Big Shiny Badges.
Why job titles matter more than you think: compensation, career progression, and personal branding in tech startups.
"Titles don't matter."
Your favorite founder or VC.
That line gets thrown around a lot in tech. Especially by people who've never had to fight for one.
Titles do matter. A lot.
If you've ever come through the backdoor, no school logos, no referrals, no bigco pedigree, your track record, your title might be the only signal you've got.
It's the story you tell when nobody's listening. It's your story. It's your medal.
It's also your comp band, your leverage in a negotiation, your entry ticket to the next gig.
I've seen what happens when you have the right title, and I've seen what happens when you don't.
You might think it’s just semantics or that “I’m mistaking the forest for the trees” as a famous tier 1 VC once claimed, but wait until that title equals 6 more months of salary.
I come from far in my career.
No prestigious university or college, no family connections, no safety net. Just raw hustle and whatever credibility I could scrape together.
In that world, your title is your armor.
It's what gets you in the room. It's what makes people listen when you speak. It's the difference between being dismissed as "just another junior" and being seen as someone worth taking seriously.
A notorious french investor once dropped this bomb:
Until you're 10+ in a startup, the only roles that exist are head of get shit done & chief common fucking sense officer.
Jean “2LR” de La Rochebrochard
And that's exactly where titles make sense to ignore.
When your company is 5 people. When the org is flat. When everyone is building, shipping, on repeat.
It's real. It works. No fluff. No status games. Just output.
But then what?
You grow.
You hire 10, 20, 50 people. Suddenly, people want structure. Scope. Accountability.
Internally, they want to know: who's in charge of what?
Externally, partners and clients might ask: who's your CPO? Investors want a clear team slide. They want to negotiate with a VP.
And your own team starts wondering: what's next for me? How do I grow here?
You realize that titles are not just labels. They're maps. They're how people navigate the org. And how people outside read the org.
Without clear titles, the loudest person wins. Unluckily, the loudest person is often the one that carries a lot of BS.
The politically savvy ones get recognition while the builders stay invisible. That's not meritocracy, that's chaos with a flat structure chrome.
In public companies, your title literally determines your compensation.
Stock grants, bonus eligibility, severance packages — they're all tied to your level.
There are glitches of course. If you’re part of this batch, chances are you’re far from a VP level but still get a Fortune 500 salary.
When layoffs hit, the difference between a "Senior" and "Staff" level isn't just semantic and for the shiny badge, it can mean 5x to 6x difference in severance.
Trust me, I've been there not so long ago.
That gap can be the difference between landing on your feet and scrambling for months.
In public companies or big ones that might soon become public as well, it's structured, and it's the structure that determines your pay, your bonus, your equity refresh, your severance, your responsibilities.
And when the layoff email hits, your exit check depends on what the system thinks you are.
Fight for it early. Because when it matters, it's too late to change it.
I did fight for some titles. I had mixed feelings about this.
Too much ego? Too greedy? Who cares about titles?
I wish I fought harder.
Your title is your very own snowball.
It's personal branding compressed into two or three words.
It signals growth, expertise, and trajectory without me having to explain my entire career arc in every conversation.
The best titles attached to great companies or products are true lead magnets, they attract the right people and opportunities while filtering out the wrong ones.
A strategic title change can shift your entire network's perception and unlock doors that were previously closed.
Titles are how you get sourced by recruiters. How people intro you on stage. How podcasts invite you, how partners reach out, how people search for you.
They're SEO for your career. They're how your brand travels when you're not in the room.
But titles cut both ways.
Overinflate your role, and you set yourself up for a painful reality check.
I've watched talented people hurt their careers by accepting titles that sounded impressive but didn't match their actual experience or skills.
Or getting titles that are bit too creative.
Here's what happens: You get invited into the wrong room. You get grilled by people who expect you to be what you claim to be.
And if you're not, you burn the opportunity and the reputation.
The market is brutal about this.
Recruiters at established companies can spot startup title inflation from miles away. They know the difference between someone who earned their stripes at scale and someone who got a fancy title by being employee #3.
When you oversell yourself, you don't just risk the immediate role, you risk your long-term narrative.
Better to grow into a title authentically than to fake it and get exposed.
Your title has to reflect the truth. Not your ambition.
This is where the "titles don't matter" takes fall apart completely.
They're almost always written by people who've never had to claw their way up from the bottom.
When you come from a very small backdoor, your portfolio and titles are all you have.
They're medals of honor you earned in the trenches.
Every promotion represents months or years of grinding, proving yourself, and fighting for recognition.
That "Senior" in your title isn't just a word, it's proof that you belonged, that you contributed, that you made it one step further than where you started.
To dismiss that as meaningless corporate theater is to ignore the reality of how most careers actually work.
Not everyone gets to start at the top or skip the game entirely.
I cherish every title I've earned, even the ones that don’t sound fancy, because I know what it took to get there.
The crunches, the late nights, the difficult conversations, the political BS, the times I had to prove myself over and over.
Some in the industry love to say titles don't matter. It's easy and lame to dismiss titles when you've already won the game. Or when you're watching it unfold from the benches.
For the rest of us bleeding in the arena, titles are how we keep score.
Julien.