7 ms·
What's the most ridiculous job title at a startup?
I am not talking about jokes
- mikestew 12y agoAn entire row of "directors", none of whom have more than six direct reports and no managers below them? Where I come from, those are called "leads".
- webmaven 12y agoStrangeberry had titles like Chief Hackberry, Chief Wiseberry, Chief Smartberry before Tivo bought them in 2004.
- mlwarren 12y agoAny title that incorporates Ninja, Rockstar, Pirate, Guru, etc. Also Full Stack is so misused it's becoming a joke.
- qhoc 12y ago"Guru" really made my eyes rolled over. Now it's "Full Stack" I guess
- jordsmi 12y agoFull Stack Guru
- qhoc 12y agoI am definitely committing suicide now...
- nmjohn 12y agoIs full stack that bad? You're the third or fourth person I've seen complain about it in the last few days. Unlike ninja, it actually is a descriptive term, is it not?
- ramblerman 12y agoIf you tell us what your stack is I suppose.
- cik 12y agoMy personal best was "Release Messiah". To this day I still cringe.
- priorconsent 12y agoThis made my day. Thank you :)
- 0pc0d3 12y agoUnder Secretary to the Sub-Committee on A/B Testing
- johnward 12y agoThere is a local startup where literally every single employee from the CEO, to a developer, to someone in marketing has the same job title: brander. Imagine being a developer and having to put "brander" as your previous job title.
- level09 12y agoPerhaps Social Media Facilitator ?
- peterwwillis 12y ago"Evangelist". Nothing quite as pride-instilling as being compared to a preachy religious fanatic.
- andrewstuart2 12y agoCEO. Any C-level title, really. To me those titles imply a lot more structure than 3-5 employees who got enough venture capital to sustain business for about a year. Maybe I'm crazy, though.
- josephschmoe 12y agoIt gets you in the door with other businesses. That's why people call themselves CEO/CFO/etc. It's a designation of authority rather than qualification.
- bitonomics 12y agoIt also helps to establish some early rolls. Some with more expectations than others. We sat with one investor and they assumed that the CEO should be the one pitching for example. Not to mention, if you are going to quit your job to build a company you don't get excited and call yourself a junior engineer. Or full stack guru.
- orasis 12y agoChief Scientist
- level09 12y agothis link might be relevant http://www.bullshitjob.com/title/ http://www.bullshitjob.com/title/
- rubiquity 12y agoWeb Spinner was one that a company I worked at used to label Web developers. Personally, I don't want the word "spinner" associated with me in any way, even if I was a DJ.
- lscharen 12y agoEverybody at the Nerdery is "co-president" http://nerdery.com/copresident http://nerdery.com/copresident ...but it comes from a good place in memorandum of the tragic loss of one of the co-founders of the company.
- relaunched 12y agoI recently moved to MN and came across the nerdery and the story behind it. It's pretty moving and doesn't deserve to be on this thread. Especially considering they have actual title and CEO goes with it.
- alina24 12y ago"Customer Happiness Hacker/Intern/Person".
- loumf 12y agoI worked at a startup with a star-themed name that made an internal CRM called Astronomy. Then, they hired someone to manage it and their title was Astronomer, when it should have been something like Sales Associate.
- mattbeck 12y agoYears ago, while working at a VC firm (in the office pool) my wife got to pick her own title. I convinced her briefly to go with business cards with the title: Floccinaucinihilipilificatrix
- api 12y agoI actually saw "Scaling Sherpa" once. Clever, but lame.
- RickS 12y ago"Happiness Hero" in the recent Buffer salary breakdown made me cringe. Customer service is an important role at a startup, but I couldn't tell another person that job title and not feel like a joke. There's no way of knowing this, but I'd be willing to bet that it's deterred potential hires in the past.
- phantom_oracle 12y agoI seriously doubt the cheesy title has deterred anyone from applying. They pay somewhere in the region of over $65K for "customer support". Probably 5-10 times more than what a service-person doing a very similar job in outsourced India earns.
- lily2014 12y agoIt think title "brander" is the most ridiculous
- totoroisalive 12y agoFounder
- abhshksingh 12y agoCEO 1 and CEO 2
- joeclark77 12y agoOne company I knew had a "Director of Clever" and "Director of Delight" or something similar. They're out of business now. Nice guys though.
- kromodor 12y agoWhen I read GURU, I automatically add "scam" to it. It is biased of course, yet my past experience made me very wary of "gurus".
- zaccus 12y agoAnything relating to culture. If you think you can control your company's culture from the top down, then you don't understand what culture is.
- paranoide 12y ago"Research Specialist" and all I'd do was to Google stuff.
- chadkruse 12y agoCOO, particularly if the company has fewer than 10 employees.
- brothe2000 12y agoChief Innovation Officer always struck me as odd. Sort of says 1 person heads up innovation. Chief Techie Startup titles should be jobs, not titles. Sales, Marketing, Development, QA.
- ceedan 12y agoDream Manager. dead serious.