Should companies operate without formal job titles to preserve flexible authority and mobility?

Harry Stebbings · Jul 21, 2023 · hedged

Candidates who negotiate hard over their title before joining are never a good hire

Scope: framed as one of his own lessons while asking whether he's wrong

15:33 20VC: Why Hiring in Tech is Broken and Founders Need to be as Good at Firing as they are Hiring, Why Product Differentiation is Unsustainable & Why the Current Generation of Tech Employees are Entitled and What Needs to Change with Jean-Denis Greze @ Plai

Eléonore Crespo · May 9, 2025

A candidate asking for a specific title is a red flag

It signals they are coming for their own agenda rather than for the mission and impact; people who think about titles bring politics

25:38 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

Titles should be abolished as a status system — Odoo lets employees pick their own titles because what you do matters, not your title, and people are smart enough not to abuse it

He wants to kill title-seeking; most people won't inflate their own title

62:11 Employees choose own titles to kill title seeking status

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

A candidate caring a lot about their title is not a red flag

Some people simply like titles and that's okay — at Odoo people choose their own title, and those who don't care take a funny one

68:23 Caring about title is not a red flag in hiring

Jean-Denis Greze · Jul 21, 2023

Caring a lot about titles is a red flag in a very small company but only a mild yellow flag at scale, where you should go with the grain of the industry on titles rather than fight it

At a thousand-plus people you recruit people for whom titles matter, and for some underrepresented groups a title like staff engineer is genuinely meaningful career recognition rather than ego; fighting the industry norm costs too much

15:59 Title sensitivity is a red flag only at small scale and becomes normal at large scale

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

Their company eliminated titles beyond functional definitions (e.g., engineering, product) because titles are a form of compensation and, as a radically transparent company, compensation is the only thing they don't share

Titles are effectively a form of compensation, and at a company that shares everything except compensation data, that form of hidden compensation doesn't fit

15:27 Titles are hidden compensation so transparent companies must eliminate them

Mati Staniszewski · Sep 8, 2025

Companies should operate without titles, because titles cap a person's decision-making scope and block fast internal mobility into leadership roles

Impact should determine influence from day zero; in an org of many small teams, deciding who gets titles is a distraction; a low-tenure person should be able to lead longer-tenured people, and titles once given tend to stick forever

47:08 Title free orgs preserve fast mobility and impact based authority