Recently, Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic. That alone is big news in the AI world. Karpathy was part of OpenAI’s founding team, later became Director of AI at Tesla, worked on Autopilot vision, returned to OpenAI, started Eureka Labs, and became one of the clearest public teachers of deep learning and LLMs. His own profile now says: “MTS @ Anthropic.” MTS means Member of Technical Staff. Reuters reported that he has joined Anthropic’s pretraining team, which is central to the foundational training of Claude models, and TechCrunch reported that he will start a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pretraining research. (X (formerly Twitter) )
That title is the interesting part. A person who was Director of AI at Tesla, part of OpenAI’s founding team, and one of the most recognized AI educators in the world joins Anthropic as “Member of Technical Staff.” No “Chief AI Scientist.” No “Global Head of Frontier Intelligence.” No “Executive Vice President of Neural Everything.” Just MTS. And that is exactly why we have to draw lessons from this.
In many parts of the world, especially in title-conscious work cultures, that title may sound suspiciously modest. But in serious technical environments, the title is often not the full story. The real story is the work, the room, the people, the freedom, and the problem space.
The title is not the job
Many professionals confuse the title with the actual job. This is understandable because titles are visible. They look good on LinkedIn. They are easy to explain to recruiters. They also work very well at family functions, where “Principal Architect” usually lands better than “I help teams make trade-offs in distributed mobile architecture.”
But the title is not the job. The real job is hidden underneath the label. It is in the scope of problems you own, the decisions you can make, the autonomy you are trusted with, the people you work with, and whether the role gives you room to grow or slowly turns you into a very senior meeting-forwarding system.
Karpathy’s move is a good reminder of this. “MTS” sounds simple, but the work behind it is not simple. Pretraining is one of the deepest, most expensive, and most important parts of building frontier AI models. So the better question is not, “Why only MTS?” The better question is, “What kind of work sits behind that title?” In this case, the answer seems to be: very serious work.
Why titles feel heavier in some cultures
This is where the discussion becomes useful for developers, architects, managers, and anyone thinking about career growth. In many Asian and South Asian work cultures, designation carries real emotional and social weight. It is not just a payroll label. It affects how people introduce themselves, how relatives understand their success, how recruiters position them, and sometimes how seriously internal stakeholders take them.
One useful concept here is power distance. Power distance measures how comfortable a society is with hierarchy and unequal distribution of power. A higher score usually means hierarchy is more accepted and visible in day-to-day life. IIM Bangalore notes that India’s power distance index is 77, compared to a world average of 59. To make that more relatable, Hofstede-style comparisons put the United States around 40, the United Kingdom and Germany around 35, Japan around 54, and India at 77. So India is not just slightly more hierarchy-conscious than many Western countries; it sits much higher on that scale. (IIM Bangalore )
This does not mean every Indian workplace is hierarchical or every Western workplace is flat. That would be too simplistic. Western finance, consulting, law, academia, and government can also be extremely title-conscious. But broadly speaking, in cultures with higher power distance, titles tend to carry more social meaning. A designation is not merely “what HR calls you.” It becomes a signal of status, authority, and progress. And once title becomes status, companies can use it as currency.
The title trap
There is a name for part of this problem: job title inflation. A related term is dry promotion, which means getting a bigger title or more responsibility without matching compensation. Harvard Business Review, commonly abbreviated as HBR, describes dry promotions as situations where employees are given more responsibility without more money. (Harvard Business Review )
This is where the trap begins. A company may say, “You are now Lead Engineer,” but the pay does not change, the scope does not change, and the decision-making power does not change. The only visible change is that more people can now escalate things to you. Congratulations, you have been promoted from “person doing the work” to “person doing the work plus absorbing everyone else’s confusion.”
The same thing happens during job hunting. A candidate may be offered a grand title that sounds more authoritative than their current role. But when they look closely, the team is smaller, the budget is unclear, the authority is weak, and the actual work is not strategic. The title went up, but the career did not.
This is especially dangerous for senior engineers and architects. At some point, your career cannot be measured by title alone. It has to be measured by the quality and size of problems you solve. A “Principal Engineer” who only reviews pull requests may have less real impact than a “Staff Engineer” who shapes platform direction across multiple teams. A “Director” with no decision rights may have less practical authority than an engineering manager who actually owns hiring, roadmap, quality, and delivery.
Titles are noisy. Scope is signal.
But careers are not always ideal
Now, this does not mean we should become career purists and reject every imperfect opportunity. Real careers are not built in clean laboratory conditions. Sometimes you may accept a dry promotion. Sometimes you may take a title-heavy role. Sometimes you may step into a role where compensation has not caught up yet. That is not automatically foolish.
The problem is not accepting an imperfect bargain. The problem is accepting it and then lying to yourself about what it is.
A dry promotion can make sense if it gives you something valuable in return: larger scope, stronger visibility, real leadership experience, access to senior stakeholders, better autonomy, or a stronger story for your next career move. In that case, you are not accepting it because the company has been generous. You are using it as a strategic bridge.
But the bargain must be clear. If you are taking more responsibility without immediate reward, you should know what you are buying with that sacrifice. Are you buying visibility? Are you buying experience? Are you buying a better external market position? Are you buying entry into a more interesting problem space? If the answer is clear, the move may be worth it for a defined period. If the answer is vague, you may just be donating ambition at a discount.
The honest version sounds like this: “I know this is not a fully rewarded promotion yet, but it gives me a bigger platform, and I will use the next six months to build proof, expand my influence, and either convert it into compensation or convert it into market value.” That is very different from telling yourself, “They will surely take care of me later.” Hope is not a career strategy. It is an emotional EMI.
So yes, sometimes accept the imperfect deal. But do it deliberately, with the right intention, a timeline, and your eyes open. Do not confuse a strategic trade with loyalty. Do not confuse being decorated with being rewarded.
Autonomy is the missing word
There is one more dimension that people often forget: autonomy. Compensation matters. Scope matters. Authority matters. But autonomy may be the real career multiplier.
Autonomy means you are trusted to decide how to solve the problem. It does not mean you can do random things without alignment. That is not autonomy; that is chaos with calendar invites. Real autonomy means you can shape the approach, challenge assumptions, make technical trade-offs, influence priorities, and say, “This architecture will not scale,” without people treating it as a personality defect.
This is why a smaller title with high autonomy can be better than a bigger title with constant permission-seeking. A fancy title can still become a cage if every meaningful decision needs five approvals. On the other hand, a modest title can become a platform if it gives you access to deep problems, strong peers, and freedom to operate.
That is the lesson worth drawing from Karpathy’s move. “MTS” may sound smaller than “Director of AI,” but if the work involves frontier model research, pretraining, Claude, and a high-trust research environment, then the room may be far bigger than the label suggests.
What we should learn from this
The lesson is not that titles do not matter. They do. Titles affect compensation bands, recruiter filters, internal expectations, and market perception. Ignoring titles completely is naïve.
The lesson is simpler: do not worship titles. When evaluating a new role or promotion, look underneath the label. Ask what problem you will own, what decisions you can make, how much freedom you will have, who you will work with, and whether the role increases your future options.
If only the title moves, be careful. If the title moves but pay, scope, authority, and autonomy remain frozen, you may not be getting promoted. You may simply be getting renamed. And renaming is cheap.
A good role should improve at least two or three things: compensation, scope, authority, autonomy, or market value. A risky role improves only the title. A strategic-but-imperfect role may improve only one thing immediately, but that one thing must be valuable enough to justify the trade. A great role may not even have the flashiest designation, but it gives you larger problems, sharper peers, deeper learning, higher autonomy, and stronger future market value.
Final thought
Andrej Karpathy becoming MTS at Anthropic is not a story about a small title. It is a reminder that serious technical people often optimize for the work, not the badge.
The badge is visible, but the work compounds. For developers, architects, and engineering leaders, that is a useful reminder. Don’t get hypnotized by title inflation. Don’t reject a role only because the title sounds plain. Don’t accept a role only because the title sounds powerful.
Look underneath. The best role is not always the one with the loudest designation. Sometimes it is the one with the deepest problem, the sharpest team, the highest autonomy, and the biggest room to grow.
And sometimes, apparently, that role is called Member of Technical Staff.