How do you know if you are an consultant, an engineer or an architect. Are you really a manager like your title says ? Is your title ambiguous and you are doomed to travel your professional life with no identity or sense of community.

I have since the begining of my career struggled with my identity. Initially it was easy, I knew no better and happily accepted my as "system administrator" or "systems programmer". I still had little or no chance of providing a simple explanation to my family what I did. answer: "Oh Brad, he works in computers!" response "Ahhhh!"

Then I as I started dealing with outside organizations, the business card became a currency of work. My job title and my business card title increasingly moved apart. My job title became a fixed descriptor within a HR system to define a pay grade, and my business card title became a ceremonial exchange of seniority and importance.

Recently titles have been used to determine membership to a community. Am I an engineer, architect, manager or consultant. None of these have a clear definition, so I could call myself a "Consulting architectural engineering manager", but the printers would have a headache with the business card, so again I choose. If I choose "architect" then I am no longer considered suitably technical to be part of the engineering community, if I choose "engineer" automatically the communities believe I have lost all knowledge of customer requirements and business objectives. If I choose consultant, then both the former communities recognise me as a generator of paper for the sole purpose of keep bookselve companies in business. To be a manager, traditionally describes leasdership and importance, but to most it brings the destain of a bureaucrat.

So mostly I pick titles that cannot possibly be attributed with any meaning. "Program Manager", "Engagement Manager" because the automatic response is to ask me what that means. This gives me the opportunity to describe more about what I actually do, in context of the person I am talking about.. Unfortunately that strategy has its limitations. I now belong to know recognizable community, a outcast amoungst my peers :)

So now I ponder am I a architect or engineer. I think the answer is the former, and I will try to explain why.

In simple terms, an engineer to me is a person who takes a set of requirements specification and turns them into some tangible product, or a person who takes a creative idea (requirements without a customer) and turns them into a product/technology. In a "2.0" world, taking multiple products are putting them together to create another new product is valid engineering. To work with a truely gifted engineer is a great experience, and one I have experienced a few times.

An architect however takes a users vision of there requirements and turns them into a tangible customer requirements specifications for engineers to execute. Additionally, architects can take products and work out frameworks (architectures) of how to put them together to meet various visions (for theoretical customers).

Its the same paradigm as the building industry. Within the building industry the same sliding scale of people exist within those two roles. There are architects whose plans are very engineering in nature and there are engineers who works is very architecturally valid. So there is always a blurring between these roles.

I think within that continuum you must be capable of existing at one end of the spectrum (technology execution vs. customer vision) to consider yourself in that role. So I think my alignment is more with customers than technology, which makes architect the more suitable choice.

Its obvious as the career journey continues, I will still call myself whatever happens to be the move effective title and label to accomodate the ceremony of business, but I am what I am!