project engineer?

Chief Whip.

Joe Gwinn

Kindergarten Teacher is more correctly described as: "Herder of Cats, Kids, and Engineers" (none of which can be successfully herded).

Titles are important. I was hired at a marine radio manufacturer in about 1973 along with several other engineers. Management decided that we need business cards to pass around at the Wescon, Nepcon, SF Boat show, etc. Oddly, none of us actually had proper titles. Rather than ask, the personnel department simply looked up our salaries on the WEMA (western electronics manufacturing association) salary scale and printed cards with the associated WEMA title. Mine said "Junior Engineer". Of course, I immediately exploded and demanded new cards with a proper title commensurate with my job function, not my salary.

When that didn't happen, I built a crude steel rule die and punched out the offending title from some of the offending business cards. I handed out about 100 cards in a year. Nobody commented on the slot in the middle of the card. After about a year, I was about to lose my faith in the importance of job titles, when I received a box of 500 replacement cards inscribed with "Member of the Technical Staff". This was allegedly an attempt to reduce the pirating of employees by recruiters and better paying companies. In disgust, I had printed 500 cards of my own design, with the self-assigned title of "RF Design Engineer". That lasted for my 8 years at the company. During this time the issue of titles and business cards was generally ignored for the existing salaried employees, but carefully orchestrated for the newly hired.

On a sunny day (Sat, 14 Aug 2021 10:16:15 -0700) it happened Jeff Liebermann snipped-for-privacy@cruzio.com wrote in snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Genius?

So far, "Systems Engineer".

"Project Manager" (maybe PMP certified if you care, which you probably don't)

"Project Lead" (not 'Development Lead').

"Project Manager" again.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

There's nothing wrong with "Engineer."

My best friend is (well was..) a software engineer, we had many years of chats on Friday evenings over beer at his business. He has since retired and is off riding his motorcycle in Ireland at this time...

John :-#)#

Sorry, but I don't know how to drive a train.

How would you react today of you were presented with business cards with "Junior Engineer" as your job title? Should it matter? Probably not if someone overshot with the title. But it would matter if someone assigned you a title beneath your perceived standing.

It also depends on how important the individual and/or the company considers the title. At one time, it was customary to accompany an elevation in position with a change of title. I've been disconnected from corporate America for too long to know if this is still practiced.

When visiting Japan, I learned (the hard way) that there is a very specific ritual required when meeting with company officials, some of which involved my keeping the officials business card in front of me while we talked. There were plenty other protocol details that were rather strange, but the business card was a key part of the ceremony.

Since I'm now retired, my biz card no longer needs or has a title:

I've seen actual titles like Technical Evangelist and Futurist.

Big companies often have a futurist career track. The endpoint is "Fellow." Collins/UTC has around 200 of them, and they get together now and then in somewhere nice to swap ideas.

Often these people are very important but nobody reports to them. If they report to anyone, it's nominal, just the path their paycheck goes through.

I know one who has two offices and two nominal bosses in different cities, so nobody is ever sure what he's up to.

But I want a project engineer.

Hardly anyone uses cards any more. They can be handy for other things, like small insulators.

"Applied Philosopher", since they are given vague constraints and have to ask "when you say X, what do you mean by X?". "Elucidator" would also fit that bill.

I've never given any thought to a job title.

In my first job I was doing exactly the same when I was an "Assistant Engineer Grade 2", "Assistant Engineer Grade 1" and "Engineer".

In my second job I sometimes had my line manager working for me on a project.

I hand mine out when customers visit the store, or I'm talking with someone on the street. They sometimes turn up decades later leading a new customer to my business...

I still consider them a cheap form of advertising, but I've always used embossed lettering on gold cards - they look good and I get compliments on the cards often. And folks remember them.

John :-#)#

Hmm, Sounds like you want a project 'closer'. Someone to nail down all the specs, boms, drawings, and get the 'thing' out the door. (I suck at project closing.) George H.

A project engineer is in from start to finish, but usually doesn't do all the low level design or code. But might do some.