Several of you have called lately to discuss titles and hierarchy within your companies, which is consistent with the hot job market. In thinking about titles, I looked back at this Ben Horowitz blog post from 2011 that has held up well. Here is his answer to "Do I really need to spend time on job titles?" (Headline: Yes)Employees will use titles to calibrate their value and compensation against their colleagues. If an employee with a title of Junior Engineer believes that she is a far better programmer than her counterpart with the title Senior Architect, this will indicate to her that she may be underpaid and undervalued. Because titles will be used to calculate relative value, they must be managed carefully.