How we think about titles

The problem with titles

Large companies use titles to signal status and importance.

They can be useful for knowing who to talk to when you need something done. However, having too many titles can create a culture of hierarchy and career ladders.

As a small company, we want to avoid that.

We want to work in a place where the best ideas win, regardless of your position in the company.

Our approach to titles

Instead of having a complex hierarchy of titles, we keep it simple.

This doesn't mean we don't have titles. We do. We just have a flat structure and try to limit the number of titles as much as possible.

There's no Junior, Senior, Principal, or Staff Engineer. There's just Software Engineer.

We want people to be as equal as possible in order to enable autonomy.

The reality of the outside world

We know that the outside world might not be as flat as we want it to be.

There are times when you need to show a title to get the attention of the right people.

That means you can use whatever title you want outside of Resend, as long as it's not misleading.

Good example:

• An engineer who's been working with DevOps for years can call themselves a "Senior Cloud Engineer".
• A person who's focused on deliverability can call themselves a "Postmaster" since that's what the email industry is used to.

Bad example:

• An engineer who doesn't manage other engineers cannot call themselves a "VP/Head of Engineering".
• A person who's only focused on admin work cannot call themselves a "Chief of Staff".

When in doubt about what title to use publicly, just ask your manager.

The future

There might be a time when Resend has a need for more structured titles.

If that happens, we'll revisit this handbook and update it to reflect the new reality.

Until then, we'll keep it simple.