Whenever I see a prospective startup founder with no product and no customers calling themselves a 'CEO', it triggers a little warning sign in my brain that this person may be too self-important to work with.

There are definitely times when you need the title to make meetings happen, so it's not a sure-fire guarantee of arrogance. But it's still a warning sign.

At the last startup I founded, both myself and my co-founder agreed to skip titles until such time as they were required. When pressed, we were both just 'founders'.

I never understood the point of having a title. I find the government is especially interested in my title/occupation and I never know what I should be telling them.

Professionally, I am a farmer, a programmer, a designer, an administrator, and was even a baker for a short while; though, sadly, I gave it up as it was too time consuming on top of the rest. Not to mention all of the business stuff that goes along with doing those jobs, like management, sales, mechanic in the case of my farm, etc, etc.

Why are people so hung up on them? They are pretty meaningless.

Government is very hierarchical. Everyone basically makes the same amount of money, so status is the only differentiation between people.

I worked for a government agency for a long time. At one point of my career, bigshots at the director level would not acknowledge my presence in a room. Later, they were my best buddies, because I was high enough on the ladder to be a minor "player" to potentially influence one of their peers.

I have never actually worked for government directly, but I was referring more to things like passports, where they are very interested in what I do for a living.

I don't even know what I do for a living, I just work on what needs to be done or feels right at any given time. My job is to solve problems and create value for others, just like everyone else. You can't be more specific than that.

Because labels are useful for quickly making sense of random data. (Pun intended but incidental.)