The OA article comes off a bit like a bunch of teenagers complaining how their parents generation are a bunch of conformists so they're going to rebel by all doing their hair different. And then the teenagers all do their hair in exactly the same "different" way.
Then they get older, and realize, hey, most people's hair is like that because as you get older, most people don't care that much, so a sort of "style freeze" happens. Then, luckily, these people give birth to their own set of teenagers, and the cycle repeats.
If he doesn't understand the value of a job title, even in a small company, he just hasn't been in business long enough. Eventually he'll learn, "Oh yeah, those things really do have a purpose!". They help settle who has final say on decisions within a particular area. They help route questions to the right folks who can answer them or get them answered. It also puts an outside-facing name next to a certain slice of the business: forcing a person to "own" an area because if, say, an outside observer thinks that some company's marketing is done badly, it will reflect badly on the VP of Marketting, etc. Sure, inside the company, in the dark, when nobody else is around, you can have whatever silly titles you want, or even no titles at all. But if you really think titles are meaningless, you should take it to it's logical conclusion: renounce all use of personal names, location names, etc. Afterall, they are just titles, they don't mean anything. Oh yeah, that's right: they are useful. That's why they exist!