That just reminded me of something I hated about a large consulting firm I used to work for. When doing the "laddering" (aka ranking people for promotions and raises), we had to justify why people deserved to be ranked higher than everyone else.
The people in that meeting were soooo full of shit. You'd have people claiming that their brand new analyst fresh out of college was managing a team of 100 people. Meanwhile I'm like "my new guy wrote some good test scripts and didn't say anything dumb in front of the client." Just couldn't compete with all that BS.
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.
Very very much a thing in Finance, with tiers of VP too (Assistant VP, VP, Senior VP). Even for people doing internal support, it makes the internal "customer" feel good.
It was a learning experience when I was told not to prioritize anyone below SVP.
It's often also used as a compensation aid when someone has maxed out their pay band or title but there isn't a management slot open or they don't want to do management. My team doesn't have titles for team leads, but all our "unofficial" ones have at least an "Assistant" VP title.
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.