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I wish Giphy well, but one random thing about them that's always perplexed me: literally 1/3 of their staff have Director titles [1] I get that vanity titles a

I wish Giphy well, but one random thing about them that's always perplexed me: literally 1/3 of their staff have Director titles [1] I get that vanity titles are a way to help startups hire good talent, but once you reach a nontrivial team size, this seems rather odd -- who are all these people directing exactly? It would make me very hesitant if interviewing a candidate who worked at Giphy, since their titles appear meaningless. [1] http://giphy.com/team http://giphy.com/team

27182818284 10y ago
If they actually are like trying to be a managerial role and 33% are acting like managers (mostly meetings and more meetings for example) that I think would be worry some indeed. For some organizations, though, Director isn't really a "Director" but more of a rank like "Senior." By this I mean there would be Assistant Director of Blah blah Development that didn't actually direct a group of people, but were was a more senior-ish developer earning the Director part of their name. It is odd, but it wouldn't be the first place I've seen that.
- evanelias 10y ago
  Sure, I mean in finance everyone is a Vice President :) But in a consumer-facing startup like Giphy, I've honestly never seen a company at that size and stage do that. "Director of Engineering" typically has a particular meaning that differs from "Senior Engineer".
dddrh 10y ago
Case in point, they have seven in the role "Director of Engineering"
gozur88 10y ago
Titles are free, so there's not a huge downside. I worked at a mutual fund company which had dozens and dozens of vice presidents. The reason was vendors and institutional customers take you more seriously if your title is "vice president".
- pc86 10y ago
  The downsides are: 1. Director generally implies a manager of managers. If your title is "Director" and you're actually a team lead, it makes your company look like it doesn't know what it's doing. Specifically, the leadership. 2. If your resume goes from "Director" to "Developer" people are going to wonder what you did. It will cause people to take a second look at your resume in a negative way. 3. So at the end of that job, you've got someone who isn't qualified for a job with that title anywhere else and who will need to actively harm their career to take the jobs they are qualified for. I'm sure I've forgotten several, but they've built a $600M GIF search engine so what do I know.

27182818284 10y ago

If they actually are like trying to be a managerial role and 33% are acting like managers (mostly meetings and more meetings for example) that I think would be worry some indeed. For some organizations, though, Director isn't really a "Director" but more of a rank like "Senior." By this I mean there would be Assistant Director of Blah blah Development that didn't actually direct a group of people, but were was a more senior-ish developer earning the Director part of their name. It is odd, but it wouldn't be the first place I've seen that.

evanelias 10y ago
Sure, I mean in finance everyone is a Vice President :) But in a consumer-facing startup like Giphy, I've honestly never seen a company at that size and stage do that. "Director of Engineering" typically has a particular meaning that differs from "Senior Engineer".

dddrh 10y ago

Case in point, they have seven in the role "Director of Engineering"

gozur88 10y ago

Titles are free, so there's not a huge downside. I worked at a mutual fund company which had dozens and dozens of vice presidents. The reason was vendors and institutional customers take you more seriously if your title is "vice president".

pc86 10y ago
The downsides are: 1. Director generally implies a manager of managers. If your title is "Director" and you're actually a team lead, it makes your company look like it doesn't know what it's doing. Specifically, the leadership. 2. If your resume goes from "Director" to "Developer" people are going to wonder what you did. It will cause people to take a second look at your resume in a negative way. 3. So at the end of that job, you've got someone who isn't qualified for a job with that title anywhere else and who will need to actively harm their career to take the jobs they are qualified for. I'm sure I've forgotten several, but they've built a $600M GIF search engine so what do I know.