It is so customers can feel good about working with a VP for their personalized service.
Hierarchy theater.
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.
It also looks better on a resumé, which can lead to a better paying job than they’d get otherwise.
I will just leave this little nugget of applicable wisdom from Napoleon Bonaparte:
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
It’s a carry over from all the bank mergers from the 80s (and probably earlier). You never want to cut someone’s title, so when dinky 10-branch bank gets bought by JP Morgan, the VP just stays a VP even though you can’t possibly make them the second-most-powerful person at JP Morgan. With enough mergers you get a critical mass and you have to create a structure where all the current VPs and everyone around their stature get the title but it officially loses any meaning.
Tldr I blame the Savings and Loan crisis
The company I work for has multiplr VPs per division, and about 20-30 divisions. Then there are the group level and corporate level VPs… Functional VPs… And so on and so forth. They last about two years before they go on to be VP of some other bit of the company that makes more money than the last bit.
The scene in American Psycho where they compare biz cards comes to mind…
With so many vice presidents I am surprised they needed my tax dollars for the bailouts.
That’s why I’m American Psycho they’re all vice Presidents, and why they all lose track of who is who.
That’s why I’m American Psycho they’re all vice Presidents, and why they all lose track of who is who.
Wait, you’re THE American Psycho?
At my job we have a president and a vice president of sales. There are 3 sales people including those two lol
From what I know about banks, they give out VP titles like candy; so I wouldn’t put much weight on someone with a VP title in a financial institution.
