Having the opportunity to take on a larger role earlier in a company's lifespan has a lot of allure to me - you get a lot of valuable experience that a larger company would be loathe to offer to not as experienced employees. For an example, I am a senior/lead software engineer with only about 2 years of professional experience. However, my experience has been increasingly high quality, and allows me to move up at my speed, which could pay off in the future if I decide to join a larger company or if I want to start a company of my own, having some credibility with other professionals I work with or network with.
In addition, it gives me the opportunity to affect the culture of a company and help the environment be run the way I want it to be. There is a lot of work to be done, but it's the same in any non-big company.
The stability isn't as much of an issue to someone like me, since I have plenty of contacts I can reach out to if I don't like the looks of things - I've gotten in person interviews set up as short as a few hours. The salary isn't as much of an issue when I am investing in myself and preparing for a larger salary down the line due to outsized responsibilities. The equity may not be as much, but it doesn't need to be founder level to be good enough, and also there are other concerns for a founder - increased dilution and the incredible early stress fundraising & networking is not something I necessarily might want right now.
Not everyone necessarily has the skills to be a successful founder (or co-founder) - personally, I may choose to found my own company down the line, but it will be in what I want. In the meantime, working as an early employee is ok to me.
Has the term "CEO" lost all meaning, amid the hundreds of startup founders who have no management experience? Not at all. They're called CEOs because they make top-tier executive decisions and act as the public face of their startups.
Based on the post above, Bahamut's senior title is also a function of the responsibilities he's dealing with - in this case, building the first viable product of the company at an architectural level, and overseeing the completion of major features from start to finish. Just like the crop of startup CEOs in YC, his title has nothing to do with his previous experience. If the leadership of the company has decided he's fit to train new engineers and prioritize tasks for them, the "lead" description is apt too.
I'm sure there are much more skilled CEOs and much more skilled lead developers at other companies, but it's completely impractical to compare people based on internal titles. We're talking about descriptions of an employee's role in the context of his or her own company - don't read anything more into titles than that.
For 20 years I've only ever called myself "software developer", or "QA analyst," or whatever the role was. I've never added level of seniority, and I always used my own term, not whatever corporate label a particular HR department dropped on a role. ("Technical staff member?" Please.) I really don't care how my employer of the moment labels me.
Absolutely! If you framed your diploma, hung it on the wall, started work the day after graduation, and made "Senior" before you have to dust the frame the first time...
The terms CEO/CTO/etc. haven't lost their meaning with all of the startups out there (some pretty poor), why would years of experience necessarily dictate that a quality engineer cannot reach that position so quickly?
In my case, I continually hone my craft outside of work (with some breaks here and there) - I spend a lot of time learning, digesting new patterns, and assessing then. I read articles, and spin up many projects to experiment hands on with the technology, patterns, etc. My abstract depth was already sharpened from my time as a math PhD student (ultimately dropped out), and spending 2 1/2 years unemployed from having trouble finding work whetted my appetite for working to an insatiable degree. The Marine Corps enhanced my innate leadership traits, which I then took the lessons learned and applied them to leading a team (which I had to do as an acting tech lead when the tech lead had to take leave due to a family death), as well as generally carrying myself.
I earned the senior title through domain expertise at an exceptional level, and with a bit of luck achieving it in a piece of tech that exploded in popularity just afterwards (AngularJS). I have been seriously recruited as a lead developer for about a year, although I have turned down such positions for a while since I did not consider myself ready at the time.
The one thing I appreciate about being in the Bay area is that companies here recognize that such talent can exist, and such people may not even be unique. In most of the country, I probably would be still a mid-level developer, and not given the opportunity to demonstrate I would be a capable senior developer, much less lead developer.
In addition, it gives me the opportunity to affect the culture of a company and help the environment be run the way I want it to be. There is a lot of work to be done, but it's the same in any non-big company.
The stability isn't as much of an issue to someone like me, since I have plenty of contacts I can reach out to if I don't like the looks of things - I've gotten in person interviews set up as short as a few hours. The salary isn't as much of an issue when I am investing in myself and preparing for a larger salary down the line due to outsized responsibilities. The equity may not be as much, but it doesn't need to be founder level to be good enough, and also there are other concerns for a founder - increased dilution and the incredible early stress fundraising & networking is not something I necessarily might want right now.
Not everyone necessarily has the skills to be a successful founder (or co-founder) - personally, I may choose to found my own company down the line, but it will be in what I want. In the meantime, working as an early employee is ok to me.