(I keep a personal journal and I ran across this entry from December 2005. A lifetime ago! I decided it was worth re-posting because I know quite a few twentysomethings and the thing is, they all work very hard and feel like they get paid too little but sometimes when they think about getting promoted, they think about allllll the rewards that come with promotions and none of the responsibility. So this still felt relevant. Or, maybe I’m still suffering from a turkey hangover.)
I’ve been thinking a little bit about titles lately.
Over the past few years, my husband and I, in our respective workplaces, received promotions that made us a Senior-something. Now we both have “Senior” in our job titles. What this means to me: we have both hit the top rung of middle management. We are NOT management, meaning, Management with a capital “M”–we are the top people reporting to the managers. We may directly manage people ourselves, but only in very small numbers.
So the next level is usually indicated by some type of “Director” in the title. This is the lower rung of management, as opposed to the top rung of middle management. And then you move up to “Vice President,” although some companies seem to call everyone at the Director level a Vice President, and then finally you get the “Chief” something-or-other in your title. When you get “Chief” anything, it usually means that now, you ARE management. “Vice President” or “Director” sometimes admits you to that pantheon, but “Chief” is more a guaranteed indicator that you’ve arrived.
The reason I think about these titles: I think about what they mean, in terms of perks (more money?), stature (within your organization and your field), and responsibility (you usually have more people reporting to you, more people sucking up to you, and more people blaming you for why everything sucks). I think about whether they’re desirable or not. There are certain people who are ambitious, and who badly want to advance up those title rungs, and there are certain people who are talented, and seem to get pushed up the ladder, and then of course there are people who are both–talented and ambitious.
I sometimes think I’m talented, but I can never decide if I’m ambitious. Dave doesn’t feel he’s either talented or ambitious, he just thinks he works really, really hard and is an immensely reliable person (this is very true, although I myself think he’s talented). So I have no idea whether we’ll ever end up being Management or not, even though we’ve advanced at a fairly steady pace in our professional lives. Maybe we’ve hit our ceiling. Maybe we’ll take a left turn, like the couple who quit their financial analyst jobs and bought a boat and sailed up the Pacific coast until they eventually founded a bed and breakfast in Seattle (which is how I met them, and heard their story, because we stayed at the bed and breakfast, which by the way was really fabulous).
The thing is, it is just really hard to tell how much of your life is dictated by your own personal wants and desires, and how much of it is dictated by an anxiety about achieving, and bringing home the bacon, and earning enough money to support your kids’ college educations, and one’s retirement, and keeping one’s health benefits. And the other thing is, career advancement is such a devil’s pact. On one hand, it is unquestionably nicer to be recognized for one’s achievements, and to be looked up to as a leader, and to MAKE MORE MONEY, and some people enjoy having more power and authority, but at the same time, there is no doubt that the more you advance, the more stressful your job becomes.
It almost makes you wonder if there should be stress tests required before people advance to management position. In the interviews for management positions, people should be asked questions like: “Do you have a regular exercise routine? Do you get heartburn regularly? Would it keep you awake at night if you had to fire someone? What’s your cholesterol level?”
If I were to think about the titles that best fit the type of job I would like to have, I would come up with something like the following:
Idea Person
Writer-and-Thinker-in-Residence
Constructive Kibbitzer
Funmeister
Planner-for-the-future
And the thing is, even while I do all of the above in my current job, all of the above things are marginalized because of all the crap one has to put up with in ANY job. So I guess the challenge is, how do I make my job more about the above things, and less about the crap? If my job were more about the above things, and less about the crap, I don’t think I would ever, ever want to be a Director or a Vice President or a Chief Somebody or Other. Ever.
Minna Jung Consulting 