I think he’s wrong here. Job titles serve two real purposes. To denote rank and to represent what rank someone had at a previous company so they can get other

I think he’s wrong here. Job titles serve two real purposes. To denote rank and to represent what rank someone had at a previous company so they can get other jobs at that level. The first need exists in any company with more than one person in a department. Once you get a second person you need to have someone be in charge in case there’s a dispute. So rank is valid for companies of virtually any size. On the second point you don’t want your employees to take a hit by working for you. The problem with calling everyone a “member of the sales team” as he suggests is that you create a hole in someone’s resume where it looks like they dropped in rank for some reason (VP of Sales to Member of the Sales Team). In a tough job economy that perceived hole could be enough for a company to pass the resume over. So stripping people of rank becomes a disincentive to your employees. Startups are a different animal from big companies. That I agree with. But they still live in the same world and in this world, for better or worse, titles are important.