
Minimize use of CxO titles at early company stages - venturefizz
http://venturefizz.com/blog/minimize-use-cxo-titles-early-company-stages
======
kyllo
_If they're not a rockstar, I'd make the case that they're your "development
head / lead"._

How do you even know if your lead developer is a "rockstar" or not--especially
if you're the non-technical co-founder? Are you supposed to give him/her
coding tests?

The term "rockstar" needs to die, now. It's a meaningless mumbo-jumbo term
invented by someone who didn't understand what developers do.

~~~
rfnslyr
I absolutely hate these meaningless titles. I just started work in the
corporate world. After a month I literally want to kill myself.

We use the following terms:

To do items -> ACTION TASKS!

Manager -> _Champion_.... groan

Meetings -> "Social". As in, "in ten minutes, we're having a social in room
10D.

Cooworker -> Friend.

We have to use these terms, there are so many more, that combined with the
fake forced "i love to work here" attitude day in day out is absolutely
crushing me.

~~~
gvb
Don't forget _Leaders!_

In Manager -> Leader in the HR context and then the Leader -> Champion in the
project management context.

~~~
rfnslyr
I have 3 months left at this internship at which point I'm going to hermit and
develop my own shit for the next year. I just need to stick this out since it
pays a fat paycheck, funding my food and rent.

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CptCodeMonkey
Funny memory, at a startup weekend in a team as the only technical resource.
Had my headset on but wasn't listening to music... was somewhat amusing as
everyone passed out C letter titles for an idea that wasn't even implemented.
Took my headset off when someone claimed CTO "CTO huh? What am I doing right
now?... Oh you don't actually know? You want to be the CTO but you don't know
what your only engineer is doing?" Walked off after that.

~~~
infinitone
Startup weekend is probably one of the last places on earth to find legit
entrepreneurs/founders. I've been to 2 and never will be going again- such a
mental drain to accomplish so little.

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tbrownaw
I would think that being a "Chief $FOO Officer" would require that there be
other $FOO Officers in the company, who all report (maybe indirectly) to you.

If your company isn't big enough to have middle management, it's not big
enough to have Chief Anything Officers. It's completely nonsensical.

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OldSchool
I've always believed that from a risk/reward, legal liability standpoint,
being $NOBODY making $ GAZILLIONS was the ideal state. This trend is
diametrically opposed to that approach.

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grosbisou
I agree with most of this post but I think more often than not founders do not
care about CxO titles. They just want to get shit done.

On the contrary people outside the company (investors, press, everybody)
needs/wants to know which position you and your cofounders fulfill when you
meet them.

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tymathews
Isn't founder/co-founder a good enough indication that you do everything? and
if its not implicit enough maybe I can just make my title CXO to get the point
across :)

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OldSchool
Yes, yes, and yes. Owner, Founder, maybe President, but CxO just looks
ridiculous. Way too many one-person company CEOs out there. I believe this
title grab began when CEOs started getting skewered in the media for being
overpaid. End result, lots of free titles self-dubbed. I suppose that had the
positive effect of lowering -average- CEO pay everywhere :)

~~~
mhurron
CXO titles in any small business look ridiculous. I worked at a small company
where the 'IT Manager' over 3 people (developer, junior developer, system
administrator) called himself the CIO. Why? So he could demand a salary that
(along with the owner/CEO, the accountant/CFO and floor manager/COO) crippled
the company and so it would look better when he moved on. Of course, now that
he was a CXO level, he just sat on his ass, drank coffee and made promises to
the company owner that everyone else had to make happen, so he looked good.

CXO positions being grabbed at small companies is a sign of a group of
dysfunctional, self-congratulating morons looking to ride this to other places
willing to pay them even more to be called CXO.

~~~
nasalgoat
One reason for grabing a C-level title early on is to avoid someone else
getting it later as the business grows.

Often, if there's no CTO for example, they might be tempted to hire a more
senior person in that role. But if it's taken, well...

~~~
mhurron
And when the person who was there to grab it isn't qualified for the position?
Just because you were there early doesn't mean you're the best person for the
job.

CXO titles at small companies are a sign of bad things.

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munro
Ha! This is great, it looks as if this article was written for Soylent
Corporation. I personally hope their company succeeds, to the point where
they're going to have some awkward title changes. :)

<https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body>

~~~
gohrt
Proposed new titles:

Founding team: Soylent Red

New hires: Soylent Green

------
Hovertruck
"Minimize use of titles at early company stages" would simplify this a bit.

~~~
michaelochurch
Right, with regard to _use_. Early on, titles mean nothing operationally.
However, they're armor against people being hired above someone. Frankly,
although I can't officially prevent it (unless a majority-shareholding CEO) if
someone's going to be hired above me, I fucking _want_ it to be a company-wide
earthquake if it happens, in order to discourage the phenomenon where high-
level positions are handed out as political tokens. It goddamn better be
painful and dramatic for the company if some outsider is hired above me, to
take advantage of my fucking hard work.

The reason VCs don't like to see CxOs already in place is because it makes it
harder for them to use the company to hand out jobs to their underachieving
middle-aged friends looking for executive sinecures.

------
michaelochurch
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
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
_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
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
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.

~~~
patrickmay
"Repulsive" needs some logical support. If your first developer lacks the
necessary skills, it doesn't make sense to put the company at risk by setting
him or her up for failure.

~~~
eropple
Hire a better first developer. If you go in to screw the guy working for you
(and by my lights, what you describe is screwing), you invite bad karma.

