> And if your early guys ask what they should put on their resume, tell them put anything down. If you are called about a former employee and can't answer the question "what was their title" with something more concrete than "meh, whatever", you will sound like a fraudulent reference. You're inadvertently screwing over your employees if you don't pick something reasonable and stick with it (modulo actual role changes…
If you answer the question "what was their title?" with "they mostly did X and Y, they were incredible", I doubt that's going to cost them the job (assuming they'd put something like X and Y on their resume). Or at least, I wouldn't want to work at any place where the Levenshtein distance between the title on my resume and the title quoted by my supervisor was a critical part of the hiring decision.
For example, Yahoo lets technical employees choose their own titles, with a default of "Technical Yahoo". My ex-coworkers who chose alternative titles don't seem to have been handicapped in their subsequent careers.