[Foundation-l] Upcoming tech hiring: CTO position split

Brion Vibber brion at wikimedia.org
Fri Aug 7 22:40:57 UTC 2009


On 8/7/09 2:35 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> By containing the magic words "senior" and "architect" the proposed
> "Senior Software Architect" is, in my experience, not inconsistent
> with industry naming practice for the most important tech guru who
> isn't primarily a manager.
>
> It's not a bad title in any case.
>
> (I was previously a manager and made a decision to hire a boss because
> I realized I'd rather be doing technical work than performance
> reviews.  These days I'm just a lowly 'Senior … Engineer', and I'm
> quite happy with that, thank you very much)

Exactly.

Now, if we really think of a _totally badass title_ before we get the 
business cards printed up I'm open to changing it, but honestly I like 
it and it fits the role I see for myself just fine. :)

Remember... titles are only useful when they're actually descriptive; 
otherwise they're just fluff. Certainly when I'm doing hiring I'm far 
more interested in asking what somebody did at their previous job than 
in what it was called...

-- brion



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