It’s a carry over from all the bank mergers from the 80s (and probably earlier). You never want to cut someone’s title, so when dinky 10-branch bank gets bought by JP Morgan, the VP just stays a VP even though you can’t possibly make them the second-most-powerful person at JP Morgan. With enough mergers you get a critical mass and you have to create a structure where all the current VPs and everyone around their stature get the title but it officially loses any meaning.
The company I work for has multiplr VPs per division, and about 20-30 divisions. Then there are the group level and corporate level VPs… Functional VPs… And so on and so forth. They last about two years before they go on to be VP of some other bit of the company that makes more money than the last bit.
Paul Allen has mistaken me for this d*ckhead Marcus Halberstram. It seems logical because Marcus also works at P&P and in fact does the same exact thing I do and he also has a penchant for Valentino suits and Oliver Peoples glasses. Marcus and I even go to the same barber, although I have a slightly better haircut.
Depends on a lot of stuff, region, ability to hire, wage bands Vs market salary. Within my personal region it translates roughly to manager or senior dev with ~10-15 years experience.
I don’t know if it’s still true, but it definitely used to be that way at every local bank in the area where I worked 15 years ago. I did a lot of contract work for them and everyone was a VP.
Especially because a lot of these VP titles are what we call ‘business card promotions’, most common in the sales area.
At my old company all of our business development guys had VP on their business card, but they were just managers like me for all intents and purposes, including pay.
I’m surprised the practice persists though. It’s not like everyone isn’t sort of in on the joke at this point.
Also great for telling grandparents you’re the VP of xyz bank also acceptable to drop the title if you’re tech, look like a complete hippy and are taking shit for it.
I’m a dept lead. But the one who gives raises is two levels above me. And my teammate went to HR fully expecting to get a promotion, which they gave to her but without the salary. I raised a shit storm, and they said, “nothing we can do.” Which is BS.
I pulled her aside and told her to work less, and been pushing for her to get more raises so she meets the minimum baseline salary for her role.
Depending on your field a title only promotion still has value. It allows the person to put “Senior Whatever” on their resume instead of “Junior Whatever” when they start applying for jobs that pay what their worth in six months.
Most companies care about actual experience (years and past duties) when making hiring decisions. They only consider previous titles and salary when they think they it’ll help them negotiate a lower salary.
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