Are tech job titles elitist?

More than three quarters (7 out of 9) of common tech job titles presented to a nationally representative sample of 1,000 UK adults failed the plausibility test, suggesting that people hoping to enter the tech industry could face unnecessary barriers to entry.

The study, conducted by digital agency Digital Media Stream, presented a selection of real and fake job titles and asked participants to select whether a job was real or fake. It identified a significant comprehension gap between the tech industry and the average adult. On average, 60% of respondents either answered incorrectly or said they didn’t know. Just 22% of participants believe ‘growth hacker’ is a real job. Only ‘Data architect’ and ‘SEO manager’ were descriptive enough to pass the plausibility test.

In a related poll of tech industry professionals conducted as part of the same study, 4 in 10 (39%) said they believed people outside of the tech industry would struggle to understand what they did based on their job title alone and 72% admit ‘dumbing down’ their actual title when speaking to people outside their industry.

“The sheer variety and pace of change in our technical capability means the days of self-explanatory job titles like marketing manager or graphic designer are long gone,” says occupational psychology expert, Professor Sir Cary Cooper. He continues: “There’s a trend for jazzing up technical jobs by adding meaningless suffixes like ‘ninja’ ‘rockstar’ or ‘guru’ – and while ostensibly harmless to those ‘in the know’ – unless the job title communicates at least something about the specifics of the role, industries risk alienating otherwise ideal candidates. The research suggests that to anyone outside of the software or tech industries, these job titles are obscure to the point of being useless.”

Similarly, Digital Media Stream’s Simon Leeming, says: “As an industry we do run the risk of being too insular in our thinking. While my colleagues may understand exactly what a growth hacker or a scrum master does, it’s quite clear that someone outside of the industry would have no frame of reference to even take a decent guess.

“In terms of internal and investor relations, this could pose a problem. Imagine a large corporate entity with a modern tech capability alongside more traditional functions like manufacturing, HR and finance. How is someone with basic tech industry understanding going to relate to a colleague if they don’t understand their role?

“There is a risk that technical professions may isolate themselves linguistically from their colleagues. We should look at stopping that from happening.”

 Here are the results of the study in full: