Silicon Valley Is Giving Everyone the Same Job Title

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Forget “senior software engineer” or “chief technical officer.” The biggest AI companies are using one deliberately vague job title: “member of the technical staff.”

According to Lora Kelley at The New York Times:

• As of last December, 39% of Anthropic employees, 31% at OpenAI, and 26% at xAI used it on LinkedIn. Stanford researchers found its use across Anthropic, OpenAI, MicrosoftAI, and xAI had risen 50% in a year.

Why go with a generic title?

• It flattens workplace hierarchies and gives employees more flexibility to pivot as AI changes their jobs. For AI companies, the title also helps to reinforce the idea of the workplace being a research-focused lab rather than a conventional corporation. And the vagueness keeps competitors guessing about exactly what employees do.

But there’s a potential downside to making everyone’s roles less specific:

• Kelley explains that it can make responsibilities less clear and “de-emphasize accountability.” That could be a problem, especially as concerns grow over the technology these companies are building.

Our take? Outside of AI, other industries are also in the midst of modernizing traditional job titles, just with different approaches.

Deloitte, for example, overhauled its US job titles earlier this year by adding descriptions of employees’ areas of expertise. “Senior consultant” became “senior consultant, functional transformation.” The idea is that greater specificity means clients can easily understand exactly what each person does, and roles are easier to hire. Meaningful job titles also affect how people perceive their status and identity at work.

So, is the future of work a broad title with room to move between roles, or a more specific one that tells people exactly what they do? For now, different industries are betting in opposite directions.

On the other hand, our Machiavellian side makes us wonder: could employers be encouraging their people to use vague titles to make it harder for other companies to poach them?