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If I say my title is: Vice President’s ServiceNow Developer

This implies that I work for the vice president, as a ServiceNow developer, kinda like an assistant, right?

My thought the experiment was to say that my title was: Vice President’s Assistant

so in this imaginary example, the title is valid. It should read as the vice president's assistant

so Vice President’s ServiceNow Developer should read as I am vice president ServiceNow developer right?

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    We don't usually use possessive forms in official titles; Assistant [to the] Vice President is more likely.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 7:45
  • If you're working as a developer your title would probably be ServiceNow Developer. You don't normally include your manager's rank (or name) in a job title, at least not in US and UK (you might say I am a ServiceNow Developer, reporting to the Vice President). Vice President ServiceNow Developer in the US perhaps implies that you are a vice president with special responsibilities for ServiceNow (something like Vice President - Finance is a common title). But I guess you're not in the US or UK, and different countries have different rules.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 10:55

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It is often said in my workplace (the single largest employer in my country) that a person's job description is many times more important than their job title, which can often be very generic. It is true that you cannot always tell what a person does from their job title alone.

That said, the wording of a job title is important. A running joke in the sitcom 'The Office' is that one ambitious employee constantly refers to himself as 'Assistant Regional Manager' which is corrected each time by the manager to 'Assistant to the Regional Manager'. The former sounds like someone who does very similar work to the manager but with slightly less authority, whereas an assistant to someone could literally be any supporting work and may make some think of menial tasks such as filing, diary management and running for coffee.

Your suggestion just doesn't sound natural for a number of reasons. First of all, if a manager's job title appears in your own it would not usually come first - as in the example above, it would more likely be 'assistant to the vice president'. But also, 'ServiceNow Developer' sounds very specific and it seems odd that a developer for something specific (whatever 'ServiceNow' is) would work directly to one person such as the vice president. Either they are the only developer working to him, in which case no need to mention what they develop; or they are one of many developers for that service in which case they would be developing together, because that's how development works.

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