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Comment by m348e912 | Hacker News Reader

My coworkers and I used to joke that at banks, even cleaning staff get VP titles.

Banks hand out VP titles like candy so that the customers think they're hot stuff and being treated well.

People outside the finance industry really buy it too. I think it's because in most companies, VPs are above director. Only in finance, is it below.

> I think it's because in most companies, VPs are above director.

Every now and again someone whose spent a career exclusively in finance gets bitten by this when transitioning into the business world. A friend once told me a story about a deal with Amazon nearly getting tanked when I coworker chewed out an Amazon VP, saying they wanted to "talk to someone who could make decisions". Took a lot of massaging to salvage that deal.

Enjoyable to imagine this. The ex finance people I work with are quite toxic towards those lower on hierarchy. Cool to hear about someone being bitten by it for once.

That must've been a fun wall to be a fly on.

Ahh, but those are not real VPs. Those are likely all AVPs ( less power, less money ) and not VPs or SVPs. Naturally, all the customer sees is a vice-president, but for HR purposes they are 'only' AVPs. I kinda hate it, because I have ridiculous title for HR purposes now myself and I am 'just' IC in real life.

edit: added quotation marks to just. I like being an IC.

I think it depends on the bank. I worked at Bank of America and random mid-career programmers were legitimately VPs. Officer -> AVP -> VP -> Director was the title progression at the time.

Can confirm: I made VP at Merrill Lynch at 28 I think. It was complete BS; my resume literally says "Vice President (I have no idea why we were all VPs either)"

I recently started working in finance at a F500 company and the number of vice presidents is astounding. People doing data entry are vice presidents. What's really interesting is there are 5 - 10 CIOs as well

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