Hiring Disparity
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Not even close. For example, to sit for the CPA exam, which has four parts, you have to have a certain number of logged hours in certain types of work, primarily tax and audit (two separate things). And to sit for the CPA exam, unless they've changed it, you are required to have at least at Bachelor's degree IN accounting. Less than 10% of people get their CPA license on the first try. Most need at least two rounds. The thing about accounting is that it's as much knowing tax law, if not more, as it is how to "do the numbers". My father is a CPA and says that so much of accounting is learning the law that makes up a given scenario, etc. Without hands-on experience, and a lot of it, you would never pass the CPA exam, regardless of how much you studied.
Requirements are silly, though. Logged hours means that you are working in the field prior to certification. So that's an advanced cert. I know that CPA is way beyond "accountant." Same for MBA. You are supposed to be a career manager before attempting an MBA. The CPA exam is hard, I understand, but I think we are talking more of a "normal" account level certification here. IT has plenty of exams that require "logged hours" but they still don't get harder, they just get weird because anyone can log hours.
Knowing tax law is just learning from books though, right? Not like CPAs can practice law as attorneys before taking the exam.
Having to have a degree in a field is just more paper. They do that to RNs too.
Not really. The law of tax and such is interesting because it's very much an applied study. You don't just sit down to study tax law for the sake of studying it. You work on a return and when you run across something (this is a very loose interpretation), you research the laws that would affect this situation and see how each do or don't apply. Also, the extent of a CPA "practicing law" is just holding POA on a client's behalf.
The thing is, though, that in the accounting field, unless you obtain a CPA license, you will not go very far. Most firms won't let you go beyond a junior level position without a CPA license. So you can't get to a senior-level position, a manager's position, and especially not a partner.
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Especially as IT is a department name and really not a name for anything else. IT as a title really only exists with the "IT Department" and to a lesser extent "IT Professionals" the latter being something that should probably be replaced with something better. To be a manager of IT refers to managing a department or IT pros. To what else could it refer?
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@thanksaj said:
Not really. The law of tax and such is interesting because it's very much an applied study. You don't just sit down to study tax law for the sake of studying it.
You can say that about any field. You don't just sit down to learn Windows administration for the sake of studying it. Yet people do that to pass certifications.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Managers don't just have to manage people.
That's what the term means.
Well, it's not my understanding of the term.
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@thanksaj said:
The thing is, though, that in the accounting field, unless you obtain a CPA license, you will not go very far. Most firms won't let you go beyond a junior level position without a CPA license. So you can't get to a senior-level position, a manager's position, and especially not a partner.
Understood, but in IT most people never move up from being junior people. The pyramid of IT has a vast number of people on the lower levels and only an extremely few high up. It seems like there are many because the pyramid itself is so huge (millions and millions of people.) But the base to top ratio is big.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, it's not my understanding of the term.
How do you define the term? What is a manager to you?
I think if you ask normal people what a "manager" does, even people in high school, or retirees, or teachers, or engineers... they will almost all respond that a manager is a person that oversees the work of other people.
Manager, after teacher, might be one of the most universally understood job terms. I can't imagine many jobs having a more strict definition.
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@nadnerB said:
Well, this is not the article that I was looking for (insert Star Wars joke) but it's close enough: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497891/Renaissance-man
Also a really good movie with Danny Devito
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@scottalanmiller said:
How do you define the term? What is a manager to you?
I think if you ask normal people what a "manager" does, even people in high school, or retirees, or teachers, or engineers... they will almost all respond that a manager is a person that oversees the work of other people.
I define it as someone involved in management (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/management) ie "The process of dealing with or controlling things or people". In this case, the "thing" is IT.
I guess that either I'm not normal, or you're not normal, or the UK has a different definition to the US.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
How do you define the term? What is a manager to you?
I think if you ask normal people what a "manager" does, even people in high school, or retirees, or teachers, or engineers... they will almost all respond that a manager is a person that oversees the work of other people.
I define it as someone involved in management (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/management) ie "The process of dealing with or controlling things or people". In this case, the "thing" is IT.
I guess that either I'm not normal, or you're not normal, or the UK has a different definition to the US.
I get where you're coming from, but Scott is right in this one. Managers manage people. Correct me if I'm wrong @scottalanmiller but would IT Director be a more appropriate title in this case for @Carnival-Boy ?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
A friend saw a post about IT techs that I posted and asked me what is an it? I had to explain IT duties could be: computer repair, networking, malware/AV cleanup, backup management etc.
That's shocking. That's up there with not knowing what a teacher or engineer is. Although, in reality, most people only pretend to know what an engineer is and don't actually know much about the field at all and would have no idea what an industrial engineer, manufacturing systems engineer, civil engineer, ceramics engineer or other fields do.
But a sad sad reality. In the 90s ASE was pushing hard to change the public's expectation of a mechanic (think Cooter on Dukes of Hazzard) to an Automotive Technician that using high tech tools and has the latest schooling on the latest vehicles.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I define it as someone involved in management (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/management) ie "The process of dealing with or controlling things or people". In this case, the "thing" is IT.
I guess that either I'm not normal, or you're not normal, or the UK has a different definition to the US.
I've never met a person that wasn't trying to promote their own title that disagreed with the concept that a manager is a manager of people. Only in SMB IT where people are trying to promote a title that they themselves possesses have I never heard it even suggested that a manager of "things" would be called a manager. Especially in IT where a "manager of things" is called an administrator. Given that there is a specific term for managing IT devices and a specific one for managing people it's most dramatic in the IT field where it's so clear what they mean.
So why not just tell people you are a manager then rather than mentioning IT at all? In the US, at least, "manager" is a title for managing people, always. I've been a manager, it was nothing like working in IT. But I called myself a manager and people knew exactly what I did without any additional explanation. If I called myself a manager now, people would think that I did exactly the opposite of what I do.
The Oxford dictionary defines the word, not the job.
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Also, @scottalanmiller and @Minion-Queen's point about mangers being the least qualified at what it is the people who they manage do, is also spot on. I think something that bears some confusion is that many people feel if they are in a position of oversight of one kind or another, they are a manager. However, manager really implies that their job is management, which means people. This is one of those connotative vs denotative things. If you look at the denotation of management, as you did, sure, slap any word in front of it and technically it's not incorrect. However, look at the connotation and it's a different story.
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@thanksaj said:
I get where you're coming from, but Scott is right in this one. Managers manage people. Correct me if I'm wrong @scottalanmiller but would IT Director be a more appropriate title in this case for @Carnival-Boy ?
A Director manages a department. The rule of thumb would be that only managers in a department would report to a director of a department. Often directors do have direct reports, but if they only have direct reports they should use the term manager, not director. A director needs at least some indirect reports.
It's not super struct department to director mapping, but it's the general rule. Start from there and deviate as necessary. In a Fortune 100, for example, a director might require a budget of $100m+ and meet director rules. At a bank, for example, it is common that only Senior VPs would report to a Director. A Senior VP might have a direct report or two who are at their level but non-managers (like I was) but mostly VPs report to them. VPs would have more direct reports, but mostly AVPs report to them and so forth.
If you run an entire department including its managers, Director is an okay term to use. Anything less (I've been a "Director" with ~100 direct reports but no sub-managers) and you are in "is this a real title" territory that I would not venture into and there is a reason why even with 100 reports I don't keep "Director" on my resume because I didn't really meet the qualifications.
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Director is certainly a looser term than manager. That goes without saying. Each company has to define what a director is. Manager is something that you can say to anyone and they all have the same idea. But Director is part of executive management. So consider if you would be comfortable describing yourself as an "executive level manager" to see if director seems appropriate.
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What people often expect is that a Director of IT or a Director of Operations is at a certain executive level and does the same or nearly the same job role as a CIO or a COO, but is not the CIO or COO. This could be that they are simply a junior CIO/COO level. Or it might mean that the company is so large that a single CIO can't oversee all of the things that need to be done so have their own role split into many.
A Director would imply more than managing people and managers, but interfacing with the business like a CIO does. So a Director of IT would be expect to see an MBA more than seeing an MS IT, for example. Just like you do with CIO.
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Part of the other issue with most IT Jobs is you aren't wearing just one "hat" or title either, so it makes it even harder to describe what you do.
Example my full true title should be:
President
Managing Director
Helpdesk Manager
HelpDesk Dispatcher
L1
L2
Business Development Manager
Sales
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Human ResourcesI am sure I do more than that I just can't think of it right now and am tired just writing that out.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I've never met a person that wasn't trying to promote their own title that disagreed with the concept that a manager is a manager of people.
I'm not trying to promote anything. I manage people and I couldn't care less about job titles. I'm just telling you that in the UK this is not the definition.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Part of the other issue with most IT Jobs is you aren't wearing just one "hat" or title either, so it makes it even harder to describe what you do.
That's why it is important to have defined Generalist titles for IT Pros. The Specialists have these titles. Generalists often covet them and use them when not appropriate (helpdesk people using "System Admin" for example.) This causes no end of problems. There need to be good, standard, universal titles for Generalist IT Pros, mostly for those working in the SMB.
The problem still arises that the Generalist at company X with three years of experience and Generalist at company Y with three years of experience will be so vastly different that there is often no simply way to exchange them. Each company is so completely unique. Even if both companies are 65 people and have the same budgets. One might work on AD and Windows and have a ProSafe filewall and a flat network. The other might spend their days tweaking Cisco on their all Mac network without any servers. One might spend all day walking the halls talking to users, finding tweaks, making things smooth. The other might be putting out infrastructure fires and not even know what people do there.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm not trying to promote anything. I manage people and I couldn't care less about job titles. I'm just telling you that in the UK this is not the definition.
So what are US managers called in the UK? What is the title for people who manage people as a profession?
What in the US is called a "management professional" or a "career manager."
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@scottalanmiller said:
Director is certainly a looser term than manager.
My understanding is that a Director is simply someone who is a member of the company's Board of Directors and doesn't relate to their actual role. They have to be declared to the government (companies house) and their names and titles are on public record. Not my area though, so I'm not claiming anything here.
