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I've seen Head of X across the board in startups and not just in marketing. Head of X is a role description that does not tie to a traditional corporate hierarc
by marcinzm 6y ago
I've seen Head of X across the board in startups and not just in marketing. Head of X is a role description that does not tie to a traditional corporate hierarchy level (CXO, Director, VP, etc.). It conveys that they are in charge of X which is important for external parties to understand when communicating with them. They may be a Director but still Head of X. But if you see Director of X you assume there's a VP of X who is really in charge but in a startup that may not be the case. Head of X is also flexible enough that if you hire someone over them one day it doesn't feel like a demotion or require contortions with titles (SVP, etc.).
- hrktb 6y agoThanks. If I understand correctly, it’s a position roughly equivalent to “Lead” but without assumption that there is a team behind nor of any official hierarchical position. Still feels weird if you have both a COO and a “Head of operations”, but I guess that’s a complex situation to start with.
- marcinzm 6y agoUsually Head of X translates into a manager position although they may have no team. So it's like the manager version of a lead. >Still feels weird if you have both a COO and a “Head of operations”, but I guess that’s a complex situation to start with. It's fairly common to have a CTO and a Head of Engineering but I'm not sure if there's that sort of responsibility split on operations as well. In the eng case, the HoE generally focuses on team management while the CTO focuses on strategy/architecture/whatever. Often the case when the CTO is a founder and no one wants to remove their title but they're not scaling as a manager.