Well - not the dictionary meaning of the word - that's pretty obvious.

What is harder to decide is where the line for what can be considered "pretentious" is drawn.  A quick example:

• Having an obvious car registration is, in my opinion, pretentious (e.g. AA11 YAU).
• Yet having a subtle car registration is (again in my opinion), not pretentious (e.g. AZ25 UAY).

And so it is with job titles - the reason for my blogging bugbear.

One of my pet peeves (and I have a whole zoo of these pet peeves, so bear (har-har) with me), is the blatant pretentiousness of job titles these days.  One isn't a salesperson any more - one is an Account Executive.  One isn't a shelf-stacker any more, one is a Day Replenishment - Customer Assistant now.

And so it is with IT - we have architects, engineers, executives, directors, yada-yada-yada.

As a personal "two-fingers-to-you" to this mentality, when I came to creating a new job title at WellDataTech, I wanted to have a title that was irreverent, ironic and somewhat self-deprecating.  My last job title was far too serious and vague (Stanley Yau - Consultant).  What, exactly, was I a Consultant of?  IT Support, Systems Architecture, Gynaecology?

And thus I have been, for the last two years, a Technology Evangelist.  A lovely, ridiculously meaningless title, yet one that vaguely describes the fact that I work in IT, and somehow gets across the message that my job is to preach to any and all who will listen about technology (and, specifically, Microsoft technologies).

Yet - I have noticed that people appear to be taking my job title seriously these days.  There is the wry smile, the nodding appreciation, the "this is so much better than my job title" comments.  "Pah", say I!  This was not the intention - the job title was meant to sound ludicrous, not be taken seriously.

Yet, looking at today's business cards, I see more and more people using the term evangelist.  Something must be done.

So - I have promoted myself (being in charge is cool - you can do arbitrary things like that - much to the chagrin of the more serious people in the company).  I have what I believe is a fitting new job title for someone of my importance, stature and immense technical omniscience.  However, I worry that with this new title, I may have crossed the boundary between what is ironically pretentious (the intention), and what is actually pretentious...!

So - please bow before the new me.  Stanley Yau - Grand Poobah of Technology Evangelism.

Have I stepped into the realms of utter pretentiousness...?

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