Beehiiv co-founder and CEO Tyler Denk announced this week that the company is doing away with titles internally. His note makes the case that titles are overhead, and that people chasing them for internal jockeying is a red flag. As a lifelong hater of titles, I love it. I also think it's a mistake.

I'm rooting for them, in more ways than one, which is why I'm telling you up front. Part of what I love about Beehiiv is how many scene values they've kept inside a startup. It's a big reason Cultish Creative lives here, because I liked what they were doing more than what I saw on Substack and Medium a few years ago. I also hold a very small investment in the company, which they offered to creators on the platform when they raised a round back in 2024. All that disclosure is to say I believe in what they're building and, hey, I like them.

Now, forgive me if this gets abstract for a minute, but it's how my brain works things out.

My stupid punk rock brain wants to be anarchistic about all of this, and there is a time and a place for that. That place is a scene. Tyler describes the early days at Beehiiv this way in his post: three people, no titles, responsibilities blended together, everyone jumping at whatever mattered most. That works (so so so) great at three people.

A work organization inevitably has colleagues in it. Beyond their tastes and individual cool factors, which is what binds people to each other in the scene at the beginning, even three people are positioned relative to each other. Sure, everyone wears all the hats, and it feels like the opposite of any big business you've ever been part of, but the relative positioning is still there.

Keep adding people and that positioning stops being implicit. Eventually somebody writes it down, because there was an event, an incident, or some annoying confusion where you all had to admit you were adults. That's a feature and not a bug, even if it feels awful for scene people. Such is the price of coming up with an idea that can actually scale! The result is titles, org charts, and eventually, email signature titling.

When I was made Vice President at a massive organization, the fancier title meant nothing to me. That was my taste talking. I didn't feel cooler with it. If anything I felt like more of a sellout, placed in a club with other VPs I wasn't all that keen on to begin with. So I didn't update my email signature, and a colleague gently scolded me for it.

My taste was the only thing I was consulting, and taste is what a scene runs on. To everyone else, the title was a signal, and the signal had real value for clients and for coworkers, who wanted to know where everyone stood. Leaving it off had consequences, and some of them landed on other people.

The Beehiiv announcement does say people can keep external titles (save the email signatures!). What changes, however, is how they describe and refer to each other internally. I do get the ethos, and I also don't think it will work as intended. Politics is the stated problem, but I'd file that under Dunbar's number as a reality of the situation. Somewhere around 100 to 150 people, politics has already shown up whether you've named it or not. Taking the labels off leaves the politics in place, with fewer handles.

Tyler's note also mentions that the Yankees don't put names on the back of their jerseys. He hates the Yankees and loves that. Yankees, whatever, but I do love the jersey name thing. The Yankees also have pinstripes, uniform numbers, a batting order, and a position for every player. The names came off and the structure stayed. Somebody still wrote it all down.

My guess is the same thing happens here. The compensation bands and levels will still exist. Yes, they'll stop being visible for a time, but something else will fill that gap. Once your org has this many people, it's a naturally occurring problem to solve for.

So here is the thought I'm sitting on:

If you want something to scale, it needs a shape.

If you want something to have a shape, it needs fixed points in reference to each other.

Titles and hierarchy matter when the goal is higher.

Titles and hierarchy get in the way when the goal is creativity and exploring taste.

A startup doesn't get to choose. Maybe there is a real creative solution inside this move, and I'd love to see it. Being clear about the shapes is what will decide how this feels over the next year. I predict Beehiiv will be back to titles within two years, and I'll check back in on this post when it happens.