do job titles matter?

by Alison Green on February 5, 2025

A reader asks:

I work for a small company of 25 employees. We still call ourselves a start-up (with all of the cultural elements that brings), but we’ve been around almost 10 years now.

The founder believes “titles don’t matter” and it’s more important to focus on the responsibilities each person has. So most people have their official title as basically the department they work for (business development, software engineering, etc), although the management team does have official titles.

Do job titles matter? Am I wrong to feel that I want my growth recognized through a new title?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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{ 66 comments }

{ 66 comments… read them below or add one }

      1. Writingonthewall*

        Some managers are more equal than others.

        My experience has been that “titles don’t matter” goes hand-in-hand with “we are a family” and the general “you would never even think of leaving us, so why do you want to talk about this?”

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        2. jez chickena*

          See also: Why do you need time off? He’s not harassing you; you are just mistaken. That never happened. What do you need a raise for, you don’t have children? The CEO’s cousin did not leave a nude portrait of you on your desk. See, I just ripped it up and threw it away. The owner’s husband did not call a client the N-word on a call. You must have misheard. I’m promoting this person over you because he is just like me (insert ethnic-demographic). I don’t care if you don’t think she deserves a bonus she’s like me.

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      2. tina turner*

        Do clients or customers or other outsiders matter here?
        Titles add “clarity” — if there’s a problem, it might be reassuring to know you’re speaking to the whoever person.

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    2. Patty O. Furniture*

      “although the management team does have official titles.” ding ding ding! I believe this is designed to prevent employees from setting any “that’s not my job” boundaries.

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      1. Generic Name*

        It’s also hard to determine if you’re being paid fairly because the salary comparison websites all hinge on job titles.

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    3. about that*

      Sometimes the title maps directly to the work and responsibility of the person holding that title. This is generally true for the Chief officers of a corporation (whether or not those people are doing the job their title indicates is a whole other matter).

      And sometimes the title doesn’t really tell you anything at all. My title is “Senior Llama Groomer”. I work for a “Manager (Llama Grooming)”, who reports to a Senior Director (Llama Grooming Infrastructure). But my actual roles and responsibilities have nothing to do with llama grooming itself. If people in the company want to know what I do, my title is worthless. What I do is facilitate and develop llama groomer-driven action plans for more efficient grooming practices. My boss leads the llama grooming efficiency program. His boss oversees the llama grooming efficiency program, among other things. There are other managers in our department that manage actual teams of people doing actual llama grooming. From our titles, you’d think that me and my boss were on those teams. We’re not.

      Titles matter, but so does who’s actually doing what. This is especially true for a startup. That said, it’s still very important for a startup to be clear about who is doing the CEO thing.

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    4. STW*

      Our leadership team has them and the explanation is because they interface with investors at conferences, and “money guy” doesn’t have the ring to it that “CFO” does.

      Bear in mind I’m a little salty about this on a personal level because my title is something like “punching lead” when in actual fact I am the leader and direct supervisor for a dozen people, whose individual responsibilities include stuff like punch, kick, eye gouge, stab, and mud wrestle. You can’t tell from my title that I’m responsible for everything to do with fighting, and outside this company that prides themselves on the lack of hierarchy, I would be the Director of Combat. Or considering that I report to the CEO and I do the budgeting and the long term planning for my division, with no oversight other than his, I might even be the Vice President of Combat.

      Clinching this argument is that when I raised the concern about my ability to get another job, the boss says that if anyone called to check my references in the future, he’d gladly say I was the Director of Combat.

      So I can’t look for a job with Director of Combat on my resume, unless I leave a job that I otherwise love very much.

      Reply ↓
  2. Medium Sized Manager*

    My current job started as a “we are a startup! Everybody is equal!” and it drove me nuts. Hierarchy is a necessary function of the workplace because even if there’s not a formal title, informal things like “Jane needs to sign off on that” still occur. Now that we are more formal, I find it easier to punt stuff that isn’t my responsibility/take ownership of work that is definitively mine.

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    1. Also-ADHD*

      I think this only works when people have clear lanes (i.e. it’s so small, it’s less about hierarchy in an up/down way and more about who owns what decisions due to function) AND they actually mean it enough to let people pick their own appropriate titles and ways of working.

      Too often I see secret hierarchy which is just dumb and confusing for all.

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    1. MigraineMonth*

      I worked for 7 years for a company that had roles but no titles within those roles. So you could be “software developer” whether you’d been there for 2 months or 16 years. There were performance raises, but the only clear promotion path was to change your role to “manager”, which meant you managed between 5 and 50 people.

      Ironically, in order to qualify for H1B1 visas, the company had to submit information about how many of its employees would fit in the somewhat standardized software developer levels, so we were annually assessed on that. We were then supposed to forget that had happened and go back to our egalitarian wonderland where no one was sure who had more expertise.

      I suspect that this was done 1) to make it difficult to find another job, and 2) to hide from customers how junior the employees were. (We were specifically instructed never to tell customers how long we’d worked for the company, because no one wanted to know their multi-million-dollar software project was being handled by a team of ten with a cumulative 5 years of experience.)

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      1. Chelle*

        As I suspect I work where you used to work , it’s probably worth pointing out that even becoming a people manager doesn’t inherently qualify as a “promotion” — it’s a different set of responsibilities and you’ll have slightly less other work as a result, but you’re still expected to be primarily an individual contributor, at least at first. Leadership roles still exist and most of them are people managers too, and the higher up you get the less IC work you do, but it’s all formally a flat structure. When you get to a company this size (>10k employees) it’s a little absurd.

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  4. Dawn*

    My last job had formal job titles, but they had a really, really strict and hidebound process for deciding who got what title; when it ended, my grandboss was campaigning for me to have a higher title because I was working at a far higher level than my job title suggested, but thanks to the layoff I’m going into my next job search looking like I never advanced beyond “customer service associate” and it’s super frustrating because I was practically running my own department.

    There was actually a letter that was answered about a decade ago where the answer said that you could just leave job titles off your resume… I doubt that would still be true today, but unfortunately, I never heard back when I asked. I’d really like to leave that title off if I could get away with it because it’s genuinely holding me back.

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    1. Archi-detect*

      I would think the move would be to include the job title but explain all the things you did in it. I have also listed the work I have done as Cadd Technician/Draftsman (listed as Project Manager) to downgrade my title to what I did- I am not a PM by any means

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      1. Dawn*

        I mean I do that, but as the response to this letter noted, people hiring do skim resumes and make judgments based off of the job titles they see – and this one’s right at the top of my resume.

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        1. Dawn*

          What it LOOKS like is that in seven years I never made it past “associate” when the truth was just that there wasn’t an established job title for the new role I was actually doing.

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    2. An Australian in London*

      It’s acceptable practice (and advised here) to list the internal job title and the title that would be recognised externally as a quick summary of responsibilities.

      For a situation like this I’d probably list this like

      2022-2024 Deputy Operations Manager (internally: Customer Service Associate, the only title used)

      Reply ↓
      1. Dawn*

        The problem is going to be that if they call the parent company’s HR to confirm it, they’ll deny that I ever had any other title but Associate so it’s a gamble. And it’s not really typical practice here either. Good idea, though!

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        1. Hlao-roo*

          Are cover letters widely used in your industry? If so, you could write up something along the lines of “At ACME Corp. I perform the duties of a Deputy Operations Manager* such as X, Y, Z, but my title remained Customer Service Associate because of internal ACME Corp. policy.”

          It might help a little bit with the skim-the-resume problem, assuming the hiring manager skims the cover letter before they skim the resume.

          *or whatever title you would have if you worked at a company that was reasonable about titles

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          1. Dawn*

            Oh I definitely write a very good cover letter, haha. Writing is one of my strengths and I always have a solid cover letter to go with it.

            Just wish the company hadn’t put me in this position to begin with.

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      2. Generic Name*

        That’s how I handled my most recent job search. In the heading for my job title, I listed a normal title (Project Manager) and then the first bullet below I said, “[Company] job title: Scientist”.

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  5. Apex Mountain*

    I think it’s very dependent by company and maybe more by position. In sales for example, at many companies you could be an Account executive, strategic account director, senior sales specialist etc etc. and it doesn’t make a difference.

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    1. Landry*

      Yep. I work in sales and people who do the same functions will call themselves account executive, sales specialist, business development representative, etc. Management is so out of touch and clueless as to either not notice or care. I don’t think any of them are inaccurate, per se, but I think it looks a little unprofessional of us as an organization to not have consistency.

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  6. YesPhoebeWould*

    As Allison notes, titles can matter a great deal. And more so, they can have a “cascade” effect upon one’s career. It is MUCH easier to be taken seriously for a manager level job if you are ALREADY titled as a manager.

    If that helps you get a more senior manager role, that makes it more likely that you can compete for director roles, and do so earlier. Which makes it more likely you can compete for an AVP role in 3 or 4 years….rinse and repeat.

    Titles are indeed critical to career advancement, and any leader who does not recognize that is doing a disservice to their people.

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  7. Caramel & Cheddar*

    I’d be curious what the LW’s company puts in job postings on external job boards, like does it really just say “Business Development”? I don’t know that I’d apply to a job with a title so vague, but obviously there are people who do.

    Anyway, as mentioned in the answer, titles can definitely give a sense of authority, hierarchy, and responsibility, but even a clear job title may not give a true sense of how many layers of staff there are. I had a job once where I took purposely chose to take a step down for a variety of reasons, but I found out once I started that I’d actually taken two steps down because of how their job titles worked (new job had “senior” level for every job title, old job didn’t).

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    1. WellRed*

      I think we have the opposite. Half the team retitled themselves as director of this or director of that. They are all departments of one in a company if fewer than 20.

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      1. Student*

        I’ve noticed this with student organizations. Every position is a director of something, e.g., Director of Finance and Director of Communication instead of treasurer and secretary. There will be like a dozen directors in a club.

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    2. Elwin*

      I had a job where I made sure I had Senior in the title when I joined, only to find out my peers were Principal. Say what?

      And I’ve worked with a startup of 13 people that had 5 EVPs lol

      Reply ↓
  8. mango chiffon*

    recently went through a change where our job family title went from “administrative coordinator” to “program coordinator” and I definitely feel like it reflects the work we do better (which includes scheduling, but also budget management) and will be more respected by others when seen on a resume. Because unfortunately, people still look down on administrative work

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  9. Lurker*

    Could lack of job titles be a way to help prevent people from successfully being able to transition to another company?

    Reply ↓
        1. WellRed*

          I don’t believe that companies spend nearly as much time sitting around thinking up ways to prevent employees from doing anything as comes up in the comments. I do believe they can be inept or short sighted. Ultimately, if an am employee wants to move on, they’ll find a way.

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    2. pally*

      Bingo!

      I was a supervisor of a department.
      So when I was asked to whom I reported to, I explained that it was the CEO.
      That garnered interest!
      But when I explained that I didn’t supervise anyone, that interest went away. Even when I explained that (1) I had techs to supervise in the past and (2) I run the entire department (and to all the work too).
      Apparently it’s bad to be in a small company and wear many hats and know how to do everything.

      Reply ↓
      1. bubble*

        I am sorry that happened. Could you have phrased it so that you supervised a project? Was this concern about administrative supervisory duties like scheduling staff? I think you can discuss it. A reasonable person would hear you out. Frustrating, but do you really want to work for someone who is not reasonable.

        Also, never forget, you can not get a job for that have nothing to do with you.

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        1. bubble*

          * Also, never forget, you can not get a job for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

          My kingdom for an “Edit Comment” option!!!!

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    3. bighairnoheart*

      I’m guessing it’s not the primary motivation of the companies who do this, but it sure is a nice finge benefit!

      Reply ↓
  10. Yup*

    We function in a system where titles do matter–for internal responsibilities as well as when you want to apply for a new job. Titles aren’t the be all, end all of what you do, but they do place people on a responsibility scale that’s mutually familiar, and that helps everyone.

    Reply ↓
  11. Lily Potter*

    There’s a world of difference between an Administrative Assistant and an Assistant Administrator. Ask me why I know….

    I was in my 20s and naive, or I would have pushed back more at the time of hiring. Back then, people in that industry knew that an Administrative Assistant was not a Secretary (people still had Secretary and Receptionist titles) However, it sure held me back when I was looking for my next professional job. I should have been titled Assistant Administrator, or at minimum, Administrative Aide. My boss’ viewpoint was “everyone in our industry will know what you do when you tell them you’re an Administrative Assistant” – the problem came when I left the industry, of course….

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  12. Wendy T*

    I imagine this is an overcorrection to old school companies where titles start becoming meaningless and ambiguous the more they’re used. In my old field, the title “associate” could mean anything from “a level up from junior” to “leading the company”

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  13. Jason*

    There’s a lot of good advice here about titles as they apply to resumes and pursuing jobs in the future.

    Within your current company, it may not matter much when it’s at startup size, but as it grows, the company will likely have to organize and standardize the titles it gives people, and that organization may go far enough to affect compensation. I’ve known people who were told they couldn’t get a raise right now because they were being paid the most allowed for a person with their title–they’d need a promotion in order to be paid any more.

    So it may not matter today, but it may some time in the future.

    Reply ↓
  14. My Useless Two Cents*

    This really resonates. My workplace is not a start-up (been around in some form for over 100 years) but is a small business. They have never put a lot of energy into titles. I’ve been here forever (over 20 years) and have had almost every job in the office but you would never have known it by my job title(s). We had new cubicle nameplates done a few years ago and my “title” was a combination of department name and job tasks, ended up something like “teapot designer/estimating/customer rep”. There have been several people over the years that have just added “senior” to their title, just because they felt like it. No one in mgt. has said anything as far as I know.

    The only time this has ever been a problem has been updating my resume which is it’s own kind of complication because along with no true job titles, the company doesn’t really provide performance metrics/evaluations nor can I provide a lot of accomplishments that sound like something (the resume equivalent of “Really, I’m a hard worker”!) even though I’ve been the “rock-star” employee on-and-off several times over my tenure :-|

    Reply ↓
    1. Lily Potter*

      There have been several people over the years that have just added “senior” to their title, just because they felt like it. No one in mgt. has said anything as far as I know.

      This happens all the time. It’s amusing when a co-worker “self promotes” themself. I’d sort of understand it if it was just on LinkedIn, but a few particularly self-important co-workers go so far as to put the new title in their signature block for all to see! (everyone in the company knew that there was no such thing as a Senior Teapot Manager, and that if there was such a thing, that Lily would have the title, not Rufus.) It’s like they think “hey, I’ve been here a few years and there’s one guy with my title hired after me. Must make me a Senior!”

      Reply ↓
  15. Sneaky Squirrel*

    Titles matter from a marketing perspective. A title is one of the first things an employer looks at on a resume. It comes with an expectation about the type of experience that someone will have. Candidates market themselves to employers by using a title that gives an impression of what they do. Conversely, employers use a title on their career site to attract the kinds of candidates they’re looking for.

    But at the end of the day, I care more about the money and the job description first. I see so many companies throwing out the term “Director” or “VP” around for junior level positions to give their staff an ego boost. Resume screeners will see right through that.

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  16. The Other Evil HR Lady*

    Besides not having titles, do you not have job descriptions??

    And, also, how does your company purchase insurance (worker’s comp and the like) without telling the insurance the title of each person that works there? You have to tell insurance companies the title and give the job description of each title so that they can categorize each person in case of injury. Maybe everyone works in the office and you don’t have salespeople – but you mentioned business development. Are those people insured appropriately for the work they do outside (if any)?

    P.S.: this might not apply to states where WC is handled by the state itself (like NY), or if the company is too small to have to purchase WC insurance (it doesn’t sound like it, but who knows?). I’m just throwing it out there because titles matter even outside of employee relations and resumes, and affect the operation of the business itself.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wilbur*

      Is that based on title? For travel insurance at my company the payouts are based on your salary.

      Not having titles seems like a great way to push back against people asking for raises. Can’t argue that you deserve the market rate as a Senior Business Analyst without a title.

      Reply ↓
  17. Susie QQ*

    Coming at this from a different angle, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that titles don’t matter, but I think that some people put too much importance on them in certain industries — namely the ones where titles aren’t standardized (which may be all of them?).

    In my own software engineering a title used to be very important to me until I realized that the level my company called “senior software engineer” would be called “software engineer” in a lot of other places. when I’m hiring and I get in a resume for a “Software Engineer II,” for example, I have no idea what that actually means. I need to inspect the bullet points to see if it’s a good match or not, and the title is definitely not a shortcut for me (if anything, it poses the risk of me thinking the title means one thing when it actually means something else).

    It’s a difficult thing for a manager to say because it can come across as pretty tone deaf (as evidenced by the responses here). And yes, titles matter. But for certain industries I don’t think they matter as much as some people think they do.

    Reply ↓
    1. Parenthesis Guy*

      I think what you’re demonstrating isn’t that titles don’t matter, but that titles can be hard to understand. A hard to understand title potentially loses value.

      For example, I worked at one large company that gave standard titles to people. Problem is, the titles seemed largely interchangable unless you were familiar with the company. This made everything more difficult. People would apply to jobs and not really understand what the title meant, so they wouldn’t fully understand what they were applying for. Other people would see the titles and not really know what they meant.

      That just means you need to push for a title that people can understand so they know where to place you.

      Reply ↓
  18. dz*

    Management not understanding the importance of titles is so annoying to me. At a nonprofit, we got a new ED whose entire previous job experience had been in elementary schools. I had been a Development Admin for years and wanted to move up to Development Associate because I had taken on many of my boss’s duties when she left. The ED said I couldn’t have that title, because the grant writer had that title and had 10 years’ more experience and a master’s degree. Well then she can advocate for her own promotion, too! She’s an adult! I just wanted my title to reflect the fact that I was almost doing the Development Director job when the role was unfilled! We were all getting paid dirt, of course a title matters, particularly when job hunting.

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  20. Generic Name*

    I worked for a company that for a long time required people’s job titles to be whatever their college degree was in (except for the owner/founder, of course). So project managers would have job titles like: geologist, chemist, etc. Then, as the company grew, they started developing their own (really weird) job titles, but kept a lot of the technical level staff titles the same. Everyone who left the company told HR that they were leaving for more money. Even though HR heard this over and over and over, they maintained that they did regular salary studies and their employees were “paid fairly”. (I guess it’s nice HR can sleep at night). People regularly did work well above what their job title implied they did. Of course they compared salaries of the suppressed job titles rather than using accurate job titles based on what people actually did.

    Reply ↓
  21. HonorBox*

    Woof. This is a tough one, mostly because many of the reasons for asking for (demanding) a title can be seen as self-serving. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t pursue a title because of that. But the request should be nuanced enough that it doesn’t seem like you’re prepping your resume.

    I’d lean heavily on any real or perceived obstacles that are created by not having titles and not having any sort of internal hierarchy. For instance, if the senior management team is inundated with requests for information, approvals, feedback and there’s ever a time that one of them pushes back because it is “beneath them” then you can suggest that having titles would help free them up. If you have colleagues who always come to you for specific things, then you should point out to your leadership that you’re fielding questions that are more than “business development” so you should be recognized as a manager or Senior.

    Reply ↓
  22. cactus lady*

    I have a question about this. I work in a niche field, and my title reflects this. I was advised to change it on my resume to something more generic (let’s say I am a chocolate teapot spout specialist, I was advised to change to something like “teapot designer”) so that hiring managers outside of this field would understand what I do. However, that is not my actual title. What are peoples thoughts on this?

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  23. GovernerdsUnited*

    I was in the exact situation at my last company. We were a “flat” company, altho our VP and CEO/President used their titles. Everyone else was just “engineer,” “designer,” etc. I gave myself my own title when it came to my linkedin profile and resume. My boss never cared. By the time I had accepted a new offer with another company, I told him he needed to confirm my title if anyone asked and he agreed. Ultimately, he knew that outside our company, titles mattered, and he just wanted everyone within to feel equal. It worked out great. Hopefully, you’re in a similar position!

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  24. ReflectingRoles*

    Hmmm, I expected this to go the other way – I have worked for companies that didn’t have Jr/Sr/Principal designations, but they still had titles that indicated what you did and it didn’t seem like a big deal. If asked why I went from Sdnior X at one job to just X at the next I just told them everyone was just an X and it wasn’t a big deal.

    To me, the bigger issue is when titles don’t represent your role. I worked at a company where all technical staff was officially Level Engineer whether they were a developer, architect, tech writer, tester, etc. On the plus side, it meant there was fairly equitable pay across team roles. But it meant we didn’t use our official titles on our resumes/etc. Which is my recommendation any time your official title doesn’t reflect your actual job duties.

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    1. Lily Potter*

      The world has also moved toward everyone being a “manager”. It’s become the grade-inflation of the corporate world.

      The only job I ever had with direct managerial responsibility (e.g. staffing, performance evaluations, etc) was when my title was Administrative Assistant!

      The only job I’ve had with “Manager” in the title involved me coordinating & supervising the work of others but I had no true managerial responsibilities. (frustrating beyond belief, but that’s a story for another day)

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  25. Volunteer Enforcer*

    My old job title was Centre Facilitator. I’ll give you a second to guess my responsibilities.

    I was actually an Administrator and Receptionist, plus every other odd job for the building. Looking back, the odd jobs weren’t too much of a stretch (the most “outrageous” was building simple flat pack toys) but felt unreasonable as my boss didn’t recognise we were understaffed.

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    1. Good Lord Ratty*

      I would have assumed that meant you were a building manager (as in, you handled management of the building/space itself, like facilities).

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  26. SunnyShine*

    The people who say “titles don’t matter” are usually ones who have managed to climb the corporate ladder. They are in positions where they can change things. They always had a tangent about some smuck who was so focused on the title that he neglected his health and family.

    Titles matter when it comes to expertise and trying to get into management.

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  27. Some Lady*

    I was promoted from a Coordinator to a Manager, but had many of the same job responsibilities. I absolutely noticed a difference in how people responded to my requests (especially externally). I didn’t actually have more authority, at least in terms of the specific project or conversation, but people felt like an important person was contacting them and responded in kind.

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  28. Annony*

    I was just shown that job titles definitely do matter, even internally. I’m getting onboarded for my new job and was sent the wrong instructions because everyone else with my job title have different required certification and different job duties. Job titles are an easy short hand for those things when used correctly.

    Reply ↓

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