I know a lot of people balk when they see the C titles for small company employees but I tend to disagree. The top tech guy at a small firm is the CTO, he is leading the technical vision of the company and doing all of the technical decision making. Even if he does the lower level grunt work the upper level work cannot be discounted in favor of it. Just as if the CEO plunges the toilet he should not be considered the janitor, just a CEO that is willing to get his hands dirty. I fear the aversion to such lofty titles hurts technical people and this is due to perception. The perception may not be internal but it can be from business partners or vendors. I have seen many cases where a young technical guy will be dismissed by solution providers trying to sell to the company leaders because their perception of the technical persons influence of the company. Conversely I have seen when a technical person is introduced as the CTO, they instead try to gain the confidence of that individual instead of trying to undermine his recommendations with the rest of the executive team. The point is titles may not matter to us, but they do to a good deal of people. Utilizing them helps level external individuals perceptions of who calls the shots for what.