From...

June 16, 1999
Web posted at: 9:01 a.m. EDT (1301 GMT)

by Laura Rich

(IDG) -- It used to be that if you were a "yahoo," you were boorish and crass. Nowadays the term is associated with one of the Internet's most successful companies. Today, being a "yahoo" is a positive thing. Still, is it what you would want on your business card?

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It seemed like a good idea to Jerry Yang and David Filo, who developed the search-engine technology behind Yahoo (YHOO). They still have the "chief yahoo" titles on their business cards, but they've added descriptions that translate in the larger world: Yang is also a "director," and Filo regularly goes by "cofounder." People still have funky titles, but this playful approach seems a bit dated now that the Net story is a big part of the mainstream business world.

E-greetings, which launched as GreetStreet, opened its San Francisco-based online greeting-card business with a crew that included "rainmaker" and "matchmaker." Today, the one-time "purveyor of potentiality" is more often known as the "HR guy," or, even more formally, "VP of human resources." Positions in employment ads are usually going to read like any other company's: "Web application developer," "systems analyst," "director of marketing." And the job functions are more clearly defined than they once were, too.

"We encourage people to pick their own titles," says the formerly-known-as-potentiality-purveyor Alan Chin. "But we do have a sense of how the outside world views these things."

Today, E-greetings is 100 people strong. Professional types like lawyers and long-time corporate executives are interested in taking positions at the company. These are the types of hires that add value when a basic structure is in place that lets employees take their assigned roles and elevate them. ("They're just more corporate," says Chin.) Even Chin missed the initial roll-up-your-shirtsleeves days when titles hardly mattered – simply launching a perfected product did.

"Before I came on board, it was just the founders. It was team-oriented," he says.

E-greetings management believes that you need a certain corporate structure to move forward and cut the partnership and investment deals necessary to grow in the Internet business. But Viant, an I-Builder based in Boston, firmly believes otherwise.

In fact, Viant's route has been exactly the opposite of E-greetings'. When former Cambridge Technology Partners consultant Diane Hall, who now oversees HR processes for Viant, took the post of chief knowledge officer two years ago, about 20 people were on staff and eight titles were at their disposal. "We got rid of them," says Hall.

Hall initially cut the number of titles in half. Then she did away with them altogether. New employees go through a rigorous routine with the HR types to determine where their strengths and interests lie before they're matched up with titles.

Since consultancies tend to focus more on adapting roles to their clients, basing employees' positions on their skill sets can be easier for them than for, say, retail companies that form longer-term relationships with clients who expect set roles from contacts.

Hall says the experience was enlightening: "Titles provide a sense of stature and experience internally. Their external value is how clients perceive you and how your friends and family think of you. The social value was the hardest to break."

New employees may tell their parents whatever they want to, says Hall, who had initially anticipated more anxieties internally. She thought staffers would become confused about the politics of a titleless workplace – and might even "do crazy things." But she attributes the company's youthful staff to the program's success.

Perhaps another reason Viant's plan works is that the company never permits an office to grow bigger than 100 people, and these tiny offices aren't expected to merge with another company.

But what happens to folks when it comes time to add their experiences to their resumes? "I know how the outside world is – they need to put titles on their resumes. But my hope is that they'll talk about what they learned and the multidisciplinary aspect of it," says Hall.

Steve Patchel, a senior consultant in the Silicon Valley office of pay experts Watson Wyatt, says that title semantics has always been a problem in the technology field. Even if standard titles are used, every company assigns a different meaning and job to the name. Employees can't get hung up on their titles but have to look at what they actually do, he believes.

"It's sort of a wash. It's more about what it takes to get to the next level," Patchel says. "A 'VP' in one company could be a 'supervisor' in another."

Further confusion kicks in when a company grows or merges with another company. Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch is in the midst of title flux as part of the two companies' merger. And GoTo.com is taking a closer look at titles as it gets set to take the company public.

Fundamental company shifts are the biggest problem with titles in the Internet business, says Stephanie Davis, a recruiter at Morgan Samuels in Pasadena, Calif. "Some unusual titles in the beginning are fine," she says, but she warns that "lessons from corporate America" can make their way into the Internet Economy, too.

As executives at Microsoft (MSFT) may attest, a company must evolve the structure to compete in the business world at large. Just a few months ago, the software giant overhauled its company structure to better reflect its relationships with business partners. The company split into four divisions, with each focused on a different segment of the consumer market. Employees were reassigned as new teams were formed around the consumer segments. A spokeswoman says no significant title changes took place, but appendages to core titles such as VP were altered to reflect new assignments.

Perhaps even more telling, the company said it expects another reorg will be in order in a few years or so.

So just what is in a name? "Power. Entitlement," says Viant's Hall. But if, at the end of the day, an assistant to an assistant to an assistant manages to cash in on the Net, how can it really matter?