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Up until not too long ago I used to work at a company where more than half of all 5000 employees had the title "manager", "head" or "lead" in their title. To pu

Up until not too long ago I used to work at a company where more than half of all 5000 employees had the title "manager", "head" or "lead" in their title. To put it extremely mildly it was a bureaucratic hell. I'm really tempted to call them and suggest yet another "head" title.

nicoburns 6y ago
Head of heads?
cosmodisk 6y ago
Chief head of not so chief heads?
keiferski 6y ago
Surely none can be more ridiculous than Chief of Awesomeness. I saw that once and thought, do people really put that on their resumes?
- axegon_ 6y ago
  Oh, game on: Someone had this as a signature in her mail(not joking I actually copied it): > Lead Senior World Director of Marketing and Monetization, Research and Development.
  - pc86 6y ago
    I wonder how many Associate Senior World Directors reported to her.
  - geoduck14 6y ago
    I applied for a job at a small company. On of the "perks" is there was no strong hierarchy- you got to give yourself a title. I'll bet the Lead Senior World bla bla bla worked at a company like this
asien 6y ago
Happened to me at my last job. Everyone was manager of something . We had chief tech happiness officer. His job was to make python script to make devs happy. I’ve never heard of that before. The company went bankrupt after wasting 200M in venture money and generating 10K in revenue. Was fascinating to be part of that experience. Nothing was being done , just a bunch of people making brainstorms all day long while 10 devs were doing everything and being told to change idea every other day. Was a relief when I quit after few months, when I look back at it no doubt it was a who’s the "coolest of the club" culture. No actual talent was there.
- tawtawtaw 6y ago
  Worked somewhere similar and saw similar outcomes. I think having too much money removes the feedback loop that lets a team know if they are on the right course, so like you say, it comes down to a popularity based culturr
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > His job was to make python script to make devs happy. I've never heard of that before. That's kind of nice. Once a project grows a certain size if you have the budget for it it's cool to have a dedicated small team that takes care of the dev environment (maintaining the build and test pipeline, adding static analysis and making sure there's some working default config for at least one IDE). Also take care of the commit hooks and helps out when migrating language and tool versions.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  How do you raise $200M with only $10k in revenue? That is, if your A round was $10M, your B round was $60M, and your C round was $130M (I'm just making up numbers here), how was it that none of the investors ever needed to see any material revenues?
  - mortenjorck 6y ago
    Founders with just enough cachet in the VC community.
  - 6y ago
itisit 6y ago
In my experience business titles don't mean much. They don't actually indicate seniority, managerial/leadership ability, expertise, knowledge, understanding, and a multitude of other valuable and praiseworthy attributes. Ever speak with someone with a <blink>Fancy Ass Title</blink> only to discover the person severely lacks the experience and thoughtfulness you'd expect from the title? Depends on the company, of course, but it happens at startups and corporations alike. However, there is some utility in recognizing when someone flaunts a lofty title aggressively, they are most certainly not the person you should be dealing with to get something done properly.

nicoburns 6y ago

Head of heads?

cosmodisk 6y ago

Chief head of not so chief heads?

keiferski 6y ago

Surely none can be more ridiculous than Chief of Awesomeness. I saw that once and thought, do people really put that on their resumes?

axegon_ 6y ago
Oh, game on: Someone had this as a signature in her mail(not joking I actually copied it): > Lead Senior World Director of Marketing and Monetization, Research and Development.
- pc86 6y ago
  I wonder how many Associate Senior World Directors reported to her.
- geoduck14 6y ago
  I applied for a job at a small company. On of the "perks" is there was no strong hierarchy- you got to give yourself a title. I'll bet the Lead Senior World bla bla bla worked at a company like this

asien 6y ago

Happened to me at my last job. Everyone was manager of something . We had chief tech happiness officer. His job was to make python script to make devs happy. I’ve never heard of that before. The company went bankrupt after wasting 200M in venture money and generating 10K in revenue. Was fascinating to be part of that experience. Nothing was being done , just a bunch of people making brainstorms all day long while 10 devs were doing everything and being told to change idea every other day. Was a relief when I quit after few months, when I look back at it no doubt it was a who’s the "coolest of the club" culture. No actual talent was there.

tawtawtaw 6y ago
Worked somewhere similar and saw similar outcomes. I think having too much money removes the feedback loop that lets a team know if they are on the right course, so like you say, it comes down to a popularity based culturr
908B64B197 6y ago
> His job was to make python script to make devs happy. I've never heard of that before. That's kind of nice. Once a project grows a certain size if you have the budget for it it's cool to have a dedicated small team that takes care of the dev environment (maintaining the build and test pipeline, adding static analysis and making sure there's some working default config for at least one IDE). Also take care of the commit hooks and helps out when migrating language and tool versions.
gnicholas 6y ago
How do you raise $200M with only $10k in revenue? That is, if your A round was $10M, your B round was $60M, and your C round was $130M (I'm just making up numbers here), how was it that none of the investors ever needed to see any material revenues?
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  Founders with just enough cachet in the VC community.
- 6y ago

itisit 6y ago

In my experience business titles don't mean much. They don't actually indicate seniority, managerial/leadership ability, expertise, knowledge, understanding, and a multitude of other valuable and praiseworthy attributes. Ever speak with someone with a <blink>Fancy Ass Title</blink> only to discover the person severely lacks the experience and thoughtfulness you'd expect from the title? Depends on the company, of course, but it happens at startups and corporations alike. However, there is some utility in recognizing when someone flaunts a lofty title aggressively, they are most certainly not the person you should be dealing with to get something done properly.