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Warning: Limit Break ahead. (Yeah, you thought I was always Limit Breaking. No, this is a real one.) This is complete and utter douchebaggery and your IQ will

Warning: Limit Break ahead. (Yeah, you thought I was always Limit Breaking. No, this is a real one.) This is complete and utter douchebaggery and your IQ will drop 5 points if you read it to completion. I'm sorry, but if I'm going to go anywhere near a pre-funding startup, I better fucking have some domain X over which no one will ever fucking be hired above me. Sorry, but if I wanted to work at a company where people could be hired above me without me having a say in it, I'd take the $200k+ hedge fund job and wouldn't touch your startup with my worst enemy's dick. This is how talent sees it. Accept it or fail at your own peril. Job titles don't matter for fuck-all early on, but companies tend to have a weird dynamic. For a long time, titles don't matter and they're so inconsequential that they're never used (business cards are blank on the title line). Sure, someone might be "Chief Revenue Officer" but the only people who even know he has that title are the CEO and Board. When titles are inconsequential, you hurt yourself by bringing them up. So don't. The title is something you have, for later on when you need it, but not something you use-- at all. It just sits there for later purposes. So, in the early stages, while it's important to have titles, I will agree that you shouldn't explicitly "use" them much. For a 10-person startup, they don't mean anything, operationally, except for where a person will be when they start to mean something. Through this, they motivate talented people to stick with the company even when things get painful. And then... the company gets to a point where titles do matter and, by that time, I better fucking have one. Unless you can convince me that your company will never have job titles, in which case I don't want to be "that guy" who brings them into existence. OP seems to support the idea of an early employee taking a pre-emptive hit ("Engineering Director" instead of "VP/Engineering" or "CTO") so other people can be plugged above him, often without his consent. This is because the real perk of being a VC is being able to hand out executive positions in other peoples' companies to your underachieving friends. Fuck that. That's bullshit. You'll never get talent if you take this guy's advice.

patrickmay 13y ago
Most successful VCs are not so willing to risk their investment by putting incompetent people into executive positions. The fact is that often the lead developer who builds the first version of a product does not have the skills and experience to be the CTO as the company grows. The first salesperson may well not be ready to build a sales team. The accountant might not have the breadth to be a CFO. In addition to money, good VCs bring in experience that can dramatically increase the chance of success. They need some flexibility in the organization to be able to do so. That being said, your comment is an excellent warning to people joining an early stage startup. Know what you want your role to be if and when the company is successful and negotiate appropriately.
- kyllo 13y ago
  The fact is that often the lead developer who builds the first version of a product does not have the skills and experience to be the CTO as the company grows. Ok, I admit I've never even worked at a startup, so perhaps I'm missing something, but this idea just smells fishy. Why on earth would the lead developer who built a software product from the ground up, possibly single-handedly, not have the "skills and experience" to continue running that codebase as the company grows? Like someone with experience "at scale" and better connections is going to come in later, read/understand all the code the technical co-founder wrote (or perhaps just hire a team to rewrite everything from scratch using a more "scalable" software stack), and take over as CTO, relegating the co-founder to a subordinate role? Has that ever worked?
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    I think that his argument is that, as the job of CTO becomes more of a management/connections role, it's better to have someone else in it. I actually agree. The right people to build a business are often not the right people to maintain it at maturity. I'd want the title of "CTO" if building someone's product, but I would agree to abdicate it if I agreed with the choice of successor, and was genuinely convinced he'd do a better job than I could. I just wouldn't be happy not to have a say in it. I want to be able to say, "if you hire him above me, then I leave and you just had a CTO quit". Titles make it hard to demote or fire someone because if they punt you, they just "fired their CTO". You want a title because when millions (and potentially billions) are on the line you can't trust people in power, even if you think you've known them for years.
    - kyllo 13y ago
      Right, the key distinction being that in your scenario, the title change is entirely voluntary, and even beneficial from the perspective of the technical co-founder, because he wants to continue working on the codebase rather than having his time taken up by all the politician duties that C*O roles entail. I think in the OP, it seemed like more of a "you shouldn't let your first developer be the CTO because you want to be able to hire someone more experienced above him when your startup gets big enough to attract real rockstar talent" type of angle. Which, as you pointed out, is repulsive.
deleted 13y ago
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tptacek 13y ago
I like the idea of looking for companies where one is explicitly guaranteed to be the asymptote of competence.
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  Sounds great for the ego, but wouldn't it be harder to learn things if none of your coworkers are allowed to be better than (or even as good as) you?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Yep.
mpeg 13y ago
Yep I joined one of those "titles don't matter" startups on a shit title. Long story short, we got acquired and I've still got the same shit title while people who were "managers" of their 1-man team are still managers. If I ever join a startup again (probably won't happen) I'm not in for anything less than fucking CTO
redshirtrob 13y ago
Wow, I pretty much completely agree with your title assessment (not sure about the VC stuff since I don't have experience there. I'd summarize it as, "titles don't matter...until they do." The specifics are unimportant, but I've been burned by this at least once, and negatively affected by it another time. I wish it didn't work this way. I'd like titles to not matter. I'd like to work in a true meritocracy. But, there will always be outsiders assessing your organization. Oftentimes they'll use title as a proxy for something els--and then it matters again. Especially when that person is a new boss. The only solution I can think of is to call everyone Beverly.

patrickmay 13y ago

Most successful VCs are not so willing to risk their investment by putting incompetent people into executive positions. The fact is that often the lead developer who builds the first version of a product does not have the skills and experience to be the CTO as the company grows. The first salesperson may well not be ready to build a sales team. The accountant might not have the breadth to be a CFO. In addition to money, good VCs bring in experience that can dramatically increase the chance of success. They need some flexibility in the organization to be able to do so. That being said, your comment is an excellent warning to people joining an early stage startup. Know what you want your role to be if and when the company is successful and negotiate appropriately.

kyllo 13y ago
The fact is that often the lead developer who builds the first version of a product does not have the skills and experience to be the CTO as the company grows. Ok, I admit I've never even worked at a startup, so perhaps I'm missing something, but this idea just smells fishy. Why on earth would the lead developer who built a software product from the ground up, possibly single-handedly, not have the "skills and experience" to continue running that codebase as the company grows? Like someone with experience "at scale" and better connections is going to come in later, read/understand all the code the technical co-founder wrote (or perhaps just hire a team to rewrite everything from scratch using a more "scalable" software stack), and take over as CTO, relegating the co-founder to a subordinate role? Has that ever worked?
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  I think that his argument is that, as the job of CTO becomes more of a management/connections role, it's better to have someone else in it. I actually agree. The right people to build a business are often not the right people to maintain it at maturity. I'd want the title of "CTO" if building someone's product, but I would agree to abdicate it if I agreed with the choice of successor, and was genuinely convinced he'd do a better job than I could. I just wouldn't be happy not to have a say in it. I want to be able to say, "if you hire him above me, then I leave and you just had a CTO quit". Titles make it hard to demote or fire someone because if they punt you, they just "fired their CTO". You want a title because when millions (and potentially billions) are on the line you can't trust people in power, even if you think you've known them for years.
  - kyllo 13y ago
    Right, the key distinction being that in your scenario, the title change is entirely voluntary, and even beneficial from the perspective of the technical co-founder, because he wants to continue working on the codebase rather than having his time taken up by all the politician duties that C*O roles entail. I think in the OP, it seemed like more of a "you shouldn't let your first developer be the CTO because you want to be able to hire someone more experienced above him when your startup gets big enough to attract real rockstar talent" type of angle. Which, as you pointed out, is repulsive.

deleted 13y ago

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tptacek 13y ago

I like the idea of looking for companies where one is explicitly guaranteed to be the asymptote of competence.

tbrownaw 13y ago
Sounds great for the ego, but wouldn't it be harder to learn things if none of your coworkers are allowed to be better than (or even as good as) you?
- tptacek 13y ago
  Yep.

mpeg 13y ago

Yep I joined one of those "titles don't matter" startups on a shit title. Long story short, we got acquired and I've still got the same shit title while people who were "managers" of their 1-man team are still managers. If I ever join a startup again (probably won't happen) I'm not in for anything less than fucking CTO

redshirtrob 13y ago

Wow, I pretty much completely agree with your title assessment (not sure about the VC stuff since I don't have experience there. I'd summarize it as, "titles don't matter...until they do." The specifics are unimportant, but I've been burned by this at least once, and negatively affected by it another time. I wish it didn't work this way. I'd like titles to not matter. I'd like to work in a true meritocracy. But, there will always be outsiders assessing your organization. Oftentimes they'll use title as a proxy for something els--and then it matters again. Especially when that person is a new boss. The only solution I can think of is to call everyone Beverly.