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.
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.
It also helps to establish some early rolls. Some with more expectations than others. We sat with one investor and they assumed that the CEO should be the one pitching for example.
Not to mention, if you are going to quit your job to build a company you don't get excited and call yourself a junior engineer. Or full stack guru.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
