Tag: title inflation

DOE (Depends on Experience)

DOE. Depends on Experience.

They showed up on a recruiter’s LinkedIn post advertising opportunities at an “amazing” company. Senior Accountant or Manager, DOE. Senior Accounting Manager or Controller, DOE. Salary ranges also DOE.

Why?

Title and salary should not depend on the experience of the candidate. They should depend on the nature and requirements of the job. I have discussed title inflation before, so I will try not to repeat myself.

There is a moat the size of an ocean between a Senior Accounting Manager and a Controller. So which is it? Is the role a Senior Manager job or a Controller job?

If you need a Controller, hire a Controller, and pay for a Controller. Hiring a Senior Accounting Manager and expecting them to somehow do the job of a Controller is setting both the candidate and the company up for failure.

You’ll get Senior Accounting Manager output, and everything else will fall through the cracks.

But the candidate can grow into the role, right? Someone might argue.

How? I ask.

A company that can’t tell the difference between a Senior Accounting Manager and a Controller doesn’t have the accounting leadership to develop one into the other. So who exactly is going to grow this candidate into the role?

A recruiter reached out to me the other day for a “Controller track, Accounting Manager” role.

I laughed. Where is the track?

These imaginary tracks sound less like a well-defined road and more like a self-guided tour through a forest. No map, no compass. Good luck getting to the other side.

I used to work with a woman whose title was Senior Manager, Fixed Assets. Fixed assets, for the non-accountants, are the physical assets of a company. Think equipment, land, buildings, vehicles. Things the company uses to create value.

She was six years away from retirement and wanted to hire her replacement. The role she was really hiring for was Junior Accountant.

Her pitch to new hires: work hard and in six years you can sit in my chair and have my job. She hired two young people who quit in quick succession, unimpressed with what she had to offer.

She then hired an older, and as she put it, more “mature” candidate who would have the patience to wait his turn.

I pointed out that a forty-year-old with over a decade in accounting accepting a Junior Accountant position was possibly a red flag.

She had to terminate him after a week because after five days he still had not managed to learn how to turn on his computer.

She couldn’t understand why there were no qualified takers for this great opportunity. Why weren’t more people willing to take a junior role with low pay that would eventually transition into a middle manager role with possibly still low pay?

This sounds like a joke, but it gets worse. Even that laughable opportunity didn’t actually exist.

Six years is an eternity in corporate America. The company could have been bought and sold many times over. Her department could have been outsourced to a third-party firm, which I saw happen to other teams during my tenure. Or the company could have decided to move the whole function upstream to corporate.

This was not her company, soit was not her track to promise.

It’s time to stop. Stop advertising two roles as one. Stop posting senior roles at junior prices. Stop promising career paths that don’t exist and that aren’t yours to offer.

This is the role. This is the pay. We hope you grow with us, but right now we need this job filled and we need the right person to fill it.

That’s not cold. That’s honest. And honest is what candidates deserve.

The Worst Job in Accounting

Believe it or not, becoming an accounting manager was aspirational when I started out.

Being a manager meant making more money, having more freedom and flexibility, and having real power and autonomy. There used to be a clear distinction between managers and working managers. Managers oversaw teams: onboarding, training, reviewing, and assigning work. Working managers did all of that plus carried a full load of their own deliverables.

That distinction no longer exists. Now all managers are working managers, juggling workloads sometimes heavier than their direct reports’ while also being expected to manage their teams in their downtime.

Devaluing the title destroyed what made the job aspirational.

The worst part is that we did it on purpose.

In a recent episode of the Optimist Economy podcast (recommended listen), titled “No Overtime for the Supervisor of Sandwiches,” economist Kathryn Anne Edwards discusses overtime. Midway through, my ears perked up. She puts words to something I’ve observed for years but couldn’t quite articulate.

Edwards discusses how in 2004 Congress raised the salary cap for overtime eligibility. In response, businesses did what she calls the “systematic managerial titling of workers.” To avoid paying overtime, companies took employees who had just become eligible and gave them managerial titles. Managers are exempt. Problem solved. One of the most outrageous examples: hostesses becoming Directors of First Impressions.

I am not an economist, but this clarifies so much of what I’ve seen in my career.

Early in my career, I reached a breaking point waiting for a promotion. I was ready to quit when the company’s CFO called me to his office. He argued that the problem was not the lack of a promotion, but my attachment to a title. His words: we all know what you do for this company and we value it, so what does it matter what your title is?

I looked at the nameplate on his desk. It read: Cofounder / Chief Financial Officer.

I said: so we can change that to Janitor, and you wouldn’t mind, right? I mean, we all know this company wouldn’t be what it is without you.

He paused. Then he smiled. You’re right, he said.

Titles matter. They matter to the people doing the work. They matter when you’re looking for your next opportunity. A title is one of the few data points a potential employer uses to understand the scope of what you did. And it matters on the other side too: when a candidate evaluates a role, the title is how they gauge what the job is and what fair compensation should look like.

By overusing and outright abusing managerial titles, companies broke the compass. Accounting Manager has become the single worst job in accounting.

And things are getting worse.

In recent months, recruiters keep reaching out to me about Accounting Manager and Senior Accounting Manager roles. Their opening line is always the same: this role is expected to run the entire accounting function.

They outline the responsibilities. I listen. Then I let them know that what they’re describing is a Controller, not a Manager, and I advise them to go back to their hiring team and rethink the title and the compensation package.

The title inflation that started as a way to avoid paying overtime has now become something else entirely. It’s a way to get senior-level work at mid-level prices. That’s not a broken system. That’s the system working exactly as designed.