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I don't understand what the advantage is to have a lower title in your examples though: if you were CTO and someone gets inserted above you then your choices fo
by esrauch 10y ago
I don't understand what the advantage is to have a lower title in your examples though: if you were CTO and someone gets inserted above you then your choices for your resume in your two scenarios are (CTO, then Director) or (only CTO, left company), which are both better than the two scenarios if you didn't have the CTO title (where it would say Director only).
If your title is Director someone might reasonably even assume there was a CTO above you at the tiny company, and you were a "director" or "vp" by being actually the absolute lowest man on the totem pole.
- rhizome 10y agoTitle inflation is a thing making "CTO" almost meaningless, as documented elsewhere. Technical cofounder skills are not the same as CTO skills, so either they can be promoted into the gig when the company grows big enough to need CxOs or they can hire someone with the experience, desire, or greater aptitude.
- esrauch 10y agoMy latter point was that widespread title inflation has the property that if you "defect" and don't have title inflation it has an actual negative effect on your future employment since it is nearly impossible for a random observer to know whether or not there was title inflation at your company. As meaningless as "CTO" is, having a title worse than that could be seen as non-meaningless as a negative signal.
- rhizome 10y agoI think "founding programmer" or similar would counteract negative signals. It would certainly be more accurate.