from you of any other stupid job titles you may have come across.

Big Galoot