When titles become goals, workers chase labels rather than mission success. Palantir uses a single title for all engineers to keep focus on outcomes instead of promotions.
Article: Reflections on Palantir
Goodhart's Law states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". This happened in big companies, where promotions meant launching shiny new products with your name on them, even if the products confused users.
The metric is launching new things, not user value. So people steer their efforts to win the metric. Because the badge of Product Lead mattered more than product quality, titles became trophies that caused a company to drift from its mission.
Palantir tried a simple fix. Apart from the CEO and a handful of directors, everyone was called a forward deployed engineer. No senior, principal or vice president badges to chase.
Need someone to lead a critical project? The role belonged to whoever earned trust through results. If you slip in performance, someone else could step in. The absence of ladders made politics less rewarding. If you wanted recognition you had to ship good code or solve a hard client problem.
The policy was not perfect. People still sought influence by bonding with leaders. However, the flat hierarchy made it hard to rest on status. You always had to earn your place in the company and earn the right to work on what you were working on.
Roles remained fluid, and the absence of titles became a quiet guardrail nudging efforts toward merit and away from mimetic status envy.