Tech executives/Tesla: weird job titles such as ‘technoking’ signal entitlement

{"text":[[{"start":13.65,"text":"Elon Musk livened up the staid world of corporate job titles this week by crowning himself “technoking of Tesla”. "},{"start":19.817,"text":"He handed his chief financial officer the Game of Thrones-style title “master of coin”. "}],[{"start":24.79,"text":"Is this, as one analyst asked, Tesla’s way of signalling that it is a tech company rather than a car company? "},{"start":30.969,"text":"It seems unlikely. "},{"start":32.549,"text":"The chief executives of Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet are not called technokings. "},{"start":37.579,"text":"The more plausible explanation is that Musk is amusing himself and his retail fans at the expense of the stiffs at the Securities and Exchange Commission. "}],[{"start":46.15,"text":"Weird job titles abound in tech, a sector in which eccentric behaviour is applauded. "},{"start":51.229,"text":"Until Musk, however, the practice appeared to be dwindling. "},{"start":54.934,"text":"AOL appointed David Shing, aka Shingy, “digital prophet” in summer 2011. "},{"start":60.039,"text":"Microblogging site Tumblr hired a “fashion evangelist” in 2012 — the same year Jeff Barr became “chief evangelist” of Amazon’s AWS. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":69.12,"text":"Odd job titles can be empty PR — think of Apple dubbing in-store workers “geniuses” or Automattic calling its customer support “happiness engineers”. "},{"start":77.137,"text":"They do not tend to correspond to unusual jobs. "},{"start":80.179,"text":"Evangelists usually work in marketing. "},{"start":82.684,"text":"Ninjas toil in software engineering. "},{"start":85.177,"text":"Musk’s job as chief executive will not change now he is technoking. "}],[{"start":90.02000000000001,"text":"Instead, funny job titles signal entitlement. "},{"start":93.43700000000001,"text":"They show that bosses feel they have the full backing of investors. "},{"start":96.867,"text":"Musk’s new job name comes after Tesla’s share price grew more than 660 per cent in the space of a year. "}],[{"start":103.92000000000002,"text":"Executives who feel under pressure do not have time to mess around with the description of what they do. "},{"start":109.27400000000002,"text":"They are desperately clinging on to posts such as chief executive officer and chief financial officer whose currency — unlike technoking — is universal. "},{"start":117.21700000000001,"text":"Jokey names are a bad look when you are losing investors money. "}],[{"start":121.42000000000002,"text":"A boss emboldened to embrace a daft job description or hand them out may make increasingly risky bets. "},{"start":127.34900000000002,"text":"Musk’s new title follows Tesla’s decision to invest $1.5bn in notoriously volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin. "},{"start":134.579,"text":"Shing’s 2011 appointment followed AOL’s vast purchase of The Huffington Post. "},{"start":139.072,"text":"One month later, losses triggered a 30 per cent share price drop. "}],[{"start":143.98000000000002,"text":"The Lex team is interested in hearing more from readers. "},{"start":147.14700000000002,"text":"Please tell us what you think of Musk’s new job title in the comments section below. "}],[{"start":151.31000000000003,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/35850-1616234297.mp3"}