[freewilly1040]

I don't think people at established companies care about gaudy job titles at startups. Being a director at some chaotic mess of a company (and much of the time that is what startups are) doesn't signal competence.

The opposite can be true, when IC's at startups who have not truly learned their craft jump to management too early.

[clpm4j]

Yeah true I suppose there was some bias in my assumption. I was thinking specifically about relatively well known Bay Area startups... say you're a Senior or Staff Engineer at a startup that has raised from top tier VCs then hypothetically you might be better positioned to be come that #1 or #2 engineering hire at the next hot startup, or you'll be able to get more meetings with those VCs should you start your own thing because you're already a "startup person" rather than 1 of X00,000 FAANG engineers.