
What's the most ridiculous job title at a startup? - qhoc
I am not talking about jokes
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mlwarren
Any title that incorporates Ninja, Rockstar, Pirate, Guru, etc. Also Full
Stack is so misused it's becoming a joke.

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qhoc
"Guru" really made my eyes rolled over. Now it's "Full Stack" I guess

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nmjohn
Is 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?

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ramblerman
If you tell us what your stack is I suppose.

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cik
My personal best was "Release Messiah". To this day I still cringe.

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priorconsent
This made my day. Thank you :)

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webmaven
Strangeberry had titles like Chief Hackberry, Chief Wiseberry, Chief
Smartberry before Tivo bought them in 2004.

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andrewstuart2
CEO. 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.

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josephschmoe
It 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.

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mikestew
An 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".

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RickS
"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.

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phantom_oracle
I 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.

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johnward
There 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.

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kromodor
When I read GURU, I automatically add "scam" to it. It is biased of course,
yet my past experience made me very wary of "gurus".

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lscharen
Everybody 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.

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relaunched
I 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.

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loumf
I 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.

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mattbeck
Years 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

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rubiquity
Web 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.

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api
I actually saw "Scaling Sherpa" once. Clever, but lame.

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brothe2000
Chief 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.

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joeclark77
One company I knew had a "Director of Clever" and "Director of Delight" or
something similar. They're out of business now. Nice guys though.

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alina24
"Customer Happiness Hacker/Intern/Person".

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lily2014
It think title "brander" is the most ridiculous

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zaccus
Anything 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.

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0pc0d3
Under Secretary to the Sub-Committee on A/B Testing

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level09
this link might be relevant
[http://www.bullshitjob.com/title/](http://www.bullshitjob.com/title/)

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abhshksingh
CEO 1 and CEO 2

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peterwwillis
"Evangelist". Nothing quite as pride-instilling as being compared to a preachy
religious fanatic.

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paranoide
"Research Specialist" and all I'd do was to Google stuff.

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chadkruse
COO, particularly if the company has fewer than 10 employees.

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level09
Perhaps Social Media Facilitator ?

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ceedan
Dream Manager. dead serious.

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orasis
Chief Scientist

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totoroisalive
Founder

