Minimize use of CxO titles at early company stages

http://venturefizz.com/blog/minimize-use-cxo-titles-early-company-stages

by venturefizz • 13 years ago

44 33 13 years ago

grosbisou• 13 years ago

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.

OldSchool2• 13 years ago

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 :)

mhurron2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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...

kyllo3• 13 years ago

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.

rfnslyr2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

Don't forget Leaders!

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

gohrt2• 13 years ago

Let's not foget this gem:

Figuratively -> Literally

Do people in your company use "Social" to mean a conversation about business topics? A "social" is people eating/drinking and chatting informally to get to know each other.

"Champion" is not a "manager". A champion is someone who cares about a project and fights for it. Someone assigned to maange a project might not be a champion -> will neglect it and let it die.

OldSchool2• 13 years ago

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.

tymathews• 13 years ago

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 :)

Hovertruck• 13 years ago

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

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

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.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

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.

patrickmay3• 13 years ago

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.

kyllo3• 13 years ago

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?

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

Most successful VCs are not so willing to risk their investment by putting incompetent people into executive positions.

Yes and no. I obviously exaggerate the incompetence of such implants. However, let's look at this way. Let's say that I'm an 8/10 for the role (9/10 is where I'm headed, 10/10 is best in the world). No VC is going to risk his investment on a 3/10; that's a 5-point drop. But a 7? A 6 whom he owes a really big favor? A 5 who he seems to think is a 9 because of the 5's superior social skills? Quite likely, yes. The VC would rather have a personal friend at 7-level competence than me at 8. And while 8's and 9's are really rare, 6's and 7's aren't uncommon, and the VC has plenty of 5+ in his network.

I know that I'm really solid at a lot of things. I also know that, while my level of talent may be rare and high, "close enough" is not rare for most purposes. I can't afford to kid myself and underestimate the competition. And to be frank about it, there are a lot of roles in which a 6 and an 8 are interchangeable.

I'm sure that's true, taking a pragmatic approach, but I also think that's often used as an excuse to throw people under the bus.

Often, the short-term compromises and stress levels cause a situation where good people end up ineligible for the top roles. The guy who pissed off 2/5 of the team by pushing what turned out to be the right decision has too many enemies to be CTO, and the person who built the original system under extreme time pressure is ineligible for VP/Eng because the system is starting to strain.

That happens, and some of it's inevitable, but if someone's going to be hired above me, I want it to be with my consent and voluntary abdication. I'll gladly step down if it's the right thing to do; but I prefer having a say in how it happens. Otherwise, you might as well just fire me.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

I like the idea of looking for companies where one is explicitly guaranteed to be the asymptote of competence.

tbrownaw2• 13 years ago

Sounds great for the ego, but wouldn't it be harder to learn things if none of your coworkers are allowed to be better than (or even as good as) you?

mpeg• 13 years ago

Yep I joined one of those "titles don't matter" startups on a shit title.

Long story short, we got acquired and I've still got the same shit title while people who were "managers" of their 1-man team are still managers.

If I ever join a startup again (probably won't happen) I'm not in for anything less than fucking CTO

redshirtrob• 13 years ago

Wow, I pretty much completely agree with your title assessment (not sure about the VC stuff since I don't have experience there. I'd summarize it as, "titles don't matter...until they do." The specifics are unimportant, but I've been burned by this at least once, and negatively affected by it another time.

I wish it didn't work this way. I'd like titles to not matter. I'd like to work in a true meritocracy. But, there will always be outsiders assessing your organization. Oftentimes they'll use title as a proxy for something els--and then it matters again. Especially when that person is a new boss.

The only solution I can think of is to call everyone Beverly.

tbrownaw2• 13 years ago

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.

CptCodeMonkey• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

munro• 13 years ago

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

gohrt2• 13 years ago

Proposed new titles:

Founding team: Soylent Red

New hires: Soylent Green

Minimize use of CxO titles at early company stages

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