Ninjas Vs. Gurus and Overlords

It looks like corporate America found a magic bullet as to how to keep underpaid employees happy — give them cool titles that will compensate for decreasing thickness of their wallet by increasing thickness of their egos.

It all started when software developers who, once attained expertise in a narrow field would start calling themselves gurus. Time passed and there was just too many gurus around. We must be special don’t we? Hence the “Ninja” was born and the vicious circle started. Other industries followed.

One of the online recruitment agencies got confused once they received a resume listing “domestic engineer” as a title. It took a bit of time to realize that they are talking about the job of a housewife.

Some…unique… titles I came across so far:

Content Catalyst Evangelist (I do not know what this means to this day)
Evil Overlord (I kid you not)
Manager of People (as opposed to what?)
Waste Removal Engineer (wonder what this one is *drumroll* — bin man)

I do not think I am asking for too much here. I would like to be able to receive a business card and understand what does a person I am talking to actually do for living. As well as go through a web site’s contact page and not have to guess who should I contact to get my question answered.