Titles: The Death of Culture?

Your company is not your family, your manager is not your friend. Be professional.

In today’s world being real is a hard job, actually not hard but we don’t want to be real when you see (almost) everyone around you doing same. Humans have this inclination to follow someone they think they could be or someone who they think of as a role-model. What if your role model isn’t the same person as what you see in the backdrop. What are you following then? An entirely different person who doesn’t exist in reality.

Do not follow a person, Follow an ideology.

Title is one of a reason to push this thing forth. Titles aren’t bad but we should refrain using a lot of titles. One of the biggest pains is Junior, Intermediate and Senior Subtitles of the same main title. That brings inconsistency and might be fatal. I mean its crazy how companies define these subtitles. For some, it based on years of experience and others its based on the work you do. At the end, you are offending both in one way or the other. Titles should be based on something where you can draw a fine line between two roles. A title means a role but it shouldn’t be something to flaunt or get wasted after. Let’s take an example of some startup where two developers are working on the same project. Both are doing same work one might have a better approach towards the task other might not have. Let’s say the one who is not on better approach is senior and the other is junior. Maybe on the basis of years of expertise or something else, Are we doing justice here by drawing subtitles? NO

More titles mean more misery.

Companies, they are equally responsible for the title and likewise stuff. Their so called HR team remains so busy in drawing perks for these subtitles which are not a justice to something they are delivering. They do the things for the job not for bringing happiness. They find that the perks are the mark of happiness but actually perks are for pleasure, not happiness. Happiness should be based on your time that you spend on an employee, not on bringing more titles home. For such companies, there should be a similar tagline.

We hire titles, not talent.

Managers, there we go. Too many managers are toxic. Imagine an environment where you are your own manager. A Project manager is fine, but what is the reporting manager, personal manager. How come is a manager’s manager your manager. Either a manager is incompetent to give his 100% and that is why you need a lot of managers. This would have been fine, but we are all humans at the end of the day. We all have different preferences and different thought processes. If a person has many managers he becomes frustrated after what one manager approves is disapproved by another. Since manager is a title, it is again used ruthlessly. 

Experts are topping to this disaster. I mean how on earth can you decide one is an expert at something. He can be either good or excellent at it. Giving another title, “Expert”, creates another opportunity of creating a disaster. Most mistakes are done by experts which are cleaned by either good or excellent people.

Employees are really an important asset for any company, It’s them who run the company. But unfortunately, we have employees who are title hungry and after that process, they lose that spark, potential, and motivation to do something extraordinary. 

I imagine a world where everyone is after goals, not titles

In the process of achieving these titles, employees forget their core values which directly affects the culture.

In a nutshell, when people are after titles we have a culture where good and resourceful employees leave and what we are left with is politicians only. And it is better to create a good culture with minimum titles and if titles exist there should be a fine line drawn between two.

be real, titles will follow.