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Since Asana doesn't use titles, how is the organizational structure around roles and responsibility?

Note: this question was asked when Asana smaller and had no hierarchy; this answer reflects the current state of Asana rather than Asana-as-founded. Note that our jobs page no longer contains the claim "We don't have titles".

We like de-emphasizing titles. It contributes to a sense of equality across team members. We encourage people to think bigger about contributing to Asana in the most leveraged way possible. But we try to have balance here and elsewhere; we're not trying to throw away a good system. We mostly still think of ourselves by traditional roles: engineer, PM, user ops, biz guy, etc.

While we are certainly a unique organization, many startups have their own version of a "no titles" or "no hierarchy" culture. This often works great for small companies but does not scale without careful adjustment. We'd enjoy staying small so that we can remain close to this egalitarian idyll, but ultimately we're pragmatic about achieving our mission.

As we've grown, we have introduced management. Still, we try hard to put responsibility into the AoR system (see What is an AoR at Asana?) rather than the management hierarchy. And so management really becomes an AoR centered around the success and growth of each of your reports. Thus "Engineering Manager" is ideally a leveraged role for empaths rather than a status-granting title, although it's both to some degree. But probably still less so than the vast majority of companies.

Over time, we may make titles even more formal in order to define the scope of new employees' roles or help Asanas understand the nature of each other's contributions. So far, that hasn't been necessary.

Disclaimer: I don't work at Asana or know anyone there personally and I have only been using their product for about two days. That being said, here's my hypothesis:

From the short time I've been using their product, I think they ultimately let actions speak for themselves.

By placing task assignment at the forefront of how work gets done, they've ultimately made the question "Who is the right person to *perform* this specific job?" the focus. When you start asking this question first and foremost, you stop asking "Who will be responsible for making certain this gets done?"

That subtle but fundamental difference ultimately leads to a workplace where you don't need managers and titles. In most workplaces a manager is responsible for keeping an eye on the big picture, delegating responsibility and then making sure that the delegated tasks get done.

The Asana product distributes managerial tasks (oversight, delegation, task delivery) to all employees, making title unnecessary in most cases. That being said, there is another question on Quora that I cannot find at the moment, where it is said that if the group can't reach consensus or is taking too long to do so, that decision making becomes Dustin Moskovitz's responsibility. This seems to me to be the typical bazaar with benevolent dictator approach, and their own product supports it.