So a couple of weeks ago, I walked into the office and my boss tails me to my desk.  He says, "I’ve got good news and bad news."  Craving to be left with something to complain about for the rest of the day (Thursdays are boring), I take the good news first.

"You’ve been promoted to Senior Application Engineer."

Well that was unexpected…but quite good news indeed.  The bad news was that I was only getting a pat-on-the-head raise, but that can be dealt with later.  Overall, I was impressed.

So imagine my surprise this morning when the boss starts doling out paperwork to the team that we are all now "Network Engineers."  Ok, still Senior Network Engineer, but..wtf, mate?  I have a hard enough time explaining that for historic reasons, a CAH Application Engineer has nothing to do with writing code.  (I implement Neat Third Party Stuff into our medication dispensing and infusion products.)  The rationale isn’t clear, but at least it’s plausible.  But making the jump to Network Engineer is such a misnomer that it knocks off a valuable chunk of professional credibility right off the bat.  Not that I’m looking for a new job any time soon, but explaining this 5 or 6 times at Lunch 2.0 every month would get old fast.

Calling myself a network engineer is about as accurate as calling the HR group who championed this initiative a team of janitors.  The only "networking" I do is the social kind.  I don’t know if I have any real input into HR’s R&D roadmapping, but I’m at least going to bring up my concerns at our group lunch tomorrow.  And if all else fails, I’ll just tell everyone I’m making twitter for nurses.