Head of Security begone: Long live the Chief of Security.

[Alfa1561]

Reposting what I said elsewhere, but here it is:

I work for the real life Central Statistics Office and the abbreviation CSO is already pain.

In all seriousness though, yeah. Chief of Security is a vastly better name in all respects. Chief Security Officer sounds like they're the Chief Officer on shift, like a Sergeant above officers or a captain above cops etc, not the actual top dog of security. Hence why they don't call the Chief of Police the Chief Police Officer. The Chief is in charge of all security, including the warden and investigators who are not officers but are security, so Chief of Security is vastly more appropriate.

[DatSamTho]

Chief Security Officer sounds horrible. Chief of Security would be vastly better.

[Wigglesworth Jones]

To echo what Faye said, Chief Security Officer sounds way too middle management-y to me, or something akin to the main security officer. I think Chief of Security would be a better title to use - it just sounds better to me. 

[Zelmana]

A lot of people call the role Commander. Why not change it to that?
I hardly see anyone calling them "Chief" other than a petname or something akin to "Big Boss" style connotatively.

[Carver]

19 hours ago, Zelmana said:

A lot of people call the role Commander. Why not change it to that?
I hardly see anyone calling them "Chief" other than a petname or something akin to "Big Boss" style connotatively.

Because this isn't Mass Effect and Commander has always been a horrid reference name?

[Butterrobber202]

31 minutes ago, Carver said:

Because this isn't Mass Effect and Commander has always been a horrid reference name?

holy shit several global militaries ripped off Mass Effect. 

Commander will continue to be used despite the official title solely because its faster to type and sounds cooler. It is unlikely to be accepted as the official name because of its vagueness out-of-context and headmins wanting to maintain a naming scheme with command job titles..

Edited May 5, 2022 by Butterrobber202

[TrainTN]

"Chief Security Officer sounds like middle-management."
 

It pretty much is middle management. You are the middle manager between the Captain and the rest of Security. You aren't the Chief of Police of a city, you're in charge of a handful of guys on one spaceship. Though I do agree with the post that "Chief Security Officer" is already used elsewhere in the lore so it'd be strange to use the same title here, and for that reason Chief of Security or Security Chief would be better to avoid confusion.

[Zelmana]

Problem to me is that CSO is a corporate term akin to CISO, CIO, CEO, CTO. It's a terminology which usually indicates they're either on the Board of Directors or are in upper management.
Chief Engineer and Chief Medical Officer are both team-lead descriptive roles, both in game and in the real world, unlike the CSO position.

[KingOfThePing]

It seems there is a great divide. It was and is not my intention to split the playerbase on this. I may consider closing the PR until some consensus has been reached where most people are happy.

[Caelphon]

It's just a name, I don't really see a difference between Chief Security Officer or Chief of Security. It will be shortened to Chief, or Commander, anyway. Regardless, Head of Security's lifeline has passed and it is time to put it out to the pasture. 

[Gem]

between the two current choices, i prefer Chief of Security over Chief Security Officer. CoS is also easier to "say" than CSO. "koss" vs "cee-ess-ohh".

though, i wonder if Security Director would work?

[wowzewow]

I'm personally warming up to Chief Security Officer. It's in line with everything. Finally, CMO feels kind of less of below everyone.

Although, we could go completely off the rails like Research Director. Maybe... Security Commanding Officer?

 

Security Commanding Officer is kind of used for the in-charges of small units, and is still below top brass like the Captain. So it works too.

Also, being called "Commander" means that 3/5ths of command isn't called "Chief"

Edited May 15, 2022 by wowzewow

[NewOriginalSchwann]

Chief Security Officer sounds like a middle-management position between the officers and the actual head of the department, rather than the actual head of the department. It would be like if we renamed Chief Medical Officer to Chief Medical Doctor. Additionally, it's currently used for lore figures as CSO is a real executive-level management position. Chief of Security sounds a lot better and is not used by any currently-existing lore figures to my knowledge.

[Triogenix]

My thoughts are rather simple. My only complaint was that we already had a CSO executive level position as Schwann said, however, Arrow offered a better alternative to the name, that's more in line with the other executive positions, Chief Security Director.

As for the name Chief Security Officer being seen as middle management, I disagree, I see it as lower management, which is exactly what it is. While we are on the flagship of the SCC, the current HoS is the leader of a department of 4 officers, 2 investigators, a warden, and potentially two cadets. At most, this is 9 people. While I do understand people see command as higher management, given we rarely see, and only sometimes hear via fax, actual management, but I think it's important to remember their position. Leading a department is the lowest level of management besides possibly bridge crew, above them they have the captain who is maybe the start of middle management, who in turn has the entirety of sector administration above them who I think are the real middle management(I.E, the Sector Security Manager). Sector administrators themselves(not the people under them who make up their administration) are the start of upper management IMO, going to the board of directors.

This is all based off of this chart, from the NT page. I know we're with the SCC now but this is the closest thing we have in lore to a chain of command. I'm making the assumption we will continue to work off of this, with a few obvious changes given the fact that it has a completely different board of directors, because it's what we've used in the past, and we're keeping CCIA. If this assumption is wrong, I apologize.

 

Also, I know that command is commanding the flagship project of the SCC, but why would they have a different title to the security manager at the smallest SCC installation? It'd be like if the sales manager at flashship store was suddenly the manager of sales, while every other store had a sales manager.

Tl;dr - I don't think there's any basis for being against the renaming because it doesn't sound high management enough, because it's not high management, it's lower. I can understand disliking it from a purely subjective point of view, due to aesthetics and personal preference as gem did in their post, but saying it sounds like a lower/middle management title means it's perfect in my eyes. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Triogenix

[Zelmana]

I would say that with my corporate experience by no means are Command "lower management".

They are organizational-director level management with the Captain of each vessel / station being organizational leads.
In fact the whole upper management schema in lore looks like it was designed by someone who isn't all too familiar with corporate structuring. The directors not being on "the board of directors" is proof of this.

For example of a traditional organizational structure. I'll use a fortune 500 example of a possible department. Let's go with cybersecurity because that's definitely not what I do.
There's an average employee.
They have a manager who manages a few people. This could be a group that has a specific task like managing cybersecurity risk via a certain function.
There exists an organizational-level director manager that is over multiple groups that serve a purpose of "risk management" all being in the same logical group function, let's say Risk Management as a whole.
Multiple group functions with their individual org-level directors report to a Sr. level director or someone with a catchy title. This person is a Chief. Chief of Information Security, let's say- a CISO. Below them is the tier below- the directors. One for the risk management, one for operations, one for engineering, one for... and so on.

Now this organizational director is likely not important enough to be seated on any board, but they are "Senior leadership". They routinely can talk to the CEO and CIO of the fortune 500.
The organizational director, the CISO, typically reports to the CIO, who is in charge of all of IT. They CIO is a member of the board of directors. The BoD has other officers such as one over supply chain, one over manufacuring, one over research, one over HR, one for corporate, etc. They are headed by the CEO who also typically has a seat or a weighted vote of the board.


In SS13 perspective, the optimal solution would be to treat Command staff as org. directors, the Captain as a organizational leader. Station Command is a bit of an oddity. Both "Central Command" and the CCIA/CCSA should exist in separate upstreams of a corporate business unit, while still remaining superior and over the rank of organizational leadership such as a Captain or whomever is operating an NT business facility.

Respectively then the Captains would report to their specific Station Command Officer who orchestrates data, objectives, etc to the entire company-level directors. Most of these directors should be heading business units and should also be seated members of the board (but not all of them on the BoD).

I fairly regularly report data and analytics presented to the BoD for a fortune 500 company ranking fairly close to 100.

[Zelmana]

I'd also add that the board of a company this size would be consistent of former CEOs, current CEOs of other companies.

Typically a CEO will not only manage their own company but serve on the board of complimentary companies where they can all orchestrate similar change. A CEO of a huge company will dedicate their entire time to running their own company, but will be supported by smaller companies CEOs and other officer-levels, most often also from their own company. 

[Marlon P.]

1 hour ago, Zelmana said:

In fact the whole upper management schema in lore looks like it was designed by someone who isn't all too familiar with corporate structuring. The directors not being on "the board of directors" is proof of this

I made it.

I researched it. This was based off large companies structures. It was intentionally streamlined to be easy to understand and reference. Everything in your post was compacted into what's on the chart.

Such as it can be assumed the former CEOs or whoever have you are members of the Board. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Zelmana]

@Marlon P.

I think the chart is a bit misleading. My post above and the chart can't both be true.
A chart based on the info above would look more something like this-

 

[Marlon P.]

Not a bad chart actually. In the past the suggested alternatives were wild, byzantine kaleidoscopes, lol.  You should suggest that for a replacement to what we have.

I'm indifferent on the name. Chief of Security doesn't confuse me when i see chief security officer. We can have two chiefs. Like president of a fan club wont make me whiplash and think its joe biden.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Zelmana]

Ty Marlon. Didn't mean to sound so pushy up above.

I think it's odd that we have a medical person at the Officer level. I believe that's why in lore they're called "Directors" even though that's organizational leadership lingo. Medical is like a support staff in a way. A fully capable hospital, yes... but it's hard to chart it. Since hospitals are ran very independently internally they are fine with having a "Chief" Medical officer as that has been a thing always running the floors. So hospitals will have a Chief Medical Director on the board instead of most of the other titles like COO CIO CTO and such, they don't have a CMO on board because that's their director level shit. So they call it a Chief Medical Director.

Basically hospitals do a flip flop usually in naming schema for officer & director.

There's a bunch of other oddities in our corporate lore but yeah. Obviously a multi-sector corpo is a spaghetti mess.

[TrainTN]

I apologize for resurrecting an old thread like this but I noticed that the PR was closed for it by the OP and there doesn't seem to have been any further discussion. I still think a name change would be good, especially since with the replacement of the Head of Personnel with the Executive Officer, the HoS is the only "head" left and everyone else is officers. Does anyone else still have any interest in this suggestion?

[KingOfThePing]

I closed the PR because the division in the community was too big and no compromise/agreeable solution could be found.

[Carver]

18 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

I closed the PR because the division in the community was too big and no compromise/agreeable solution could be found.

Didn't the PR have maintainer approval so long as it was changed to Chief Security Officer? https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/13650#pullrequestreview-958521581

[KingOfThePing]

Oh, right, I remember. I closed it because there was no consensus from the community, I was insanely busy at the time and I found Chief Security Officer the worst possible name to change it to. 

[Carver]

Unfortunate. I genuinely wish I had any talent with git and thoroughly searching through the code to replace names in items, I'd just revive and finish it myself.