I am reading the Druapl job postings. Granted they are from individual work places, but so many say the same thing, but want something different. Drupal designer, developer, themer, engineer, trainer, etc. Add prefixes like senior, junior, UI, front-end, and usability and things really get complicated.
Is a Senior Themer the same as a Junior Designer? I'm sure someone is getting mad at the suggestion, but I would not know the difference by reading some of these job posts.
I realize that companies can give any name to any job description, but shouldn't Drupal.org have some basic "authorized" job description for these "titles"?
JSCSJSCS
Freelance "Drupal Generalist"
Drupal Generalist:
A Drupal Generalist has knowledge, aptitude, or skill in a variety of Drupal CMS areas, as contrasted with a specialist. A jack of all trades, the Generalist hopes to someday become a Specialist in one or more areas, but generally learns the more technical aspects of Drupal only when they need a particular problem solved. Generalists' duties include creating Drupal websites using a variety of contributed modules and themes, as well as some customizing of those modules, themes, template and CSS files, and getting coffee for Senior Generalists when asked.
Comments
Don't forget titles like
Don't forget titles like ninja, rockstar and guru! Here's what we say on our jobs page at http://www.larks.la/jobs
I've also seen titles like "advisor" and "analyst" and I don't really know what they stand for other than a way for various companies to differentiate themselves in the market. I'm certain, though, that Drupal.org will never standardize in any official way on an authorized list of titles. As long as the Drupal community and software grows and changes, the number of positions and variety of disciplines involved in Drupal work will be immense — and be consistently open to interpretation.
This might be a good question to ask in the Consulting and Business group. Please edit this post and cross-post it to that group. I suggest posting a wiki page there, too, so that people can add their own lists of job titles. I think it might be both fun and informative.
Your description of a Drupal Generalist seems very out of place to me. Many people come to this community because they're looking for something different and getting coffee for a higher up is part of the world that they left when they came to Drupal. In the company I founded, I'm usually the one making coffee for people.
The Generalist title
The Generalist title description is meant in fun with a play on the unlikely difference between a Junior and Senior generalist.
James Sinkiewicz
Drupal Site Builder and Generalist
http://MyDrupalJourney.com
This thread on YC News is one
This thread on YC News is one of the best I've seen about the differences between junior and senior developers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493290
Who are you looking for?
Agreed. And "Traditional" titles like "Senior _____" and "Engineer" tend to differentiate positions only within the company -- as James has noticed. If companies aren't getting the candidates they want, it's probably that they spend too much time thinking up cool names and not enough communicating what they're really looking for.
Jobs rarely (if ever) are the same even if the title is the same, so having a "standard" lexicon to describe them is pointless. Better to know what you want and be clear when putting the job opportunity out there.
BTW, I'm pretty sure that james was speaking tongue-in-cheek about the coffee.
As official as you can get..
The roles in Drupal development page is probably as "official" (in Drupal-land ?) as you can get, since it is a wiki page rehashed from the tons of comments that went into synthesizing these roles.
Stay away from Drupalisms entirely
Describe what you want the person to do.
If you can't do that without descending into Drupal-specific terminology, you probably haven't defined the requirements for the job adequately.
In Drupal, there are (for better or worse) often numerous ways to accomplish the same task. Attempting to nail down a job description to a set of Drupal-specific functions ensures that you will narrow the scope of your applicants in ways that could be detrimental to the goal of finding the best candidates.
Focus on what you can do (or need done) first, and how it can be done with Drupal second. And be leery of anyone who can only propose one solution to a problem, as that indicates a lack of breadth that could be come problematic on larger, more complex projects over time.
FunnyMonkey