a word used as a job title in organizations that are generally newer and tech-forward, and applied to roles in one of two very different categories:
- senior leadership, such as founders and others with sufficient equity stakes or income such that typical job titles can be casually dispensed with, as these individuals will never need to polish a resume again; used by those who wish to demonstrate how non-hierarchical, whimsical, and/or iconoclastic they are; can also be used in fast-growing organizations where exact job responsibilities are difficult to pin down due to the fluidity of the business environment
- jobs in repetitive, front-line roles; applied by companies that want to gussy up the fact that these are in fact call center workers
used to trade on the connotations of stealth, competence, discipline, nimble athleticism, and/or overall mastery associated with ninjas, with little awareness of the feudal, martial, and political context of Japan in which they arose
