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Comment by 9f94wGqJ4g | Hacker News Reader

I cringe every time I see a 21 year old call themselves a CTO. Please stop doing that. Just say "founder". You're not a CTO and you won't know what being a CTO entails for another 10 years.

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In the end it's just a title and we all take those titles with a grain of salt when it comes to startups anyway, right? The original purpose of those titles was for official company contracts anyway, so everybody involved (investors, stakeholders, clients) knows what's up and I agree that possibly 10 or 20 years ago being CEO or CTO had a stronger load in popular language. The fact that it's so easy to start a company anno 2013 makes the use of them way more common. From a practical point of view, CTO is also shorter than "Technical founder".

You're aware that CTO is a role and not an experience level, right?

Even simply as a role, it doesn't even make sense in a dinky company. Chief technology officer? Does the company even have other people in that branch, or are you de-facto "chief" because you are the only one?

Thank you. I came here to say the same.

If you're company is < 10 people, you're not a CTO or CEO. Putting it down as your title only makes sense in the bay area. Outside of the bubble, it looks ridiculous.

Even _if_ CTO is "technically" your title, it comes across as pompus and immature. Have some humility. A better description is tech founder, tech lead, principal engineer, lead developer, etc.

Even in the bay area, to most normal people, it comes off as silly. It only seems 'reasonable' among startup founders younger than 30.

I'd say that being CTO of a small startup is worlds different than a large company (which is what I think you're saying here). It's not meant to be self-aggrandizing, more to simply show which side of the business I work on.

PS - I'm 24. Only 7 years to go!

Ok, I said this in another post, but don't call yourself CTO then. Outside of the tech bubble, it comes across as self-aggrandizing even if you don't mean it to. Have some humility and use the title tech-founder or tech lead or something like that.

Just a reminder- Mark Zuck. was founder, but also CTO, CEO and what not at the age of 21, and of an almost billion $ company in the age of 23. Grow up, the world belongs to the young!

The world belongs to everyone!

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