It's been my experience that people who are quickest to say "Titles don't matter here" are the ones with the nicest titles. :)
In fairness, I don't think most founders set out to create political organizations. (Politics is more of an emergent phenomenon -- a "god of the gaps" that arises to fill informational voids and power vacuums.) But saying titles don't matter is either being very naive, or being intentionally misleading. Naive: when someone high up in an organization (a founder or VP, say) isn't aware of the extent to which titles matter, because his title has ensured that people always listen to him. Misleading: when a boss or hiring manager tells a prospective employee that titles don't matter, in order to get that employee to accept a title below his expectations.
That having been said, I do occasionally encounter the "Entitled" anti-pattern the blog post talks about. You see it in employees who feel marginalized. Sometimes you see it in new employees, especially those who have recently come from a much bigger organization, and who are used to formalized hierarchies. Sometimes you see it because your organization really does care a great deal about title, and you've been blinded to the extent to which it does. In any of these cases, I tend to think the burden is on the organization/boss to try to understand the source of any title hangups. Sure, some people are just wildly insecure, and they'll never be content with any given title. I tend to think these people are the minority of most "Entitled" scenarios. And at any rate, it's more productive to assume that the person feels marginalized in some way, and to attempt to diagnose why -- rather than to blame his fundamental psychology.
In fairness, I don't think most founders set out to create political organizations. (Politics is more of an emergent phenomenon -- a "god of the gaps" that arises to fill informational voids and power vacuums.) But saying titles don't matter is either being very naive, or being intentionally misleading. Naive: when someone high up in an organization (a founder or VP, say) isn't aware of the extent to which titles matter, because his title has ensured that people always listen to him. Misleading: when a boss or hiring manager tells a prospective employee that titles don't matter, in order to get that employee to accept a title below his expectations.
That having been said, I do occasionally encounter the "Entitled" anti-pattern the blog post talks about. You see it in employees who feel marginalized. Sometimes you see it in new employees, especially those who have recently come from a much bigger organization, and who are used to formalized hierarchies. Sometimes you see it because your organization really does care a great deal about title, and you've been blinded to the extent to which it does. In any of these cases, I tend to think the burden is on the organization/boss to try to understand the source of any title hangups. Sure, some people are just wildly insecure, and they'll never be content with any given title. I tend to think these people are the minority of most "Entitled" scenarios. And at any rate, it's more productive to assume that the person feels marginalized in some way, and to attempt to diagnose why -- rather than to blame his fundamental psychology.