[exelius]

Once you get to a certain size of company, you have the normal career path of (entry level functional job) > manager > director > vice president. Depending on the size of the company, there may be sub-levels such as junior/assistant > senior > executive/general. The levels usually mean the same thing across companies.

If someone goes from a manager to a director at a big company, that usually means something. Depending on the company, some titles can have negative connotations - "executive director" at many companies means "director who will never get promoted to VP".

Also, if they worked at a bank, "vice president" means nothing. Nearly everyone working at a bank is a vice president - government regulations restrict access to certain customer data and the ability to enact transactions on behalf of the bank to VP and above, so the solution is to just give everyone the title of VP.

[JoshTriplett]

> Once you get to a certain size of company, you have the normal career path of (entry level functional job) > manager > director > vice president.

It bothers me that that's considered a "normal" career path. The skills that make someone a good engineer/architect/etc do not necessarily make them a good manager or VP; even if they do end up doing well in a management role, they're then not actually using most of their technical skills. To me, it's a sign of a dysfunctional company if there's no technical advancement path.

Job titles tend to vary more in technical roles, but at least within the computing field, there's a normal career path that goes roughly engineer -> architect/lead/etc -> principal/distinguished engineer -> fellow. There are often several levels within each of those ("senior", etc), and smaller companies may omit the pre-fellow stage (the name of which tends to vary). For many companies, a quick search will turn up what set of titles they use for the top few tiers.

I would hope that isn't unique to software engineering, and that other fields have the concept of advancing within that field without becoming a manager.

[dragonwriter]

> "executive director" at many companies means "director who will never get promoted to VP".

That's somewhat obnoxious, because "executive director" has a fairly well-established general definition that is equivalent to "CEO".

> Also, if they worked at a bank, "vice president" means nothing. Nearly everyone working at a bank is a vice president

...and if they worked at a B2B software company for which banks are a major set of customers, almost the same thing happens, because the customers think "if you aren't at least a VP, you aren't anybody."

[Sniperfish]

In Canada it's not uncommon to see the seniority of Director and VP reversed (Director being the more senior)

[jghn]

I'm thinking more in the realm of things software developers (as that's what TFA is focused on) are often referred to as. For instance, an anecdote I like to give here is that I've worked at companies where "senior software engineer" meant "we didn't hire you fresh out of college and you're not a manager" (i.e. nearly everyone) and I've worked at places where SSE meant "you're nearly a manager in terms of seniority"

I was going to make the VP at a bank point but you already did for me :)

[exelius]

Yeah, I will agree that below manager level titles are pretty meaningless in general.