Partner actually has a practical meaning: co-owner of the partnership. So it's more like 'stockholder', in that it's a title of objective value: this person ow

Partner actually has a practical meaning: co-owner of the partnership. So it's more like 'stockholder', in that it's a title of objective value: this person owns a portion of the firm. I sometimes suspect that software engineers should operate more like lawyers, in that firms don't generally hire lawyers internally.