Re:Why we're a titleless startup
by prodigal_erik on Friday April 23, 2010 @01:48AM
(#1287381)
This. In a followup, the author writes
> The types of people that are going to come to us and demand large titles they can stick on their resumé now aren’t primarily concerned with building a company; they’re worried about building themselves.
which I see as a mistake. No matter how little I'm thinking about another job search, to knowingly sabotage it before it starts would be foolish. I can't gamble that your startup is going to see me through to retirement. (I've never worked for a fifty-year-old company; have you?)
Question: at a startup without titles, what do you think of fashioning one's own, within certain ethical limits?
It's obviously wrong to take the CEO title if you weren't the CEO (he or she might take it personally) or CFO if your job had nothing to do with finance, but I think a certain amount of leniency is allowed.
The biggest practical downside I can think of is if in checking references, your former boss gets called and has a reaction of, "John Doe, Senior Foobar? I don't think we even had a Foobar". So might be worth running it by whoever it is from the company you'd be likely to put down as a reference. I've met founders who are perfectly fine vouching for any reasonable title the employee wants to pick, though.
If you want future jobs that carry the kind of responsibilities that a VP of Engineering, for instance, would typically handle, those jobs will be easier to get if that title's already on your resume. Forcing people to accept the title of "Irreverence Engineer" is forcing them to leave money on the table, and it's not a necessary feature of a culture that deemphasizes hierarchy.