[version_five]

It's common in the consulting industry to have a wide range of titles - [senior] manager / principal, director, managing director, executive director, vice president, associate partner, etc. Depending on the firm, literally all of those could refer to a similar job.

The reason I've seen put forward for this is to make it hard to compare titles, so that a person can feel like their title matches their seniority.

I've seen this happening in tech too, especially with senior and "lead" roles (especially being "a" lead vs. "the" lead). At some places, I think the staff / principal / distinguished / etc engineer role is along these lines too, basically a way for a more experienced person to feel like they don't have the same job as a 25 year old.

[radicalbyte]

It's also a way to provide a technical career path without having your super experienced people all stepping on each others toes.

[karaterobot]

This, to the extent that after 13-14 years in the industry, I have no clue what differentiates any of these titles in theory, let alone in practice at individual organizations.

[stephc_int13]

I've seen that in Video Games versus Advertisement, Art Director is a high seniority position in the former while it could be an internship role in the latter.