[MoBattah]

If you were to study this for corporate standardized careers, how would you go about getting data?

I can't think of a reliable, detailed, readily available source of info like that. Maybe LinkedIn for profiles that explicitly state education years (HS and B.S. to estimate age) and then somehow filter through and classify job titles?

Several issues not including users who state themselves "Founder", "CEO", for MLM schemes. Maybe you could cut the population down to users who have had software titles.

[withdavidli]

As another person said, large well run HR departments have this data. Level employees come in at, performance reviews, compensation, and job titles within the company throughout employees tenure.

It would be hard to standardize it across multiple companies in a person's career. Maybe for people that stayed at one company their entire lives. Govt/military likely have higher rates of people working and retiring withinn their system for 20+ years. And their job titles should be standardized as well.

[ghaff]

I expect it would be effectively impossible. The meaning of titles vary markedly between companies, a lot of companies don't even have well-standardized titles, and people often don't list a succession of titles within a given company. And I'm not sure how any of that maps to success anyway. Even if you had salary info, which you don't, that's only one metric and, for many, not even the most relevant one.

[MoBattah]

Perhaps data from large HR departments would be useful. Although that would limit it to people who stay at the same company.

Brings another question, is it possible to find out which two companies in the world have the most overlap between employees? To clarify, two companies which a majority of knowledge workers jump between.