The quiet case for smaller job titles

Every week someone asks me whether a senior title at a smaller company is worth the same as a smaller title at a bigger one. The honest answer is that titles are a local currency. They buy you scope inside one company and very little anywhere else.

I coached a product manager last spring who turned down a director title to stay an individual contributor at a company she believed in. Her friends thought she was being modest. She was being precise. The director role came with a team of four and a budget she would have spent most of her year defending. The IC role came with a product she would have shipped twice.

What actually travels between companies is not the noun. It is the sentence you can finish: I owned this, it changed that, here is the number. A title is shorthand for that sentence, and usually a poor one.

So when you compare offers, compare the verbs. Who decides? Who is in the room when the roadmap changes? How many people does your judgment affect? If the answer is smaller than your current role, no title will make up for it.

The case for a smaller title is not humility. It is accuracy — and accuracy is easier to interview with than a story about what you were called.