@rowan – It’s a bit of both, but mostly for other people’s. cards dont get me in the door – contacts do, I think. That wasn’t the case before.

@adam: thats pretty much what my _personal_ business card has. name/phone/email/web/twitter/flickr, and a photo on the back. No title.

It says “Guy Kawasaki” and his contact details.

I think our the web-industry in particular has a nasty streak of egotism. I’m guilty of this as well, and try to spend a good amount of energy fighting this vice, but every so often I’ll find myself talking some piece of work up with another developer, throwing in the “polymorphism”, “design by contract” and other terms.

We may be smart enough to build software that holds together in production, but let’s be honest, we’re not building sky scrapers here – we’re not sitting down for a year to deduce the structural loads being exerted on the bolts on the 22nd floor.

Ever since my first post-graduation job I’ve described myself as a “web developer in training” as a way of trying to stay humble. I’m only part-way through Hackers and Painters, but i’m already convinced to describe myself as a hacker.

My fear is that a lot of web devs spend many hours a year going on courses to learn about the newest branch of the agile religion, debating methodologies and Kanban (another elitist soft.eng term, Japanese for “billboard”) layouts, and then feel they’ve earnt the right to call themselves “Engineers” – you may know every agile book back to front, but if you’re not producing code then you’re not a programmer.

I think we’re craftsmen (if not artists), and we’re only as good as our last job.

Rowan Simpson is commenting on this post for instance; I think the only thing he needs to say is TradeMe, and people will understand his abilities.

I hope to be able to do the same one day; I am as good as the products I’ve helped create, so I hope to be able to list somewhere like Xero, and have that credibility represent my abilities.

The role of Junior Engineer is so blurred with System Administrator and HelpDesk/Support lately that you can’t tell any more where one starts and the other stops… even though they should be totally disparate roles.

I am contracted to a large auckland-based local govt body at the moment where they dont seem to have any idea about what each of those roles should do. Their Helpdesk staff have more administrative access to the production servers than the team I manage – who are tasked to design and deploy those systems(and provide post-deployment support)

The role of Infrastructure Architect here is simply an attachment to the Design Engineers, and doesn’t sit as a disparate role (nor do the other guys performing the role have any formal training/experience in what it means to be ‘architect’)

They have a seperate group of Software Architects and an EA sitting two floors away from the IT team, expressely don’t want to be involved in nor muddle with the ‘hardware rubbish’… and whom are the butt of all jokes litterally about their ‘descending from on high to mingle with the commoners’ (thanks: Jeremy Irons)

How should it be?… well, that is a question I too am probably not qualified to answer… but:

Helpdesk/Support should be considered ‘future administrators/engineers/developers in-training’. Treat them and train them as such – train them about your application, server, operating system or hardware but for heaven’s sake – dont give them the keys to your prize Aston if you don’t want them to crash it (Rates database and SMS server both went bye-bye over the weekend thanks to one such hell-desk jockey)

Then you come to Alex’s comment about ‘Apprentices’… hear hear!!!
In any other occupation you would apprentice for a number of years (usually 4 these days) to ‘learn your trade’. This should be true of Engineers AND developers – in other words, I agree with Alex. You dont see a 15 year old come to your restaurant and call himself a Chef (nay, he is an ‘apprentice chef’) Similarly, why should some kid fresh out of a Diploma of Systems Engineering or Software Development be called a Developer?

And all the way at the top – re-define the terms of Architect to actually mean something. My role at the moment is as an Infra. Architect – yet I am doing everything but… These guys just thought they needed an Infra Architect beause they didn’t have one – even though they now show (after I signed up here for a few months) that they didn’t really know what my ‘label’ was all about.

I would love to ‘demote’ myself (if it can be called so) to ‘Distinguished Engineer’ (or in Nic’s case ‘developer’)and actually fit my label. I like the phrase and think that it more befits what I like to do. I problem solve… I build infrastructure almost as what you hear called a ‘rapid prototype’ – I come in and complete projects that others have stalled on. Do I like architecture – yes… but I also like to build the tools I design, if you know what I mean.

If being an architect means ascending two floors up to sit in a swish office where it is quiet and totally devoid of any excitement or challenges – then that is definitely not for me!

A distinguished developer to me often represents someone with raw intellectual horsepower, or the developer you can throw at a problem who produces quality solutions ‘n’ times faster than his associates. They also often seem to be the kind of people who don’t enjoy developing business apps.
Obviously under scrutiny there’s a lot of overlap – but that’s just what leaps into my head when I hear either title… I’m not sure where/when I start developing those persona’s though. They probably don’t marry up with reality.

This is a popular topic at the Architecture Chat, especially as a lot of the attendees have “escaped” into contracting or running their own company, it’s often common to analyse what drove us there, and if there’s anything (i.e. money, opportunities etc.) that would draw us back in.

My biggest problem is with Senior – Senior is totally screwed up title in our industry – I know plenty of other industries where senior _means_ something… I was having a conversation with a nameless Dev Manager from a large Dev house in NZ recently where he has “Senior” developers who can’t even be trusted to complete simple tasks on their own.

Hell I became a Senior developer by the time I was 22, and I only officially entered the industry when I was 20… that’s ridiculous.

My personal feeling is that:

Junior is replaced with Apprentice (and treated as such, there should be a big difference in pay, and a lot more mentoring involved).

Intermediate just becomes Developer, and covers the current pay scale for High junior through to high senior at the moment.

Senior starts at the current high of the Senior pay scale, and continues towards the skys – with less focus on incremental pay increases, just readjustments as the business better understands your capabilities and value to the business.

The perception should be that a Senior developer could easily leave at any time to start their own company/contract as a high-demand candidate etc. so the industry pay would reflect this, and filling a senior developer role would be a more rigorous interview process then it is currently.