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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

These people should have the good sense use titles that are subsets of their full roles.

  s/CEO/Sr. Product Manager/g
  s/CTO/Sr. Software Engineer/g

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You mean lie on the resume / hide their level of responsibility?

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever (beyond being dishonest, it would likely be surfaced in reference checks and stop a hire).

I'd see the startup experience as very positive, assuming they could articulate why the startup failed and learned from the experience. There's many startup CEO's who would make (and are) great sales, strategy, or product leaders, and CTO's who would be great fits for engineers, architects, or engineering managers.

Depending on the startup, mentioning themselves as senior developer might be the truth. Imagine the team was not larger than 5, team lead would work.

The title should reflect what the person actually did, also the CV is supposed to help find a job not self sabotage.

Saying to be a CTO when you where coding all day seems a bit fantasious and inacurate anyway. senior developer/team lead reflects much more the reality of what the person actually did in the job.

We're just talking about the largely arbitrary labels you choose to put on your resume. Putting "CTO", when you ran a two person startup, is objectively more dishonest than calling yourself the "Sr. Software Engineer."

I was in no way suggesting withholding any detail in the interview, or even the resume. Of course you should be completely honest about your experience. Just don't use lame titles, that turn people off, when there's not even a good reason to.

The best course is probably to use 'Founder'. You're not really a C-level executive until you have a company big enough to require one.

I opt for the less glamorous title owner/operator

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