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Comment by mrbonner | Hacker News Reader

He was a VP. I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job. I always thought director level and below would be the case.

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> I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job

A lot of companies (especially finance) suffer from title inflation, and also flip Director and VP (i.e, Director is a higher rank than VP).

For example, at Goldman Sachs 30% of all employees are Vice Presidents.

Yeah, I work at a bank. The VP track is often on an 'Officer of the Company' track (Officer, Associate VP, VP, Senior VP, etc). Then there's the 'Job Title' track (Manager, Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director, Executive Director, etc). Usually, you have to be a minimum job title for certain officer title, but less the other way. So you can have a Manager who is a VP and a Director that's a AVP, but not a Manager that's a Senior VP. In any case, the job title is what gives you rank, and officer title is honorary.

Other places do weirder things. I have a buddy at an insurance company who's a "Second VP" and is basically an "Assistant CIO". Never figured that out.

i didn't understand that at all. i thought a director is a person elected by shareholders onto the board of directors. but i normally work for small companies!

It is that, too. Welcome to the totally non-standard world of job titles.

In most companies, it's both. On the employee side (non-finance) you have things like Manager -> Director -> VP -> C-level (often with "Senior" versions of some of those), but then the people who serve on the board are also called Directors.

+1. In Morgan Stanley, the title/promotion hierarchy is associate -> vice president -> executive director -> managing director. You can get VP within 5 years or so.

I work for a Fortune 150 company where VP is definitely a mid-level management job. It's insane how many VP we have. Just my small part of the company has 5 VPs and they are all at least 4 levels below the President of the company.

How does that even look on an org chart?

Normal: President -> Vice-President

Common: President -> Executive VP -> VP

Guessing: President -> Platinum VP -> Exec VP -> VP (It is related to airlines, so just borrowing their classes)

At a typical investment bank: President/CEO --> CTO (may also hold corp title of Managing Director, maybe "Senior Managing Director") --> Managing Director --> Director --> VP --> (possibly) AVP --> Peon.

When I last left the IB world, there were many VPs and a decent number of Directors that were individual contributors.

I find it amusing that someone would be closer to the CEO through six degrees of separation than through the levels of management.

Future: President -> Titanium VP -> Platinum VP -> etc.

It's funny how "titanium" is somehow such a big thing with marketing names these days, such as with car trim models. It's a pretty neat metal but it isn't particularly valuable. Steel and aluminum are pretty neat metals too, in different ways, but no one uses those in marketing this way.

In the airline industry, it might be

President -> Platinum VP -> Gold VP -> Silver VP -> Bronze VP

You forgot Senior VP.

But, it's more like President > C?O > some other C?O position > Senior VP > VP > etc.

Depends on the company. In some companies, there are many VPs that themselves form a hierarchy... so you'll have a VP, Senior VP, Executive VP, etc. So VP can start to look an awful lot like directors (not board directors that is).

On the flip side, I'm working with a company where everyone that should have a "Director" title relative to their authority, knowledge, and experience has been given a VP title... probably because the company isn't very attractive as an employer.

Depends upon the place. Sometimes VP is above director or vice versa.

So, title inflation?

A VP in an investment bank would be a middle manager.

Or in enterprise sales, someone who has 6 months tenure. Why? Because an angry customer call can always be handled with: "I will put you straight through to the Vice President."

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