My office mate (both programmers) put it this way: Your title walks into the room before you. In an initial meeting with external customers / partners, the inv

My office mate (both programmers) put it this way: Your title walks into the room before you. In an initial meeting with external customers / partners, the invitees may not know anything about you or your actual role . They see the titles on other people on say a meeting invite- "Senior Architect" or "Director of Engineering" and have much more interest in those guys and ask them the questions. Despite those guys often being so far removed from the actual technology they (in our experience) knew nothing and just said "yes" to everything... or just asked us later. It's stupid, and it's petty... but it happens, just like this guy tells it.