Job Titles and Roles: A Piece of the Pie
People are amazingly complex and amazingly simple creatures at the same time. 99.99999% of the people in the world cannot function without an external structure. People need an anchor.
In corporate world, people need a corporate anchor. That’s why corporate ladders exist. Typically it’s a spreadsheet. Written communication is absolutely essential for distributing information. Is it the only and correct type of communication for describing what you should do? Absolutely not.
I'd argue that the only Job Description anyone should ever need would be this:
“Solve the problems that make the business successful. Solve them well and in a reasonable amount of time.”
Did I just solve the corporate world? Absolutely not.
The simplicity in people is that they can’t function on this level of abstraction. It’s too vague. That’s when job descriptions are introduced. Are they precise? No. Do they capture the passage of time and gaining experience? No.
So then we have job levels for Workers. Junior, Medior (awful word, by the way), Senior. And then you’re what? Dead?
According to a random google search a Senior is considered a person with 5+ years of experience. Do all the people gain the same level of proficiency in an area when they spend the same amount of time on it? No.
Does this mean that after 5 years you have nowhere to go? Are you done when you’re Senior? Traditionally, you would switch to management as a career progression.
Except management is not a natural growth path, it’s a completely different kind of job. So you have Junior, Medior (still an awful word) and Senior Managers. And then you’re what? Dead? No, the next step is probably an Executive.
Except being an Executive is again a completely different kind of job. Are there Junior Executives? I need to sift through linkedin.
Also, hopefully for very obvious reasons, you don’t need as many Executives as you need Managers and you don’t need as many Managers as you need Workers that do the actual work.
Just joking, it is all actual work. Just different type of work. And you don’t need equal amounts of it in a corporation. The traditional look - the ladder - is also sometimes called a pyramid. And it indicates the growth trajectory. You “climb the ladder” to reach the top. To become the CEO. To have all the power there is.
What if it’s not a pyramid at all? What if it’s a pie chart? There is a finite amount of work that needs to be done in a corporation. Every employee contributes in a certain area. There is a large amount of work for Workers, moderate amount of work for Management and tiny amount of work for Executives. Let’s play with this for a bit.
In a circle, you don’t climb to the top. There is no top. You can move from one piece of the pie to a different one. You solve the problems that need solving. Some people are better at solving Management problems. Some people are better at being Workers. Were they born like that? No.
They learned by doing. How do you do new things in the pyramid? You get promoted up and then you get the opportunity to do those things. Except they are new to you so you suck at it. And if you suck at something for long enough, you get fired.
In the pie chart? Just work out with the other people who does what. If you suck at it, just go work on a different piece of the pie where you contribute more. If you can’t function on this level of abstraction and uncertainty, you might be a better fit for a corporate pyramid. There’s no shame in that.
If it was indeed a pie chart, the people’s responsibilites would fluently shift over time as the needs of the corporation would shift. A project needs different things when it’s new or when it’s running. Everybody would understand that the shared goal is this:
“Make the corporation successful.”
But then people would need to sacrifice their personal ambitions, hunger for power and all the other toxic bullshit that comes with the idea of climbing the ladder and having a career.
True equality is not for everyone.
Why am I writing this? I am formally changing a role at my job. Everybody is making a huge deal out of that. I don’t see why. There is no difference to me. It’s all work that needs to be done by someone to make the corporation successful. I am just going to do a slightly different piece of the work now.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people would be able to just shift what they work on without any fuss? A little bit of management here, a little bit of worker there… What a Wonderful World that would be where people would naturally need to learn skills that they don’t yet have because the people that have them are busy with something else.