I'm a professional cynic, but my heart's not in it.

These days in any large corporation, certainly in every software company I've worked for morale, position, wages, job title and advancement are crucial factors to any employee that the HR department invariably gets wrong.

One of the problems is that for most companies advancement "up the chain" is usually only via becoming a manager, it goes something like this.

Bob is an excellent engineer, Bob is promoted to senior Engineer.
Bob is an excellent senior Engineer, Bob is promoted to Management.
Bob has a rotten time and hates his job and quits.

Very rarely there is any kind of concept of advancement for engineers beyond graduate, engineer, senior engineer, architect. Once you hit senior engineer there's only architect to go to, and once you hit architect you're probably doing management.

These roles are also hideously ill-defined; often senior engineers are expected to project/product manage and this is hardly reflected in their job specification.
It's all very confusing, annoying and - frankly - archaic.
So what is there to do? What can we replace it with? What can we possibly use to model our job titles, rewards and goals on that todays engineer can understand.

Easy. MMORPGs.

Hear me out here; it all makes sense, and is pretty damn easy.
Instead of jumping to senior engineer from engineer you are an engineer with a LEVEL, at different levels you are expected to do certain things, you are awarded JXP (Job XP) as you do well which will advance you towards your next LEVEL, (and therefore pay grade) as well as Extra responsibilities.
For example;
A level 1 engineer is allowed to modify existing code, make check-ins only after peer review and authorisation from a level 10 engineer or higher. They can raise bugs but not close them. ETC.
A level 10 engineer can modify existing code, create their own modules, check-in after peer review and can close bugs.
Higher level grants you more responsibilities, more abilities, indeed these could also be granted in skill trees (coding, check ins, design, etc) that are granted as you level.

So a level 1 engineer must have skills of at least coding 1, check-ins 1, design 1
A level 10 engineer must have to have coding 10, checkin 10, design 10 (or whatever)

So rather than XP you could even have it as a skill based advancement system!

But what about titles? Easy. At certain levels you get a new title. A level 1-5 engineer could be a graduate, levels 6-10 is an engineer, 11-15 senior, 16-20 principal, 21-25 elite, 26-30 epic and so on...

Wouldn't you want your official company title to be "Epic Engineer" ?

But what about bonuses, I hear you cry (down voices, DOWN!)
Easy - quests!

Complete a quest in order to get a bonus; or a set amount of XP towards your bonus (BXP)
So for a full bonus every half year you would need, say, 2000 BXP; your manager sets you the following goals
1000 BXP - Complete project A
500 BXP - Update wiki pages
500 BXP - Complete docs for project B

Scalable, measureable goals. Depending on what you complete depends on how much of the maximum bonus you get.

But there's more, oh yes!

What if you DO want to be management as well?
Well, simple - MULTI CLASSING (Or multiple skill branch requirements)
You start some levels in Manager and advance those instead, with similar progress requirements.

That's the plan, anyway - so if I ever start a company I'm going to be a Level 100 Epic President.

Then I can start working towards class titles ;)

High backed leather office chair, small rip in seat: £ Free.
(Can drop off in Cambridge area if needed)

King sized Argos wooden slat bed + Mattress; will require deconstruction and then reconstruction! £ 20
(Pick up by preference, but can probably deliver (Cambridge area), but then it's down to you to work out how to build it!)

That reminds me you know.

Acronyms that don't deliver. Or rather, perhaps their over use. Communication is a tricky weasel, sometimes you think you've got it by the tail but then after you release it to slink through the grass of freedom it doesn't quite deliver the trouser experience you were intending, because that's ferrets.

Anyway...

I think, I think it's time for new acroymns to express the real levels of actual amusement out there, let's stick with one emotion for the time being, Rome wasn't built in a day and all that malarky.

But I'll batter up on a biggy, hilarity. Oh yes, the lols¹, the rotflmao and the lpmt².
They're just not representative; I defy anyone who has used rotflmao to say that before typing that they were actually doing what they said they were.
So my, admittedly, less snappy⁴ proposals are:

aas - Appreciative Amused Snort⁵
ghc - Genuine Hearty Chuckle
htcmml - had to cover my mouth laughing⁹

and, a close contenor to aas for my favourite

itihml - I Think I Hurt Myself Laughing

T minus 1:17 to cow juice. Dammit.

Addendum:

icsyonamts⁷ - i could say yes or no and mean the same


1 lower case quite deliberately, they're a bit too loud for this time in the morning⁸ see, that's another thing to tackle already, right there - I'll get back to that one.
2 not quite, can't remember this one - it's new to me but can't remember what it is exactly. It tickled me though, feathers are a forte for it.
4 Probably. Still in concept at this stage...
5 I like where this is going
9 Note to self: Elcor.
8 Capitals. No deposit.
7 far far too long

Llama vodka sweet child dancing even morevodka inthe typing moment past the clapping do the rumboid in no mind the tulip past the head bang it bounces upand chorus rocks the solo past stars over water rippling in reflective introspection.
It makes sense when the chorus ends

Nineteen ninety humphmarumpharuphm, University, I'm walking down the high street from the university street and that ol' dusty cd emporium which I swear was swallowed into the nth dimension when it left. No really, I saw the floud of fliers coming down from the sky.
But there it was. Eighty yards short of the MacDonalds where we did milkshake juggling for fun and profit.
Six feet tall.
In a box.
In a window.
Of that shop that sold lego.
And paint.
And all those old humbol joys that you used to spend ages on, I never trusted airfix, strangely enough.
But no.
None of that.
In the window.
Six fucking feet tall.
Inflatable.
20 quid, was it thirty? Damn lot of money those days. But still.
What couldn't you achieve in life?
What couldn't you do, crush beneath your mighty radioactive feet?
As a six foot godzilla.
Taller if he wore heels.
I mean, that's three stories.
So that must be three inches.
Which ain't much in a hell, be honest.
Godzilla could handle a six inch heel.
So three would just make him six foot three.
In heels.
Dinosradioactivetokyodestroyinginflatablecrushrahstompsaur

But I bought pringles instead.


And so toothfairy bought me a six foot tall inflatable godzilla.
She rocks and wins at girlfriend-ness so much :)

I'll not be DJing on Tuesday at the Calling, be forewarned!