It is so customers can feel good about working with a VP for their personalized service.
Hierarchy theater.
Always remember to ask a VP “how many people report to you?” If they say none, then they aren’t a VP just sparkling wage slave.
I had 100 people reporting to me as a VP in a global bank. It’s still nothing. It’s all about relative size.
100 people in a company of 1000? Real VP.
100 people out of 100k? Middle manager.
In some industries you can be a supervisor with 100 reports. Job titles are so asynchronized even in similar types of companies that they’re virtually meaningless without company specific context.
How do you manage having 100 reports? It sounds like a ton of work. I don’t know what working in a bank is like though.
Layers. I managed managers of managers of people
That and it feels good to some employees to get that title even if it doesn’t come with any extra benefits or better pay. A cheap way for companies to not properly compensate their employees but keep some employees. Though from an employee standpoint, seems the only people who stay are those with inflated egos who boss everyone else around.
Some people like being able to tell their friends they’re a vice president even if there’s nothing behind it. Also helps pad their resume until this becomes common knowledge and no one takes a Goldman Sachs employee resume seriously.
I will just leave this little nugget of applicable wisdom from Napoleon Bonaparte:
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
The scene in American Psycho where they compare biz cards comes to mind…
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.
That’s why I’m American Psycho they’re all vice Presidents, and why they all lose track of who is who.
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.
Tldr I blame the Savings and Loan crisis
